Social Studies

This article will help you to understand how structal can fit into your Social Studies classroom.

If you have a national average classroom, 2 out of 3 of your students can't read grade level texts. This means that when they read your textbook or look at primary sources, 2 out of 3 of your students will greatly struggle to understand what they just read. This can mean that you spend the entire lesson helping them to just literally understand what they read instead of discussing the bigger themes, covering important concepts, and building the critical thinking skills that you got into social studies to teach!

Social Studies teachers have told us structal helps them in the following ways:

Help students to understand primary documents

Primary source documents often use lots of antiquated language and advanced vocabulary that can be really tricky for students. These documents' antiquated grammar can further hinder student understanding. structal's vocabulary and reading comprehension supports help your students to understand the primary document more quickly and deeply.

Help students to understand your textbook

Similar to primary documents, textbooks can be dense and use a lot of advanced vocabulary. structal's reading comprehension supports help students to break down the text so it's easier for them to understand.

Teach content vocabulary in context

You're responsible teaching content vocabulary, but it's hard to find the time for explicit instruction of those words. Study after study has also found that vocabulary instruction is far more effective when it's done in context with what students are reading. structal allows you to create custom highlights for your entire vocabulary list so that students see your vocabulary words highlighted in everything they read, helping them get review on vocabulary you've taught and learn the words more effectively.

Diagnosing student issues

We've all been there, you get to the end of a lesson and you wonder, "What happened?" structal's reports, like our word cloud, help you to see what specific vocabulary and concepts your students struggled with in what they read so you don't have to guess. This lets you easily and effectively address student misunderstandings so they don't compound.