Literature can provide cultural support and identification for students from minority cultures. It presents models for writing. Positive experiences with literature may promote lifelong reading. It provides the opportunity for student growth in the Common Essential Learnings. As students develop and share responses, they are encouraged to think critically and creatively.
Students enhance communication abilities through a variety of modes of responding to literature.
Students negotiate meaning both with the text and with their peers, and so further their growth in personal and social values and skills. As students team to explore and validate their own meanings, to take responsibility for self-selected learning tasks, they develop dispositions and skills for increasing independent learning. In selecting novels or other literature a propriate for Social Studies, the teacher may consider some of the following suggestions. The literature should deal with appropriate historical or social experiences and provide opportunities to extend the concepts identified in the Social Studies curriculum. It should be of good literary quality, and be recommended for middle years students.