Intervention for Struggling Learners in K-5 Social Studies: Exploring a Tiered Model of Support

The K-5 social studies curriculum introduces students to foundational knowledge in civics, geography, economics, and history. Social studies is also a vehicle through which students: (a) synthesize content knowledge which in turn supports reading comprehension, (b) learn about community structures around them, and (c) build social-emotional skills through an in-depth understanding of the human condition. Yet, instructional time allocated to social studies has decreased over the past few decades, and scores on national social studies assessments indicate that most students do not attain proficiency in acquiring social studies knowledge. Furthermore, there is an absence of a robust system of intervention to address these academic deficits. This article proposes a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) framework as a viable option for providing intervention for struggling learners in social studies. To illustrate how MTSS can be applied to social studies, an example unit of study is provided.