An Action Research on the Adaptation of the Content Area Literacy Approach to the Social Studies Curriculum

Content area literacy is one of the types of literacy. Content area literacy has emerged with the need for schools to keep up with the change in the concept of literacy. According to the concept of content area literacy, students have different literacy needs in each subject, and these needs should be addressed. Social studies lesson is one of the lessons that require specific literacy skills. Situations such as the fact that social sciences contain subjectivity-based value judgements, are affected by the views of the researcher, and require analyzing more than one source on a social/historical topic can be listed among the reasons why the social studies lesson requires field-specific literacy skills. The aim of the research is to determine the necessary literacy skills in social studies lesson and to make an application on these skills. While examining the effectiveness of the application, student opinions were also consulted. This research is a qualitative study conducted within the framework of an action research design. Perception questionnaires, worksheets, researcher diary and student opinion form were used as data collection tools. The research was conducted with 4th-grade students at a primary school in the Üsküdar district of İstanbul province. The researcher was the primary school teacher of the group in which the implementation was carried out. The class consisted of 29 students, all of whom were included in the study. According to the findings of the research, it was observed that students developed in terms of necessary literacy skills in the social studies lesson and about half of the students prepared qualified products during the application process in terms of the resources used in the research. Students generally expressed positive opinions about the application. As a result of the research, it can be suggested that practices to develop content area literacy skills should be implemented not only in social studies lessons but also in other subjects, and that content area literacy practices should be incorporated at different grade levels.