Zoom In! Tools for Teaching Literacy in the Social Studies

This three-year project, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will create, test, and scale a suite of digital tools that will help teachers develop effective instructional routines and their own curricular resources for teaching middle-school social studies and history with primary sources.

Zoom In! Tools for Teaching Literacy in the Social Studies will be a set of digital tools that support social studies teachers in aligning their teaching with the Common Core Literacy Standards. The focus of the project will be the development of a set of interactive analysis tools that teachers can use to help students develop habits of reading and writing using evidence from primary and secondary sources.

Zoom In! will help social studies teachers learn how to:

• Read complex texts for evidence and perspective
• Anticipate and address the reading challenges their students will face
• Lead sustained, focused discussions of challenging texts in the social studies classroom.

EDC has partnered with the American Social History Project (ASHP) as content and pedagogy developers, and with Blenderbox as designers and technology developers.