The Greece Central School District of Greece, New York put together a fabulous and comprehensive list called "Essential Strategies for Literacy in Social Studies"
This link will take you to their list, but I will also copy and paste the information down below for your convenience.
http://www.greececsd.org/files/1361/Essential%20Skills%20for%20Social%20Studies.doc
The following information is borrowed from Greece Central School Districts, 2016 (see above link)
Essential Skills for Social Studies:
Organizing and Using Information
Thinking Skills:
Classify Information
Identify relevant factual material
Identify relationships between items of factual information
Group data in categories according to appropriate criteria
Place information in order of occurrence
Place information in order of importance
Place data in a variety of forms, such as tables, charts,
graphs, illustrations
Interpret Information
State relationships between categories of information
Identify cause/ effect relationships
Draw inferences from factual materials
Predict likely outcomes based on factual information
Recognize multiple valid interpretations of factual
information
Analyze Information
Organize key ideas related to a topic
Separate a topic into major components according to
appropriate criteria
Critically examine relationships between and among elements
of a topic
Detect bias in information presented
Compare and contrast differing accounts of the same event
Summarize Information
Extract significant ideas from supporting illustrative
details
Form a conclusion based on information
Restate major ideas of a topic in concise form
Form an opinion based on critical examination of relevant
information
Synthesize Information
Present information visually (e.g., chart, graph, diagram,
model)
Prepare an essay that requires an answer to a task
Communicate orally and in writing
Evaluate Information
Determine whether or not information is pertinent to the
topic
Determine whether information is important to know or
interesting to know
Estimate the adequacy of the information
Decision-Making Skills:
Secure needed factual information
Make decision based on the data obtained
Take action to implement decision
Metacognitive Skills:
Select appropriate strategy to solve a problem
Self-monitor one’s thinking process
(Greece Central School District, 2016)
The great thing about all of these skills and strategies is that not only will they be beneficial to students in the Social Studies Classroom, but they will be essential and helpful to students throughout their academic and adult careers! This could be a really important topic of conversation to have with your students. So many times we hear kids whine "why are we learning this?" "When will I ever use this?"Go through this list and pick out some that you can readily have real world examples to give your kids the next time they start to complain.
