Newcomers to the U.S.: Developing Historical Thinking Among Latino Immigrant Students in a Central Texas High School

Abstract

Newcomers are a special subgroup of the student population designated as English Language Learners (ELLs). The research project described in this article investigates how a teacher integrated language and content in a single subject area, social studies, in a high school newcomer classroom. Three extended lessons were presented to newcomer students in Central Texas who are native speakers of Spanish. The case study in the newcomer classroom documented immigrant students' use of digitized primary resources and document-based questions pertaining to the social crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957; the civil rights concerns of the Chicano Movimiento of the 1960s and 1970s; and the U.S. public's conflicting responses to immigration, particularly from Mexico, in the 21st century. Each extended lesson required that the students systematically understand sources; contexts; historical significance; and notions of agency, empathy, and moral judgment. Despite the challenge of specific concepts in the social studies curriculum, findings show that the interactive use of digitized primary source documents available in English made the subject relevant and meaningful to the newcomer students. The choice to use (or not) the home language for oral and written responses played a significant role in the students' understanding and use of historical thinking.