Social Studies Middle School Guide

Social Studies Best Practices

Teacher ​ uses reliable assessments to both inform instruction as well as to provide feedback to stakeholders on progress towards mastering the standards. Social Studies area of data include: ● Content Understanding ● Historical Thinking ● Social Studies Literacy

Data Based Instruction

Students engage in assessment to identify instructional needs. Engage in learning routines, structures, and lessons to build social studies skills Students consider multiple sources to determine a point of view. They use this to come to their own conclusion on a historical event or problem. Student need to look at multiple sources and place them within the context of the time and place of an event.

● Corroboration ​ asks students to consider details across multiple sources to determine points of agreement and disagreement. ● What do other documents say?

Corroboration

● Do the documents agree? If not, why? ● What are other possible documents? ● What documents are most reliable?

Contextualization ​ asks students to locate a document in time and place and to understand how these factors shape its content.

Contextualization

• When and where was the document created?

• What was different then?

• What was the same?

• How might the circumstances in which the document was created affect its content?

Teachers ​ build classroom conditions to promote higher reading engagement and conceptual learning through such strategies as goal setting, self-directed learning, and collaborative learning.

Students ​ should engage positively in activities, goal sweeting, self-directed and collaborative learning. Students ​ should actively read the text. ● Students use annotation strategies for the defined purpose ● Students discuss

Increase student Motivation and Engagement in Literacy Learning

Use of Text CLOSE reading in Social Studies

Teachers engage students in rigorous primary and secondary sources to: ● Source and analyze rhetoric ● Determine claims made by the author ● Analyze the evidence the author uses ● Distinguish words, phrases, images, and symbol the author uses to persuade the audience.