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Hello, I am Teaven Barnum the District Instructional Specialist for Secondary Social Studies. I'm excited to help you in any way that you need. You can reach me at teaven.barnum@killeenisd.org, text at 254-446-2873 or call my desk phone at 254-336-0253.

• STAAR Grade 8 Social Studies Blueprint
• 2023 US History Blueprint

Description: Student cites evidence by selecting highlighted text in a sentence, paragraph, or extended reading.

Point value: These questions can be worth a maximum of 2 points with the possibility of receiving 1 point for a partially correct response.

Social studies tests that may include these questions: Grade 8 and EOC

The focus of this question type is on citing evidence. Students who are familiar with annotation and justification of their answers will find this question type familiar. I would not focus on recreating this question type through technology. As a teacher, you can recreate question types like this by pre-highlighting text evidence and asking students to select which of the highlighted text pieces is evidence for a specific question that is being asked.

Description: Student gives a brief explanation in their own words to demonstrate their understanding of content.

Point value: Short constructed responses are graded on a rubric equal to 2 points.

Social studies tests that may include these questions: Grade 8 and EOC

I would highly suggest that reading, science and social studies teachers collaborate on expectations for the short constructed response. It is much easier for students if we do not have different expectations for each content area.

Students are going to need lots of opportunities to write with content specific prompts. Many students are hesitant to write because they've lacked exposure to it. Sometimes they feel like they don't have enough background knowledge to write adequately. Use discussions as a launching point for writing. Not all writing pieces have to be graded. Give students an opportunity to find their voice.

Currently the character count is listed as 475, but we are awaiting final confirmation on this, as well as rubrics for grading this area. Google Forms do allow you to limit character count.

Description: Student selects the correct answer(s) from one or more drop-down menu(s).

Point value: These questions can be worth a maximum of 2 points with the possibility of receiving 1 point for a partially correct response.

Social studies tests that may include these questions: Grade 8 and EOC

Description: Student matches statements or objects to different categories presented in a table grid.

Point value: These questions can be worth a maximum of 2 points with the possibility of receiving 1 point for a partially correct response.

Social studies tests that may include these questions: Grade 8 and EOC

For both inline choice and match table grid, students will often be recalling information. It is critical that we not rely upon memorization for recall, but instead ensure our students have been provided the necessary tools to move the learning beyond surface, into deep learning. Example instructional strategies of deep learning include: graphic organizers, class discussions, close reading, metacognitive strategies, and reciprocal teaching.

A few notes about graphic organizers:

• Consider - transformation, not replication. How can students take the information you have provided and organize it in a way that is meaningful to their learning?
• Graphic organizers should be considered an intermediary step, a planning step - what will we do with the information once organized - write? discuss? create?
• Article: The Great and Powerful Graphic Organizer (Cult of Pedagogy)

Please make sure that if you have not already taken the practice test that you do so. This will help give you the perspective the students will have. The test can be found at www.texasassessment.gov

This website is a resource for you to create new question item types. This is the same system that STAAR questions are built from. The goal is to have a work group in the system for 6th, 7th, 8th, and 11th (U.S.) grades where teachers can contribute questions to a bank that everyone can pull from. The team leads were trained on how to login and create new items. You can also go to www.texasassessment.gov and click on the LMS (Learning Management System) tab to access online modules. From there you will click the course link and that will bring you to a place where you can learn about the website at your own pace. I will post a picture of the button you are supposed to click. Mrs. McClish is also working on creating a quick view video that will help you navigate the website.

In an effort to reduce cheating amongst students and campuses on the Common Unit Assessments, we will not enable students to view their correct and incorrect responses in Eduphoria. This includes during bridge week, since not all campuses test at the exact same time.

However, we recognize that teachers may like to review the test questions with students as part of their bridge week protocols so that students may examine the questions they missed without the correct answer displayed. If this is something you would like to do, you can follow the directions included in the attachment below to print student test summary reports and display questions and answer choices for your students/class to examine or discuss.

As you remember, we had Lowman Education come out and present. While we loved their free resources of the frequency charts and the framework, I heard a resounding desire from all of you to purchase more. When looking at what product could give us the biggest bang for our buck, I decided that the warm-ups and the assignments would be the best decision. These products were purchased and a big shout out to Dr. Buckley for pushing it through!

Who can use the products?

​Lowman only has their products available for 6th, 7th, 8th and 11th (U.S.) grades.

​How do we accesses the products?

Go to LOWMANEDUCATION.COM

CLICK ACCESS PRODUCTS

CREATE ACCOUNT (claim campus)

LOGIN WITH EMAIL AND PASSWORD

DOWNLOAD ANY ITEMS LABELED "OPEN"

​Now most of you will already have a login because you created one during Job-alike.

​Why should I use the product?

Lowman has created these warmups and assignments based off the frequency of tested TEKS. They also have new question item types. However, these resources are not interactive. For example, students would not actually drag and drop an item on the drag and drop questions. These products are available to you through word and PDF, so they do not have interactive quality. However, they do explicitly explain to the student what question type it is. If you would like to make them interactive, you could take those questions and plug them into Schoology. I believe the purpose is the same because we want to focus on the skill of how these new question types are tested.

If you have any questions please let me know.

Texas regional social studies leaders are excited to partner with OER Project to provide a series of professional development sessions for Texas educators this school year! For the past 10 years, OER Project has been providing teachers free social studies curricula, resources, and PD. Their courses are taught by teachers throughout the state. You can learn more about OER Project here.

This free collaborative series of virtual workshops has been designed with Texas teachers in mind and will provide participants with ideas and tools that can be implemented immediately in their classrooms. Each session will explore a particular skill that helps students made sense of social studies content. Registration for the first three sessions is now open! Click on the link here to register or learn more. https://community.oerproject.com/events/tesc-strengthening-the-reading-muscle/c/e/112

Amping up Argumentative Writing – Making Strong Claims - October 12 6:00-7:00 PM (ET)

Comparison is the Highest Form of Flattery - November 8, 2023 6:00-7:00 PM (ET)

I am excited to have Writable train us on how their program integrates with our content. One of the main reasons this training is valuable is it will allow you to easily administer short constructed response questions to your students. This is one of the more difficult item types for students to answer.

We have often found the most successful campuses use a combination of three strategies to help them achieve student success within this content area.

1. Ensure that teachers are unpacking standards to align the depth of the content with the rigor of the test. Often as history teachers we are passionate about certain moments in history and not so much about others. It is important that we are cognizant of how the state wants the content taught so that we prioritize our time adequately. Resources such as the Frequency Distribution chart from Lead4Ward as well as Lowman also help teachers understand and prioritize content.

2. Help students move the content from surface to deep learning. Students really need content provided to them in multiple ways, continually increasing the rigor level, so that they are able to move the information into groups that make sense in their mind and can be retrieved by them at a later date. Spiraling content back in, using anchor charts as constant reference tools, and creating a note-taking system that students can reference are all helpful ways to do this.

3. The final component is more of a systemic change...re-evaluating how history is taught prior to 8th grade. Often we find that our 8th grade teachers are having to spend a lot of time introducing HOW to think like a historian AND teach a massive amount of content. Consider reflecting on how students are prepared with historical skills, such as analyzing primary sources, prior to the tested year. One of my favorite resources are the Document Analysis Worksheets from National Archives.

A Schoology course has been created to help spiral high frequency TEKS and concepts to our 8th grade students. There will be one lesson a week posted in Schoology to be delivered through the intervention period. The goal is for the lesson to last no longer than 20 minutes and be completed without the need of a content expert. If you are interested in helping contribute to this effort, please contact me for more information.