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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.

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

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)

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

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 also created an easy to follow video on how to create, share and publish items. Multi-Select Question - TFAR.mp4

Summer has also created a step through guide on how to create, share and publish items. Links to those documents provided below.

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 or TFAR. 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.

The history you hear depends on who is telling the story. History is about perspective and point of view. Join us for all four sessions or sign up individually as we look at digital resources for uncovering forgotten history. Each session will feature a different topic.

Sessions include:

April 11 - Pullman Car Museum

**ESC Region 12 teachers may register for the Forgotten Voices in History sessions HERE.

Skills:

• Citing Evidence
• Identifying Key Ideas & Details
• Identifying Point of View & Purpose
• Questioning

Students hold silent discussions about essential questions, in writing on chart paper, by asking and answering questions in a real-time, paper-based conversation. This strategy helps students develop critical thinking and communication skills and provides a format for every student’s voice to be heard without judgment.

1. Select a Discovery Education video (or a video of your choice) related to your unit of study.

2. Distribute the butcher paper around your room. On each piece of paper, write one essential question related to your unit of study.

3. Introduce the strategy by reviewing each of the questions and providing a few minutes for students to discuss their initial thoughts with a partner.

4. Explain that they will watch a video that will provide additional and supporting information to help form their responses to the essential questions.

5. Play the selected media. Once the video has concluded, have students move around the room and respond to each question silently.

6. After responding to the questions, students should revisit each question and add notes, highlight or circle comments with which they agree, or pose additional questions to their peers’ responses. They may use arrows to help direct the silent conversation.

7. As a class, review the comments and questions from each sheet that resonated the most.

Explicitly teaching students how to investigate historical questions in the same manner a professional historian would should be a critical component of the start of your history instruction. How are students expected to dissect primary sources in your classroom, what annotation strategies will you be using, is there an expected way to read articles or sources? The beginning of the year is the perfect time to introduce students to your expectations and model best practices. Here are a few suggested resources to help you get started:

Stanford History Education Group - Reading Like a Historian Intro Materials

There are free posters and supports for evaluating sources. Lunchroom Fight I and II are phenomenal lessons to conduct with a variety of age levels to help them understand sourcing, corroboration, and contextualization. Free login required.

Developed by the Right Question Institute, the Question Formulation Technique, or QFT, is a structured method for generating and improving questions. It distills sophisticated forms of divergent, convergent, and metacognitive thinking into a deceptively simple, accessible, and reproducible technique.

The QFT builds the skill of asking questions, an essential — yet often overlooked — lifelong learning skill that allows people to think critically, feel greater power and self-efficacy, and become more confident and ready to participate in civic life.

Recognizing and celebrating historical holidays—from memorializations of monumental American figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. to remembrances of events like Juneteenth—offer entry points for a deeper exploration of the pivotal moments, key figures, and central conflicts in American history. For teachers, these holidays provide an excellent way to focus classroom study and activity.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute offers American historical holiday resources from its Collection of more than 80,000 primary source documents, essays published in its online journal History Now, videos of talks by eminent scholars, lesson plans by American history teachers, and more to help teachers guide discussion, create class projects, and gain content knowledge that can be directly applied to their curriculum.

Did you know our online collection provides access to films relating to Texas, U.S., and World History, as well as free lesson plans aligned with Texas teaching standards (TEKS) for grades K-12? https://texasarchive.org/education

Introduce your Texas History students to the subject with an overview of Modern Texas. This short TAMI exclusive film will give your students essential background knowledge on the various industries present in Texas today

Please make sure you check out this amazing free resource. You will find amazing primary sources of stories/perspectives rarely told in Texas History. https://education.texashistory.unt.edu/

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.

CUA Revision Teams are underway! I want to thank all the teachers who have showed interest and have started the hard but necessary work to make sure our CUAs are the best they could possibly be.

If you have any concerns about any questions on the CUAs please email me with the grade, unit and question number as well as an explanation with what is wrong and how you would possibly fix it. Thank you.

(October 2022 Newsletter) https://www.smore.com/5xkvg

(November 2022 Newsletter) https://www.smore.com/akyd6

(February 2023 Newsletter) https://www.smore.com/28pcj