Planning for Delivery & Implementation in Social Studies

Implementation of the Standards

Implementation science shows that implementation is a marathon, not a sprint.

Background

• The Iowa Social Studies Standards Implementation Plan - Outlines a three-year process for implementing the Iowa’s Social Studies Standards.
• Iowa Social Studies Implementation Tool - Download this tool to help you determine where your district/school is in regards to implementation progress.
• As implementation takes place, what should be done more and what should be done less? A New Vision for Social Studies Education provides an overview of how student learning should change as a result of Iowa’s social studies standards.
• From Old to New: Mindshifts with Iowa’s Social Studies Standards
• Iowa Social Studies Standards Frequently Asked Questions outlines common questions the field might have regarding implementation of Iowa’s social studies standards.

Other Materials

• Holocaust Connections within the Iowa Social Studies Standards - Document outlining the connections between the standards and the teaching of the Holocaust, including links to connected resources.
• The Standards-Based Teaching/Learning Cycle - From the Colorado Department of Education, this document describes what student learning looks like in a standards-based learning environment.

Inquiry-Centered Classrooms

Creating an inquiry-based classroom takes purposeful planning.

Planning for Inquiry

The Inquiry in Social Studies Poster highlights the following stages in planning for inquiry in the social studies classroom.

• Explore Standards
• Develop Questions
• Gather Resources
• Communicate Conclusions

Developing Questions

• Right Question Institute - Provides several resources on the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) in order to help students create better questions.
• Developing Student-Driven Questions - An article from Edutopia provides ideas about how to get students to ask their own questions.
• The Power of Asking the Right Questions - An article from Edutopia provides ideas about how asking good questions can be a powerful learning experience in the classroom.

Designing Rigorous Curriculum

Karin Hess has designed the Hess Cognitive Rigor Matrix for Social Studies/Humanities applying Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK) Levels to Bloom’s Cognitive Process Dimensions. Check out more resources on Karin Hess' website.

Developing a Scope and Sequence

• The Louisiana Department of Education has developed scope and sequence documents for their grade-level standards in social studies.
• The Minnesota Center for Social Studies Education provides several scope and sequence examples.

Unit and Lesson Planning

Templates

Various templates to use when thinking about unit and lesson planning.

• Lesson Plan Template
• Lesson Plan Template with Guidance
• Unit Plan Template
• Unit Plan Template with Guidance
• Course Plan Template
• Course Plan Template with Guidance

Standards at a Glance

Templates

• Standards At-A-Glance Template K-5
• Standards at a Glance Template 6-12

Examples

These guides provide an example of how a specific grade/content area has approached thinking about the bundling of standards into cohesive units throughout the course of a grade level/course. Check out these examples:

• Kindergarten Standards at a Glance: Spaces and Places
• 1st Grade Standards at a Glance: Communities and Cultures
• 2nd Grade Standards at a Glance: Choices and Consequences
• 3rd Grade Standards at a Glance: Immigration and Migration
• 4th Grade Standards at a Glance: Change and Continuity
• 5th Grade Standards at a Glance: Rights and Responsibilities
• 7th Grade Standards at a Glance: Contemporary Global Studies
• 9th-12th Grade Standards at a Glance: U.S. History

Alignment Tools

• Aligned Instructional Practice - This resource from Achieve the Core outlines what aligned instruction looks like.
• Achieve - This includes a toolkit for alignment of instructional and assessment materials to the Iowa Core. Although predominantly designed to look for alignment of the Literacy standards, these tools can also be helpful to examine alignment with any standards.
• Open Educational Resources (OER) Rubric - These rubrics help teachers determine the degree of alignment between OER materials and standards.
• Ed Reports - A resource that rates instructional materials aligned to the Iowa Core Literacy and Math standards.
• The Rubric to Evaluate the Quality of Units in Social Studies helps teachers and districts evaluate the quality of instructional units in social studies and is modeled after the EQuIP rubric in ELA/Literacy, Mathematics, and Science.

Reflective Tools

Best Practices in Social Studies Rubric - A reflective tool for classroom teachers to use to gauge how they are thinking about and implementing research-based practices in social studies.