Social studies is an online receptacle of electronic resources for the K-12 Indiana social studies curriculum. They are built around (a) the principles of good social studies instruction, (b) the practices for the various history/social science academic areas, (c) the Indiana social studies content standards, and (d) good/interesting writing.
The resources consist of a central text, an article if you would. The article is “marked up” as one would expect from a reader using the “marking up the text” strategy.
The concept for building the resources is as follows:
- narrative text
- address one person, institution, event, controversy, issue, theory, idea
- write in the present tense and active voice
- control sentence structure and vocabulary to promote reading
- present as a foundational text
- promote intellectual engagement with ideas, motives, intent, values, beliefs, and conflicting concepts (i.e. the purpose of mankind)
- enhance the basic text using hyperlinks (i.e. definitions, graph representations of reasoning, etc.)
- enrich the resource using hyperlinks ( i.e. read more about it, advice for starting personal inquiry, etc.)
- read aloud the main text as applicable
- images, graphics, mind maps, graphic passages, audio, video, avatars.
Resources are pliable. They can be used as:
- reading assignments before or in class
- launchers for class activities/discussions
- jumping off points for personal inquiry
- revision/review
They are what the learner/teacher chooses to make of them.
They are laid out as a smorgasbord of resources. Teachers can take their lesson plan and choose a resource that work within it for the class, a group of learners in the class or as a reteach/remediation for a student. Your to use as you choose is the way you should approach each individual resource.