History Repeats Itself in the Classroom, Too!

Prior Knowledge and Implementing the Common Core State Standards

By (author) Gregory Gray, Jennifer Donnelly

Publication date:

01 April 2014

Length of book:

154 pages

Publisher

R&L Education

ISBN-13: 9781475804126

The best history/social studies classes are those in which students act as historians, political scientists, and economists. The best teachers are those who model “discipline-specific expertise.” There is an effective formula for achieving the Common Core State Standards’ goal of college and career readiness in history/social studies:

Establish the foundation for future academic work, subject area knowledge and skill development
Take deliberate advantage of students prior knowledge of those topics taught multiple times from elementary school through high school
Increase the complexity of reading materials in these subjects as they are covered in subsequent courses
Develop a multi-year plan to vertically spiral writing and speaking skills towards producing work that demonstrates thinking commensurate with college and career readiness

This resource book is intended for both new and experienced teachers. School-site departments and district curriculum specialists will find this book useful. In addition, this book will be an excellent supplement for university methods instructors interested in helping their student teachers meet the goals of the Common Core State Standards.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1The Foundations of Democracy
Chapter 2The Age of Exploration and Discovery
Chapter 3The Age of Enlightenment
Chapter 4Political Revolutions
Chapter 5The Industrial Revolution
Chapter 6Imperialism
Chapter 7The First World War
Chapter 8The Great Depression
Chapter 9The Second World War
Chapter 10The Cold War and Decolonization
Chapter 11The Post-Cold War World
Chapter 12Globalization
ConclusionDeveloping a Vertical Alignment Plan to Implement the Common Core State Standards

History Repeats Itself in the Classroom, Too!, provides a practical approach for satisfying the exigency of Common Core Standard implementation for social studies teachers, social studies departments and secondary school administrators. It is also an excellent source for teachers of all experience levels that are searching to augment their own content knowledge, to be aware of their students’ prior/future experiences in Social Studies and to collect rigorous writing and project based activities to be applied in the classroom. This book makes a cogent argument for the vertical alignment of social studies curriculum as an effective method for teachers to prepare students to handle readings of increasing difficulty and to improve the quality of citizenship education for all secondary students through the exploitation of content repetition and the scaffolding of content literacy skills.