Approach

The process to accomplish the curricular goals mentioned in our rationale comes from a combination of inter-content and cross-curricular teamwork.  The main structure to these goals comes from the design of assessments to meet our high level expectations.  A well designed and efficient assessment utilizes the work of unpacking multi-tiered standards to supplement the content of the assessment.  The social sciences department bonds content-specific standards from the Wyoming Department of Education with the reading and writing goals of the National Common Core Standards.  These designs, which focus on those two strands of standards, promote flexible frameworks that are open to the resources offered at the national level from the National Council for Social Studies.

A viable curriculum in the social sciences area comes from proper design from all educators.  The process focuses on the recognition and application of each strand of the standards.  This unpacking of the standards allows educators to develop high quality instructional design that fits in with the expectations from the standards.   High quality instructional design is a positive result of the analysis of strong skill sets highlighted within the standards and the potential for relevant new skill sets to displayed in student work.  Once a common scope and sequence can be agreed upon and finalized, all of this can be housed within Atlas Rubicon.

One of the major components of a strong and viable social studies curriculum is the access to and use of high quality resources.  The focus within the social sciences is to utilize the plethora of primary and secondary sources available while still sustaining access to strong literary textbook resources.  The primary and secondary sources are gathered and administered within both the resource section and specific assessments within Atlas Rubicon.  Access to these resources is the final bridge between the curricular scaffold and the design of common assessments.

The design of these assessments apply the guidelines and structures of the Karen Hess framework for advanced learning.  Within this context, common assessments are designed to give an accepted blueprint for the formative, interim, and summative goals of the curriculum.  The guidelines utilized for the assessment designs employ an ascending level of Depth of Knowledge.  A high quality assessment is one that fully applies achievable benchmarks while meeting the depth of knowledge goals of the curriculum.

The curricular goals of the social studies educators is to fully apply multiple instructional strategies as a form of curricular determination.  While most assessments strive to meet the reading and writing goals of the English Language Arts standards, an implementation of performance and project based assessments allows for continual education growth through depth of knowledge.  Our intentions are to fully adhere to the differentiated instructional needs of students within the bounds of our curricular intentions.

While all state, federal, and supplementary standards are important, each one has a different purpose and priority.  As a department, standards are analyzed and vetted in the context of classroom, building, and district goals.  Those standards that fit the curriculum and meet the needs of students' long term goals through formative and summative assessments get priority.  The standards are presented formally as a whole, but fit informally into the greater context of curricular design and knowledge building.  The prioritizing process in professional learning communities builds the scaffolding for student success through the curriculum.

In the same process of prioritizing standards is the concept of bundling.  The design of our curriculum allows for educator autonomy through collaborative design, and in that process standards may be bundled together to achieve a stronger outcome.  While most of the bundling process is within one category of standards, this bundling process can include cross-context and cross-curricular standards.  The bundling of standards allows the curriculum to grow through efficiency for intended student outcomes rather than standard organization.

To properly coordinate professional learning community work with assessments, educators of common subject areas follow a general timeline to complete units and assessments.  The implementation of scope and sequence documents for each content area allows both new and veteran teachers to have access to resources which coordinate classroom content in a similar chronological order.   A common timeline allows students to access one-on-one help with any teacher of that subject and opens the potential for differentiated interventions from the department, building, or district level.   Access to these maps are available under the assessment protocols tab.