Social Studies Colleagues,

Good afternoon! I hope everyone will have a restful winter break so you may return refreshed for the new year. There are several updates since the last newsletter that will be helpful to move forward in January.

1. As many of you already know, Ryan New has taken a job outside of JCPS. He joined us slightly before the new standards rolled out and helped guide our district through this transition. We greatly enjoyed working with Ryan over the years. We thank him for his thoughtfulness, attention to detail, and dedication to JCPS. Please know that the work continues and if you have any needs, I am here to support each of you.

2. I have made several updates to the Living Democracy Curriculum since the last newsletter and it is a continuation to the June update. The June update was a shift of simplifying curriculum pieces to make them more accessible. The Social Studies curriculum maintains its focus on inquiry, equity, and literacy. 

• C3 Teachers: The Living Democracy Curriculum has always taken a "cohesive curriculum approach". Instead of leaning on one company or partner, we have always brought in the best national model inquiries from a variety of groups to make a cohesive curriculum. I have now brought in all of the original links for C3 Teacher inquiries. For those of you that are unfamiliar with C3 Teachers, it is the national model for inquiry that was created by the same people that created the C3 Framework. With the addition of these inquiries, the curriculum has grown by 60+ Compelling Questions and 230+ Supporting Questions. The C3 Teachers inquiries include Compelling and Supporting Questions, modified/excerpted sources, and Formative Performance Tasks. This is the national model for what resources that are seen as "teacher ready" and the model that we have mirrored in our own inquiries. All of these inquiries have been sorted by the appropriate grade level and unit. In time, the C3 Teachers inquires will be modified to look like our other curricular resources in the Living Democracy curriculum. The itemized list  of these inquiries is provided below in the "Updates'' section.

• For Elementary: Since June all of our inquiries have been in the process of being updated to be "Student Ready". "Student Ready" means that each newly completed Compelling Question will come with the following: Teacher guides and student slides for Staging the Compelling Question, all Supporting Questions, and built out Summative Performance Tasks. Teachers were asking for resources to be built out in Google Slides and these slides now provide instructional steps for each slide deck. The student slides include content literacy (i.e. ALM), disciplinary literacy (i.e. Thinking like a Historian), and questions for discussion to promote student engagement. Since October, I have also been building Student Workbooks for every Compelling Question, with the intent to go back and make workbooks for the previously created Compelling Questions. Please note that any student ready material will always need to be adjusted to meet the individual needs of the students in your classroom. 

The goal was to have at least one Compelling Question student ready for every grade level and every unit so every grade would have a complete curriculum. I am happy to announce that Kindergarten, 1st Grade, 2nd Grade, and 3rd Grade all now have "Student Ready" Compelling Questions for each unit. 4th Grade and 5th Grade are not far behind. Over time, the curriculum will expand on the "Future Inquiry" so teachers will have more choices of inquiries for each unit. 

• For Middle and High: Since the last newsletter, all grades now have "Teacher Ready" curriculum resources for each unit. Similar to C3 Teachers, "Teacher Ready" means that each grade and unit has at least one Compelling Question with teacher guides for every Supporting Question. The teacher guides include the Supporting Question, alignment to standards, 4-7 sources, and a Formative Performance Task. All sources have been modified for grade level and excerpted to a word count that is comparable to the ranges we have seen on the Kentucky Summative Assessment (KSA). The "Teacher Ready" version provides a complete curriculum but still leaves teachers with instructional decisions. To support that work, we have provided resources and guidance on the Instructional Framework page, including Google Slide lesson templates that mirror the instructional framework and are comparable to the style of the KSA platform. In time the intent is to create "Student Ready" versions for all Compelling Questions, similar to what is currently being built for elementary. 

Not every newsletter will be "War and Peace".  I thought it important to clearly communicate the continuation of the work that we began years ago while explaining how the curriculum is being made more student ready and accessible over time. The curriculum will continue to be refined based on the needs of our students, and the feedback of our teachers and JCPS community. 

If you need any support, please reach out!

Vincent Tinker