SS Literacy & Language Support
Resources and Strategies for CCS Social Studies Teachers
FALL 2022
This bulletin highlights resources available to support all teachers with
literacy and English language development in the social studies classroom.
What's Inside
CCS Adopted Programs Support
- TCI Support for Reading, Vocabulary, and Writing
- TCI Visual Resources
- TCI in Spanish
- Achieve3000 Literacy Resources
ESL Department Support
- People to Know
- Adapted Social Studies Textbooks
- Language Practice using TCI Visuals and Edcite Premium
Supplemental Resources
- Pebble Go Next and Capstone Interactive ebooks
- Ken Burns in the Classroom Video Collection
Professional Articles for Teachers
- Productive Struggle
- Text Difficulty and Adolescent Literacy
- Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners
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TCI Support for Reading, Vocabulary, and Writing
The TCI platform includes a textbook to support the lessons. While the textbook is part of the Tier 1 instruction, it is not assumed that all students will be able to read the textbook independently without support. All students will benefit from guided practice and modeling, as teachers work through the text and notebook with them. The textbook includes several reading support tools.
TCI texts and the interactive notebook are designed to promote productive struggle, but it is not always imperative to read (especially independently) the entire text. Sometimes just discussion around the key ideas, along with the supporting visual material is sufficient for what students need to know.
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TCI Visual Resources
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TCI in Spanish
Additionally, teachers can use the Materials section of the platform to access printable PDFs of the handouts and Interactive Notebook.
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Achieve3000 Literacy Support
The Alignment Guides outline the units and sub-units from the CCS Curriculum Maps and identify articles that align with the topics. Each article is hyperlinked for quick access. Note: You will need to log-in to Achieve3000 first via CCS Clever in order to access the lessons. You may want to right click and open in a new tab to keep your place in the file. There are about 60-70 articles for each course.
The Alignment Guides are available on the Social Studies Curriculum webpage or from the links below.
Learn more about Achieve3000 at the CCS Achieve3000 webpage.
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People to Know in ESL
Teachers can contact ESL Instructional Support via CCS email:
- Alisa Jones, ESL Instructional Support, Region 5
- Mark Paskert, ESL Instructional Support, Region 3
- Robyn Secrest, ESL Instructional Support, Region 6
The team also crosses over to help MS and HS with specific school support in Regions 1 and 2.
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Adapted Social Studies Texts
All social studies teachers may access the digital versions via the Social Studies Course Sites (log in with CCS Google):
- Modern World History 9 - Pacemaker World History and Access World History are under the Textbooks tab. Files are embedded by chapter in a Google Drive folder. The titles are straightforward with regard to how they align with the Curriculum units.
- American History 10 - Pacemaker American History, Access American History, and Gateway to Social Studies are embedded into the Google Drive folder for each unit/lesson.
- American Government - Pacemaker Government is under the "ESL" tab the top of the page.
These texts cover much of the same content as TCI textbooks (and the standards) and can be used for extra support for the TCI text, notebook, and strategies.
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Language Practice using TCI Visuals and Edcite Premium
ESL Social Studies teachers have access to these assessments through their Edcite Premium account.
- Go to www.edcite.com
- Log in your CCS Google account
- Click on Assignments
- Click on My Assignments
- Choose ESL Department
- Click on Supplemental ESL Supports for TCI using Edcite.
The recording activities based on TCI images/placards are in chronological order starting with Imperialism.
General education classroom teachers interested in piloting these assessments may contact Mark Paskert via CCS email.
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Pebble GoNext and Capstone Interactive eBooks through INFOhio
Through INFOhio, teachers and students have access to the extensive databases of Pebble GoNext and Capstone Interactive eBooks.
Pebble GoNext articles cover most topics in American History, Geography, Government, and World History. The articles are accessible, but age appropriate for middle and high school students. Articles include a read-aloud with highlighting, visuals, video clips, and critical thinking questions.
Capstone Interactive eBooks collection provides a library of 800 interactive eBooks—high-interest texts with highlighting and read-aloud capabilities. Although the collection is marketed for grades 3-6, many of the books in the collection stretch into the upper middle school/low high school Lexile range, cover the content of middle and high school courses, and are age appropriate.
Access the collection directly through INFOhio.
Access the Pebble GoNext and Capstone Interactive eBooks Alignment Guides for Modern World History 9 and American History 10 from the files below.
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Ken Burns in the Classroom Video Collection
This collection includes over 400 video segments from various documentaries, organized by era. Rich visuals are accompanied by narrative, with closed captions and transcripts. Video speed is adjustable.
Access the Ken Burns in the Classroom collection.
See an example video below.
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Productive Struggle
Student success occurs when you create an instructional environment that sets high expectations for each student and provides scaffolding without offering excessive help. The key is to incorporate productive struggle.
The Neuroscience Behind Productive Struggle (Edutopia)
Challenging tasks spur the production of myelin, a substance that increases the strength of brain signals. Here are four strategies to incorporate productive struggle into your lessons.
Here we posit that productive struggle can, and should, be an aspect of curricula across all content areas.
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Text Difficulty and Adolescent Literacy
One interesting finding: “Only a small subset of students who read significantly below average, many of whom were identified as English learners, benefited from reading the easier versions.”
In other words, as long as there was instructional support, most of the students were able to make sense of the texts.
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Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners
We interviewed educators with decades of experience in teaching ELLs and tapped a network of experts and observers to find the strategies that work.
12 Ways to Support English Learners in the Mainstream Classroom (Cult of Pedagogy)
Three ESL teachers tell us what they know about the things regular classroom teachers can do to improve instruction for ELL students. These 12 strategies are simple, they are not very time consuming, and best of all, they will help everyone in your class learn better.
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