Elementary Social Studies Content Area Task (CAT) Prompts



Elementary Social Studies Content Area Task (CAT) Form

Be sure to read the instructions in the Elementary Social Studies CAT Task.

Planning Commentary

Write a commentary of 3-7 single-spaced pages (including prompts) that addresses the following prompts.

1. What is the central focus of the learning segment? Apart from being present in the school curriculum, student academic content standards, or ELD standards, why is the content of the learning segment important for your particular students to learn? (TPE 1)

| |

2. How do key learning tasks in your plans build on each other to support students’ use of facts, concepts, and interpretations to make and explain judgments about a significant historical event or social science phenomenon, and to develop related academic language? Describe specific strategies that you will use to build student learning across the learning segment and attend to different learners’ needs (e.g., English learners, GATE students, students with IEPs). Reference the instructional materials you have included, as needed. (TPEs 1, 4, 9)

| |

3. What language demands[1] of the learning and assessment tasks are likely to be challenging for your students at different levels of language development? Explain how specific features of the learning and assessment tasks in your plan support students in meeting these language demands, building on what your students are currently able to do with language. Be sure to set these support plans in the context of your long term goals for your students’ development of academic language. (TPE 7)

| |

4. How do your choices of instructional strategies, materials, and the sequence of learning tasks reflect your students’ backgrounds, interests, and needs? Be specific about how your knowledge of your students informed the lesson plans, such as the choice of text or materials used in lessons, how groups were formed or structured, using student learning or experiences (in or out of school) as a resource, or structuring new or deeper learning to take advantage of specific student strengths. (TPEs 4,6,7,8,9)

| |

5. Explain how the collection of assessments from your plan allows you to evaluate your students’ learning of specific student standards/objectives. (TPEs 2, 3)

| |

|PLANNING MAKING CONTENT ACCESSIBLE |

|EH2: How do the plans make the curriculum accessible to the students in the class? (TPEs 1,4,5,6,7,8,9) |

|Level 1 |Level 2 |Level 3 |Level 4 |

|Plans refer to students’ experiential|Plans draw on students’ experiential |Plans draw on students’ prior |All components of Level 3 |

|backgrounds[2], interests, or prior |backgrounds, interests, or prior |learning as well as experiential |plus: |

|learning[3] that have little or no |learning to help students reach the |backgrounds or interests to help |Plans include well-integrated|

|relationship to the learning |learning segment’s |students reach the learning segment’s|instructional strategies that|

|segment’s standards/objectives. |standards/objectives. |standards/objectives. |are tailored to address a |

|OR |Plans for implementation of learning |Plans for learning tasks include |variety of specific student |

|There are significant content |tasks include support[4] to help |scaffolding or other forms of |learning needs. |

|inaccuracies in plans that will lead |students who often struggle with the |structured support[5] to provide | |

|to student misunderstandings. |content. |access to grade-level | |

| | |standards/objectives. | |

|PLANNING DESIGNING ASSESSMENTS |

|EH3: What opportunities do students have to demonstrate their understanding of the standards/objectives? (TPEs 1,5,11) |

|Level 1 |Level 2 |Level 3 |Level 4 |

|There are limited opportunities |Opportunities are provided for |Opportunities are provided for |All components of Level 3 plus: |

|provided for students to learn |students to learn what is |students to learn what is assessed. |Assessments are modified, adapted, |

|what is measured by assessments. |assessed. |The assessments allow students to show|and/or designed to allow students |

|OR |It is not clear that the |some depth of understanding or skill |with special needs opportunities to|

|There is a significant mismatch |assessment of one or more |with respect to the |demonstrate understandings and |

|between one or more assessment |standards/objectives go beyond |standards/objectives. |skills relative to the |

|instruments or methods and the |surface-level understandings. |The assessments access both productive|standards/objectives. |

|standards/objectives being | |(speaking/writing) and receptive | |

|assessed. | |(listening/reading) modalities to | |

| | |monitor student understanding. | |

-----------------------

[1] Language demands can be related to vocabulary, features of text types such as chronological accounts or historical interpretation, or other language demands such as understanding oral presentations or participating in role plays.

[2] Cultural, linguistic, social, economic

[3] In or out of school

[4] Such as strategic groupings of students; circulating to monitor student understanding during independent or group work; checking on particular students.

[5] Such as multiple ways of representing content; modeling strategies for interpreting primary sources or history-social science data; providing graphic organizers, rubrics, or sample work.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download