Arkansas

Each chapter is designed using an inquiry-based approach that focuses student learning through a “Big” or “Essential” question. The question is drawn from state-specific standards  for Social Studies and is supported by Key Ideas, Learning Goals, and Key Terms in each chapter.

Activities throughout the text and curriculum are scaffolded and designed to build upon each other and to gain skills, as well as content knowledge.

Together, this curriculum design places students at center of their learning and offers students the chance to explore and learn social studies in unique and meaningful ways.

Every lesson features specific strategies for students to develop their reading, writing, and speaking and listening skills. Key Terms activities offer students the opportunity for students to gain and understand academic and domain-specific vocabulary.

Our digital platform includes links to external content to enable students to explore and enrich the concepts they are learning about in a technology-based way. Other tech-based features aim to teach students the skills they need to be successful in using and critiquing tools of technology and more.  

Our curriculum design is more than just history. Every lesson includes unique content connections to economics, culture, geography, government, and civics. 

It also emphasizes connections between social studies and other disciplines like art, science, health, drama, math, and English.

GSE resources emphasize the skills historians use to understand and interpret history. Students employ historical-thinking skills to build understanding as well as make connections with historical concepts.

Students also have the opportunity to develop and use skills like analysis, compare and contrast, contextualization, cause and effect, periodization, forming fact-based opinions, research, defending a position, and accurate chronicling historical events.

Each chapter includes multiple opportunities to practice  primary source analysis. These activities prompt students to move beyond surface-level questions and think critically about what they are studying.

Questions are scaffolded, allowing students to build confidence and skill as they explore, examine, evaluate, and interpret a variety of sources to understand historical concepts and make connections to the world around them.

Throughout and after each lesson, students can check their understanding of the content and concepts they have studied.

Teachers have access to a variety of options for formative assessments. Types of assessment vary and include writing, basic recall questions, critical thinking questions, and more. Formative assessments are scaffolded to the summative chapter assessments, which also include self-assessment opportunities for students to gauge their own understanding of the content and skills.

These checks for understanding allow for students to display a range of depth of knowledge and also include a self-assessment for students to reflect on their own learning and performance.