001This is an asynchronous recording of the June 2025 stakeholder engagement sessions on best practices for social studies instruction guest speakers panel. This presentation held originally on June 11th and 12th, 2025 included guest speakers from Richardson ISD and Lamar Consolidated ISD in coordination with the social studies team from the TEA division of curriculum standards and student support. Members of the reading, language arts, and social studies team in the curriculum, standards, and student support division are led by Jim Doris and include Tim Bryant, myself, Jenny Galina, Tamar Robert, and Geomar Anduhar. The agenda for this presentation began with an overview of the protocols and goals of stakeholder engagement sessions. The main focus of the presentation was to share best practices for social studies instruction. District panelists shared their research and curriculum actions taken to support quality instruction
002for students. And during the live event, we provided opportunities for participants to share their feedback with the district panelists and ask questions. If you have questions, you may contact TEA staff through the email addresses included in the presentation or later on a link to the help desk will be given for use in submitting questions and with an overview of stakeholder sessions in general sessions because TEA is committed to enhancing opportunities for stakeholder engagement. In these sessions, we share information related to social studies and reading language arts, provide opportunities for general questions, facilitate discussions, and collect feedback from stakeholders. Access past stakeholder engagement sessions on our TEA social studies web page under the recent social studies communications section. The next section of the presentation will focus on best practices for social studies instruction. Carlen Jolly from
003Richardson ISD will be our first district panelist providing information followed by Lisa Kale and Britney Scammerhorn from Lamar Consolidated ISD. Thank you so much for uh giving us the opportunity to share our findings um with everyone else in the state. I'm Carlen Jolly. I am in Richardson ISD, which is a suburb of Dallas, and I am the elementary social studies specialist. and I'm going to take you on the journey that I've been through the last few years. I had taught everything from prek through second grade and then in 2010 I moved to sixth grade and was teaching RLA science and social studies all at the same time and I started to notice a pattern in the star reading passages. As you can see here, we have Bangladesh and monsoons and westward expansion, the pyramids of
004Egypt, World War II, the Cold War, George Washington, Venezuela, and the Lyn in Lindberg, and lots of maps. So, I began to realize that many of the star passages were related to social studies content and included social studies vocabulary. So I'm going to take you on a journey journey with me of some of the research that I conducted and then some of the observations that I have made. These are not from tea um and they're not from Richardson ISD. This is just kind of my passion project. So in my research I found an infographic on the marginalization of social studies. And this little pie chart here gives us a average breakdown of the time spent on different subjects in elementary school. And some of us know that and it's obvious that science and social studies
005get a little bit less of the time and social studies sometimes probably gets even less time than what is um conveyed in that chart. We also on that infographic have a statistics of second graders who had 60 lessons of literacy rich social studies instruction scored 23% higher on reading assessments. I like to look at this in a couple of ways. If I look at the data of my students and the data of our district and just overall data, many of our students who fall short would have a lot more success if they scored 23% higher on reading assessments. And I also like to think of it maybe not being as just second graders. Maybe we could put third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, English one, English two in there. And maybe it would also boost
006their scores a bit. This is another piece of research that I came across which is pretty astounding. Um forom research um follows students from K through fifth grade that there's as we've already seen there's more time spent on ELA, ELA, RLA reading, whatever we want to call it at the moment. Um so let's not get hung up on the different um acronyms for reading instruction. A clear positive and statistically significant effect on reading improvement is associated with increased time spent on social studies. It compared science, reading, math, and RLA and how the time spent on each one impacted reading improvement. The next bullet though says that no correlation was found between time spent on English language arts and reading gain. So there again, there's links provided if you would like to go um dig into
007that research. It is um pretty fascinating and goes into great depth. So, with the STAR redesign that happened just a few years ago, um TEA said that they were going to make efforts to build students background knowledge, that they were going to prioritize crosscurricular passages in RLA that reference topics that students have learned about in other classes. I really kind of like that as a social studies person. I was hoping that social studies would be there, but I really liked that it was going to be intentionally taking cross-curricular material from that grade level and things that students may have learned maybe in the previous grade level as well. Um, so as I had found from 2013 to 2019 about 92% of the third through sixth grade passages had already had social studies content or vocabulary.
008If I looked at English from seventh grade to English 2, it was about 97 to 98% had social studies content or vocabulary. So, but now they're going to prioritize and intentionally make it crosscurricular and for that grade level because as you notice in the samples before for the sixth grade, there were some that were really kind of fifth grade um with the westward expansion and some of that. So, um, so this set me on another journey to then start digging even deeper into the STAR reading passages to analyze them for social studies content. And, um, you get to see some of that data. And these are just my observations. It's not done by TEA or anyone in the state or even anyone in Richardson. It's just me going in and looking for content and vocabulary
009in reading passages for third through English 2 for 2023. on the next few slides. So, here is where I wound up. I started reading all of the STAR passages for all the grade levels, third grade through English 2. And I looked not only at the content, social studies versus science versus math versus other, whether it be fine arts or specials classes or other um areas where the students do have teaks in school. But I also looked at the genre. Um, and as we know, we can all have little interpretations about the genre. So, we're not going to get hung up on it. I just did the best I could at the moment as I was reading all these passages and just kind of set up a table of the title, what genre I thought it
010was, and if it contains some social studies content or vocabulary. So, um, as you can see here, it's not justformational, and social studies is very well represented in these different selections. Here we continue on with fifth and sixth grade and we have the same pattern all of these contain social studies content or vocabulary and we still have regardless of the genre we have some social studies content and a lot of science content um and again some of the uh fine arts or specials classes. Just give you a second just to soak that in. And the pattern continues. Here's seventh eighth grade from 2023 with the crosscurricular content with the genres. You see some drama and poetry,formational, persuasive, fiction, paired selections. All of it has or most of it, the majority for sure has social studies
011content. And we'll see the same when we get into high school with English one and English two. Um we see a lot of social studies content, a lot of science content and again all the different genres are represented in this. So it's not justformational passages. We can do our integration and our teaching and our building of those literacy rich social studies lessons through any genre. Not just when our do we're doing ourformational focus um and all grade levels. It's not just K through three that needs that literacy rich but it's all grade levels that need the literacy rich social studies content. So how does this impact our students in Richardson ISD? Um we are a very diverse district. We're usually about fifth or sixth in the state as one of the most diverse. We have
012approximately 37,000 students um of which 12,000 or more are emergent bilingual and we have more than 76 languages represented in our schools. So how does this impact our students and what can we do to help all? This is a study that has been passed around quite a bit and in fact tea did use this as an example when they were showing the crosscurricular connections and how they were going to prioritize that in star passages. I have taken the liberty to change colors and some of the things, some of the graphics um but it's the baseball study. And so when we look at a very um complex passage about baseball, which students are going to score better? Those with high reading ability or high knowledge of baseball? So, um with the first look at this, we
013probably know that the ones in the green section with the high reading ability and the high knowledge of baseball will most likely do the best. So, who do you think which one which group do you think will do score the lowest? I think when we look at low reading ability, low knowledge of baseball, we can probably take that. So, who's going to be second best? Let's find out. So, this graphic shows us which groups of students scored, how they scored on this. So as as predicted the green group scored the highest and the purple group scored the lowest. But when we look at the two middle sections is it the low reading ability or the high reading ability or the high knowledge or the low knowledge which is going to really create success and help
014all students um be successful on the reading test and um it is the orange section the low reading ability with high knowledge. So even if you have a high reading ability but you don't have that background knowledge or that schema, you will not be able to perform as high. So um this is like oh so how can we level the playing field for our students in Richardson ISD? So, after looking at all of the STAR passages and looking at all the data and looking at um the our students in our district um and that are also reflective of many students throughout the state, I decided to dig into Telpus testing and to see how this information and how social studies might impact Telpas for our emergent bilingual students. So at the top of each of
015these slides, you'll see the year of tailpots and the grade level band. So this one is from fourth and fifth grade. The question is at the top and then social studies TESS that align to that question are at the bottom. And right off the bat, you can see Texas and government and three branches and legislative, executive, judicial. So this is straight from social studies TICSS with all that content and that vocabulary. Um this is a fill-in-thelank through multiple choice um where students have to know um that each branch has its own job. But if students have not been um have not seen have not been exposed to this vocabulary, this content, this question might be a little bit challenging. So this question is um for a second and third grade banded question. And during social
016studies today, a teacher drew these pictures of landforms. Tell what you see on the chart. Choose two landforms to describe and write about landforms you have seen where you live or where you would go on a trip. So um that is heavy in social studies. There's also some science in there and this is covered in many grade levels of TEICSS. But the students have to write on this question. So, here's another question from 2023 Telpass for second and third grade. And again, we see those um critical vocabulary words of economy, producers, and consumers, um money, and then the teaks below it. This again is a multiple choice fill-in- thelank. But students have to be familiar with these con these concepts, content, and vocabulary to be successful. So this is the last question we're going to
017look at from Telpas. This is from the 2020 sixth and seventh grade Telpass. I'm going to give you a minute to look at this one. This was very indepth. Um and having taught sixth grade, this is a bit um overwhelming. I really would have specifically had to teach the social studies TESS to the rigor of the TEICSS for students to be successful. So I'll let you look at this for a minute. So, some of the things that we have adopted in Richardson ISD for elementary social studies um or instructional implications that um we found are in each of our elementary planning and pacing tools, we have added writing prompts. We also have a section called RLA connections where we might have a trade book or a book from our one of our adoptions such as
018Benchmark um or something from Pebble Go or just one of the other things that we use in our school. Um that relate to social studies. Um we've included some graphic organizers and different activities specifically with some of those. Um we have ideas for literacy stations. So one of our teachers added conversation stations for kindergarten and first grade. um any kind of books, library books from the RLA adoption, um things from the classroom library. We also have added reading strategies and we use a variety of genres in that section um so teachers can see how social studies is connected through all genres. Here's an example of one um resource that we built. We used a poem from uh paired selection from the 2014 sixth grade star and put this in fifth grade because it's about westward
019expansion. And the first part of the poem is about traveling on an airplane and what you would see and experience traveling on an airplane from east to west across the United States. And then the second half is about what your experience would be uh traveling in a covered wagon. And so, um, as the RL rlats talk about students visualizing and illustrating what they're reading, um, and to help support our students in building that skill, we pulled clip art, little pictures where students can match those pictures to stanzas. Um, and to help them learn how to visualize, um, of course, you can differentiate this and have some students go ahead and sketch their own illustrations. And then we have a section for um annotations. So after students work on that, annotating each of the stanzas of
020the poem, they can write they can write about and do a T-chart of what the experience was on the airplane versus the experience on the wagon and then explain what you would rather do um which way you would rather travel west. They could explain reasons and provide text evidence. So that ties in some of the writing and providing text evidence. So the second part of this activity, it's more than one day obviously um but it really digs into literacy and social studies. We'll look more on the next slide. So here is um are some other things that we added that dig into RLA skills and westward expansion. The section of pictures on the left is just an open sort where groups of students would get the pictures. They get to look at them and determine
021how they would sort the pictures. Of course, they're all going to do black and white pictures versus colored. And so, we try to get beyond that and have them really look at what was the author's purpose in these different paintings. So, um they usually get to the point where it's like some some of the um painters wanted to create something that looked very peaceful and like an easy trip, a wonderful family experience where others wanted to show the challenges and obstacles that the people traveling west faced. And then students could write about the author's purpose and what evidence they saw or select one of those pictures to analyze. We also use the traditional um gas manifest destiny um where you could do quartering where different groups get together until they find the match and describe
022the different perspectives in it. Or you could have speech bubbles and the students write about which the different people, characters um and things in the painting would the perspectives that they would have or what they might be saying. And then we have anformational passage where students annotate and that kind of ties all of this together into what the students are to learn about um the westward expansion of the United States. So, thank you so much for your time. I hope that this is helpful to you all um and it gets your brains kind of going on the journey that mine mine has been going on. And um next up we have um Lisa and Britney from Lamar Consolidated ISD. and wait till you see the amazing things that they have done with this idea in
023their district. >> Hello, this is Lisa Kale from Lamar Consolidated Independent School District. I'm the K12 social studies coordinator and I'll be joined by Britney Scammerhorn who is our elementary social studies content specialist from Lamar Consolidated Independent School District. Today we want to talk about some um connections between the RLA assessment and social studies content TEICSS as well as share with you some of the struggles that our district has had and how um we have made some adjustments to address those struggles. Before jumping into the RLA and social studies alignment um information, I want to tell you a little bit about our school district, Lamar Consolidated Independent School District. as this is going to help explain um our some of the struggles that we faced and then some of the adjustments that we made within
024our district. Currently, Lamar Consolidated is one of the fastest growing school districts in in the state of Texas with our current enrollment just over 47,000 students. To be considered a fast growing school district, you have to have um 300 new homes annually. And right now we have three areas within our district that have 300 new home an new homes being added annually with one of those three areas having over 700 new homes being added annually. So we are looking at between the next 15 and 20 years we're being projected our district is being projected to add about 2,00 uh 2,100 students each year. And currently we have seven um high schools which are 9th through 12th grade. We have seven junior highs which are 7th through 8th grade. We have seven middle schools which are
025sixth grade only. And we have 35 elementary schools. We also have several special sites like an early childhood center 1621. Um we have alternative learning. We have an alternative learning center, Fort Ben County alternative school. We have a juvenile detention center and a career and technology center that's under construction. Um those special sites serve all of the um high schools, junior highs, middle schools, and elementary schools in our district. Um we are looking to open even more schools next year. And uh we have to serve all of the schools. We have one K through2 social studies coordinator, one elementary content specialist for social studies, and one secondary content specialist for social studies. So, um the reason I part of the reason why I share that is because many of our social studies coordinators are in
026the same boat. Um you have a very lean staff at the district level serving many schools within a district. Before jumping into the connections with the RLA assessment and the social studies standards, I want to give you a little background information on our why and LCISD and then some of the adjustments um that we made because of uh some of the struggles that we've had. So when the star redesign was rolled out, LCISD had one social studies coordinator and we had only one secondary um elementary content specialist at the time. And so what we did is looked at how was social studies being taught across the district and uh we looked at our elementary schools. Was there designated social studies time being taught in our elementary schools? And what did that instruction look like? Um
027was it crosscurricular? Was it uh rushed at the end of the day? How many minutes were they spending on elementary? We also looked in secondary um classrooms and and looked at how were they teaching social studies. where they using primary and secondary sources to help kids glean information about social studies. Some of the adjustments that we made was hiring a an elementary content specialist for social studies and that's Britney Scammerhorn who you're going to hear from later in the presentation. Uh she works with instructional coaches that are on campus as well as teachers. um she helps them utilize uh district resources that we have and she shows them how to fit those district resources into the designated time for social studies. Um things like social studies weekly and status. Uh a little side note on
028that, that is not TEA advocating for any of those resources. That's just what our district has purchased and used. We've also partnered with other content areas. Um we really started off partnering with EL in the beginning heavy and then I've also included math and science um especially when our content um has areas that overlap and connect like in math with personal financial literacy and economics. Um in elementary school those overlap and those are easy crosscurricular um opportunities. also the same for science when you're teaching about geography and then the earth's materials. Um those are some easy content areas uh or areas in the content that allow for that crosscurricular integration. Um, we looked at how many minutes were included daily in the daily instruction of the elementary schedule and our coordinators had gotten together and
029talked about that time and suggested um a 30 minute chunk of the day in the elementary schedule to be designated for social studies instruction specifically. And then we also used resources like I said um some of the resources that you're going to hear Britney talk about is uh social studies weekly and SAVIS um but how we use those resources to address the STAR redesign and crosscurricular instruction. So, now we're going to look at the fifth grade RLA 2024 released test and we're going to look at um RLA information, which is the paired a paired selection that is going to be anformational text as well as a um po some poetry. And for my RLA or EL people, I come from a social studies world, so I apologize now if I get some of my term
030mixed terms mixed up and I say paired passages or um call it something that's a little bit different than than what you're used to. So, I'll apologize now. Um but anyways, we're going to look at the social studies content that is in the paired selection and then we're also going to look at the social studies strands. So, what you're looking at currently on the screen are social studies strands that are colorcoded, and we're going to connect the content that is in the RLA passage in both theformational passage and the poetry. We're going to look at how they connect um with the social studies content strands. So, you're going to see one of two things on the screen with that ROA passage. You're going to see the key that's down below that's just highlighted with the
031history as being orange. geography, green, blue, economic, um that purple color for science, technology, and society or the social studies skills in yellow. Or you will see the actual strands listed out, the teaks listed out with the strands um on each one of the passages. So this is um theformational passage from the fifth grade 2024 RLA assessment. And this is theformational passage. And you can see the passage as a whole on the screen. And um you know the the highlighting of the text does not represent tea's um judgment there. This represents um what I feel like is alignment from the rla content and the social study strands. Um you may feel like one thing needs to be highlighted or less needs to be highlighted. The overall point that I'm wanting to bring your attention to
032is you can start to see the color coding in the passage and how much of the content aligns with the social studies standards. And we're going to take a deeper look um into this passage. So this is the first part of the passage and I want to bring your attention to that magenta or that purple color in paragraph 3. It says, "For six years, people have been building a railroad that would connect the two coasts of the United States. It was called the first transcontinental railroad. It was probably as as important as the invention of cell phones." So if I stop there and then I go to the um TEACS and I look at 22B, it says identify how scientific discoveries, technological innovations and the rapid growth of techn technology industries have advanced the economic
033development of the United States, including the transcontinental railroad. So if you're looking at paragraph 3 and you're looking at TEI number 22B, you can see that there's clear alignment there. It is even as specific as including the transcontinental railroad um and how that has been such an important or significant um technological innovation and the growth of that technology. It also explains how the technological innovation was in the field of transportation and how it's benefiting um individuals and society in the United States. I'm going to jump down to another example and we're going to look at the green geography strand. Um in in paragraph 8 it says the railroad workers also faced physical challenges. Difficult terrain such as mountains block the path. The workers had a tunnel through the mountains by blowing up a rock. So
034then if I go and look at the TEICS and the geography st strands I can see 8A describe how and why people have adapted to and modified their environment in the United States such as the use of human resources to meet basic needs. So you're looking at the way people adapted um or modified their environment there when you're looking at the difficult terrains with the mountains and how the path was blocked and how they had to dig through the tunnels um dig sorry dig through the mountains by blowing up the rock. And my point in in highlighting this and showing you these two examples is if students aren't learning social studies in their daily instructional minutes, then they're going to be at a disadvantage when they're reading the RLA passage. Like uh Carlen Jolly pointed
035out earlier with the mastery of comprehension study, it's going to show you if students have had social studies instruction to build up that foundation. this is going to be easier for them to comprehend. Um, and so it's just to show the disadvantage if students aren't getting that daily in instruction, social studies, or the advantage that they can have if they are receiving social studies instruction. This is the second portion of theformational text. And the example that I want to point out on this page or this slide is the use of primary and secondary sources. So, if I'm looking at that yellow that's highlighted and I go down to the social studies skills and I look at 23A, differentiate between, locate, and use valid primary and secondary sources such as technology, interviews, biographies, oral, print, and
036visual material documents, and artifacts to acquire information about the United States. Well, they're including a primary source about technology within this passage. And if students aren't using primary and secondary sources or they've never seen one or they've never interacted with a primary and secondary source in social studies, they're going to be placed at a disadvantage when they get to their RLA test to understand why an author might have included that primary source. So, I wanted to be able to point that out to you. And then you're going to see this later come up when you look at the questions that are on the RLA assessment. Now this is the second passage. This is the um poetry piece and you can see within the poetry piece. This is the whole um passage that students have to
037read. And you can see that it is purple heavy. And um again this is not um TEA's interpretation of this. This is this was mine. You may um feel like that there needs to be more or less highlighted. My point was just to show you um some of the things or some of the connections between the poetry and the uh social studies takes. And just like Carlen pointed out, not all of the content on the RLA um that is aligned with social studies isformational text. You can see that here with this poetry passage. So, if I'm looking at the first couple of stand stanzas, um, it talks about that I I tap, type, click along the information superighway. Any question that I have is answered in seconds. The people's, places, or things of the whole
038worldwide are connected by a web of wires and signals invisible to my unknowing eye. So if I go down and I look at the science, technology and society strands again, I can see how scientific discoveries and technological innovations in the field of communication have benefited individuals and society. I can also see how the rapid growth of this technology has advanced um the economic development of the United States. If I keep going, I can read more and more about how that technological advancement um has developed in the United States and I can see that connection between the TEICSS and the RLA passage. I've also pulled a few of the questions that go with the paired selection so that you're able to see the um alignment between RLA and social studies. So this is one of the
039questions and if you look at the question it says in this article a country connected what is most likely the author's purpose for using a cause and effect structure in the section a life-changing project. So, if you're looking at that question and I go down to the social study skills and I look at 23A um sorry 23 C analyze information by applying absolute and relative chronology through sequencing, categorizing, identifying cause and effect relationships, comparing, contrasting, and so on. I can see that that is specifically tied to a social studies skill, cause and effect relationships. And if I have not been exposed as a student to understanding cause and effect, I'm going to be placed at a disadvantage and and it is in our social studies tees to be able to teach and identify those cause
040and effect relationships. And then if you look at the answer to explain the impact of the railroad on people who lived at the time, that to me um for my social studies people out there, that sounds like an answer that could come have come off of the eighth grade or the US history assessment. That is a social studies content answer. So let's look at another question. Now this question um I included because it is specifically about that primary and secondary source. And again if students aren't handling primary and secondary sources in their social studies classes, are they being placed at a disadvantage on the RLA assessment? So, if I look at this question, what are the most likely reasons the author includes the photograph in the article, a country connected? That is going to be
041one of those social studies skills with a question. Um, I can see in other 8th grade and US history test when they include primary and secondary sources. A lot of times they will ask why um you know let's say Abraham Lincoln or George Washington might have included certain information in one of their inaugural addresses or they might have a photograph you know I'm I'm thinking of potentially like a a poster from the homeront on World War I or World War II and what was the reason they would have you know used this poster during wartime. Those are skills that students are going to pick up and learn how to use and look at and analyze information from primary and secondary sources in their social studies classes. And so it's asking you to to select two
042answers on this question. And your answers are to emphasize the lasting effect lasting impact of the completion of the railroad and to show how the anniversary of the completion of the railroad was celebrated. So if you're looking at connecting with social studies information, it's going to go back and connect to that science, technology, and society teak. And then the last question I have to present is which is best which is the best summary of the poem the world is at my fingertips. I also wanted to show you where they're asking a question about um a text that is tied to social studies that isn't necessarily informational. This one is over poetry. So you can see they're asking for a summary of it. And if I go down again, then I look at the social studies
043skills. It's going to talk about finding the main idea, summarizing, making generalizations. And this is asking for a summary of the poem. And then if I'm looking at the answer again, the answer is going to come um from that science, technology, and society um content, that alignment of that social studies content. So, after looking at the questions, I want to remind you of some of the district adjustments that we made. Um, we hired an elementary content specialist, and that is Britney Skimmer Horn. You're getting ready to hear from her. And, um, with that district level staff addition, she serves, uh, all 35 of our elementary campuses and she works with the instructional coaches on campus as well as teachers. um she has worked to help them understand how to take some of our district purchase
044resources such as studies weekly and fit them into 30 minute time chunks or SAVIS and fit them into 30-inut time chunks that they have allotted for the day. Um she has also collaborated with other content areas whenever we have um opportunities for that crosscurricular um integration of instruction and we have started with EL and then we've also worked with math and science um in any way that we can. One of the first things that our coordinators and content specialists did when we made some of these adjustments was we all looked at our scope and sequences K through 5 and we adjusted them for maximum opportunities for that crosscurricular integration. So I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about with our scope and sequences that we adjusted in science. When science teachers um are
045teaching about the earth and its materials at the same time and in the same nine weeks they are also teaching about um geography both physical and human geography. um so that they can maximize the opportunity that they have to be able to teach uh similar content and so that they can naturally integrate it. Um another one of the things that we looked at was partnering with RLA. So whenever they are teaching aboutformational text and research that it aligns with our social studies content. So it may be that they're learning about historical figures at the same time they're doing research so that they can research those historical figures. We also um talked about daily instruction for social studies in the elementary schedule. We've carved out at least 30 minutes um and and gave suggestions of how
046to do that with a block schedule or um if you were a self-contained teacher in K through five so that there was dedicated daily instruction to social studies in the elementary schedule. And then we also used our resources to address the star redesign and crosscurricular instruction. Um Britney is going to go over some of the things that she saw a need for and um created using our social studies purchased uh resources for the district. And before she gets started, which I'm sure she's probably going to to tell you about, but I also want to tell you is that we would love to be able to share the resources in full that she has prepared and designed, but because of the fact that uh we are using portions of things that uh resources and materials that
047our district has purchased from things like studies weekly or savis, we're only able to show you a small portion of it and cannot share them due to copyright. But what she is going to share with you are some ECRs and paired selections. Um we talked about during STAR time, how can we support teachers um and get them to teach social studies during that star review time? And one of the things that um Britney thought of that she's going to explain is the extended constructed responses and the paired selections. So you'll hear from her in the next few slides. One of the resources that we made here in Lamar CISD is our ECRS. Now, this is a really easy way for us to work crosscurricular with RLA and social studies. And so, um, this kind of
048came about based on data from STAR. when um for fourth grade they had the writing assessment and the reading assessment and they removed the writing assessment and they added writing to the reading assessment just to make it one rla encompassing assessment. We noticed that the data for our ECRs were low in comparison to our reading standards. And that was for a variety of ways such as the students not having um exposure to those type of questions and teachers having exposures on how to teach those type of questions. And so this came about on our data and it first was rolled out during our STAR review and it was just a couple um ECR selections that were based on what they were currently teaching in social studies but formatted in a way that they can practice
049the ECR strategies and skills and kind of get the best of both worlds. This particular um sample we used from studies weekly. We also used other samples from SAVIS and I even used AI generated passages and questions um because those are the resources that we purchased as a district. So we wanted to get the most of them. So when this was created I kind of took a snip of the selection added a primary source so that it looks like um it has text features just like the RLA assessment. and I sat down with our RLA department and the content specialists on that side and really reviewed what the um format looks like and even what the questioning looks like on our side. And so this expanded the next year after that to begin with when
050we are teaching ECRS um and extended constructed responses to our third, fourth and fifth graders. Then they also will have one for each of the units in social studies to be able to practice and show off those skills. After we did the ECRS and we had so much good feedback from our teachers and students and they really loved the crosscurricular connections. We've dived a little bit more into what kind of um social studies are we seeing in these assessments. And I saw a lot of paired selections that had something to do with social studies and being able to take two um selections and be able to kind of crossexamine them, find what's similar, find what's different, look at common themes. And so um this again started when we were doing a star review. um and
051it's expanded into when we teach paired selections, but they would take a social studies standard such as um the Wright brothers or the moon landing or a space exploration or any social studies standard that you want to cover um that we can see kind of a um similar theme in it and then wrote questions based on that. Again, some of these selections came from or sources that we already purchased. So I know the taking flight with the Wright brothers, we purchase studies weekly. And so we used that purchased program to then add on to it so that they can teach the social studies part during social studies and then practice during ELA, especially during their star review, during their workstations, during their independent work, just so they can see the connections between those two contents.
052Now that it's been over uh gosh, I think we're going into our second year of really looking into crosscurricular connections and social studies in ELR, some of our results is that elementary teachers including social studies in their daily schedule. And so not always they were teaching social studies every day, but now they really are because they see that importance during the RLA assessment as well as just making those connections. More and more campuses and teachers are requesting social studies and crosscurricular support. So, a lot of times I come out right with the um the content specialist for RLA um to support our monilingual teachers and our bilingual teachers and campuses and just so they can see the connection between the two. And those teachers are so open to using those resources during RLA instruction. So,
053because it looks like RLA, such as the paired selections in the ECRS, they're willing to do it during their RLA time to reinforce those skills, meaning it opens up social studies time to allow for more content to be taught, um, more interactive lessons to be taught. And the best part is that it broken down content silos. So, we're no longer just social studies all by itself. They see the importance of it being embedded. Following slides provide contact information for TEA staff and other divisions within TEA that may be of interest to stakeholders. If you have a question, please feel free to contact a member of the social studies TEA team. The email addresses of the team can be seen here. You can also access the TEA social studies web page with the QR code on
054the left. Submit a question to the curriculum help desk via the QR code in the middle or subscribe to the social studies newsletter using the QR code on the right. Instructional materials web page for up-to-date information regarding instructional materials. Their help desk link is also seen here. You may also submit questions to the assessment help desk using the QR code on the screen. Early childhood education resources are available through the QR code seen here. Use the link or QR code here to learn about the Texas Virtual School Network statewide catalog. TXVSN is a state-led online learning initiative that provides students and Texas schools access to quality online courses and instruction. Thank you for accessing this video of the June stakeholder engagement session asynchronous recording of the best practices for social studies instruction guest speakers panel
055held on June 11th and 12th, 2025.