All Louisiana 11th grade students have the opportunity to learn about our country's history throughout the school year. The state has adopted a new approach to social studies, and students are no longer just memorizing facts about what happened throughout history. Students must be able to analyze historical documents, interpret the information, and respond with the knowledge they garner from those resources.
The Louisiana Social Studies Content Standards were designed with a foundation of four core disciplines, or strands, from the social sciences: geography, civics, economics and history. The core strands incorporate sociology, anthropology, and psychology where appropriate. An additional component to the Louisiana Social Studies Content Standards is the foundation skills associated with all disciplines: communication, problems solving, resource access and utilization, linking and generating knowledge, and citizenship. These strands and foundation skills, along with the state’s Grade-Level Expectations, help to define scope and sequence and assist in the development of appropriate tools for assessing student learning.
Each discipline in social studies demands certain skills for students to engage in meaningful learning of content, for example, historical thinking skills. Meaningful historical understanding requires students to engage in five categories of historical thinking. These include (1) developing a sense of historical time and historical perspective, (2) explaining and analyzing historical events and ideas, (3) interpreting and evaluating historical evidence in primary and secondary sources, (4) using historical inquiry to analyze historical and contemporary issues and conduct historical research, and (5) analyzing cause-effect relationships.
Your child will practice these skills extensively throughout the year, and through the use of group work, class discussion and independent practice, they will become stronger "historians" and be well prepared for the EOC test.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any concerns or questions.