Texas Social Studies Framework - Department of Geography ...

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plans. (Consult Appendix B: Resources for Enhancing
Social Studies Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment.)
Instructional Unit Plans
Instructional unit plans provide very specific
guidelines regarding how the instructional program
is organized and delivered. They contain detailed
performance objectives, the organization and
sequence of units and/or topics, suggestions for
instructional strategies and activities, specific
suggestions for assessment, and lists and descriptions
of resources available to support instruction,
e.g., books, videos, CD-ROMs, websites, etc. These
curriculum documents are especially useful to
classroom educators (Armstrong, pp. 103-104).
The SSCED website includes annotated bibliographies of
books and CD-ROMs as well as links to other websites
that contain useful information for developing instructional
unit plans.
Instructional unit documents are intended primarily for
the use of classroom educators. They are the most
specific of the set of interrelated documents described in
this section, providing detailed and practical information
for the delivery of the curriculum in the classroom. Good
instructional units are of invaluable assistance to all busy
classroom educators, but are especially helpful at the
elementary level, where a single teacher might have to
plan for and carry out instruction that incorporates as
many as seven or eight different sets of TEKS. These
documents ease the classroom educator’s burden of
having to plan curriculum on a daily or weekly basis and
allow them to devote more time to the critical elements
of instruction and assessment. Instructional unit documents
fulfill an important legal function for districts in
that they are built upon the documents described in early
parts of this section and, therefore, incorporate the TEKS
as mandated by state laws and regulations.
Useful instructional unit documents incorporate performance
objectives based on the TEKS for Social Studies
(as well as other TEKS when appropriate), identification
of important ideas (concepts and generalizations),
specific suggestions for delivery of instruction (lesson
plans and activities), specific suggestions for assessment
(performance tasks and rubrics), and identification of
useful instructional resources (fiction and nonfiction
books, CD-ROMs, websites, videos, etc.). They might
also include suggested modifications for special populations,
enrichment and extension activities, suggestions
for formative evaluation and reteaching, and ideas for
Chapter 4: Developing Social Studies Curriculum Based on the TEKS
linking social studies with other subject areas, e.g., world
history and literature or U.S. history and technology. To
insure the implementation of the TEKS for Social
Studies, careful consideration needs to be given to the
development of good instructional unit documents.
SHOULD DISTRICTS WAIT UNTIL NEW
SOCIAL STUDIES TEXTBOOKS ARE
ADOPTED BEFORE DEVELOPING THE SOCIAL
STUDIES CURRICULUM?
No. New social studies textbooks will not be adopted by
the State Board of Education until 2002. Classroom
educators need assistance in implementing the TEKS for
Social Studies now. Waiting on the adoption of new
textbooks before developing curriculum is a sure
prescription for a low level of implementation of the
TEKS for Social Studies.
Most education professionals recognize that social
studies textbooks and their related support materials are
useful resources for both teachers and students; however,
there is nearly unanimous agreement that the curriculum
should consist of more than the contents of a textbook.
They also agree that curriculum development should
precede, not follow, the adoption of textbooks. Textbooks
should be chosen to fit and support the curriculum, rather
than determine the curriculum.
District level educators generally have an intimate
knowledge of the needs and interests of their students,
the skills and abilities of their professional staff, community
and district level resources available to support the
local curriculum, the requirements of state mandates, and
the organization and operation of their schools. Large
national and international publishing conglomerates lack
this intimate knowledge and, therefore, often cannot
make the critical decisions that insure optimal learning
for students.
Textbooks serve as useful curriculum resources but they
cannot be relied on as a curriculum. Think about how
multiple sources can be used to help teach the TEKSbased
curriculum adopted in a local district. Here are
some reasons why multiple sources are needed to
augment the selected textbook:
• Most textbooks are written for a national
audience and cannot include multiple examples
of content drawn from regional or local areas
that can contextualize student learning and