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Secondary History/Social Studies

Task 1: Planning Commentary

TASK 1: PLANNING COMMENTARY


Respond to the prompts below (no more than 9 single-spaced pages, including prompts) by typing your responses within the
brackets. Do not delete or alter the prompts. Pages exceeding the maximum will not be scored.

1. Central Focus
a. Describe the central focus and purpose of the content you will teach in the learning
segment.
[The Central Focus of my learning segment is based around students examining and analyzing
different things from the early history of the United States: the lives of the Founding Fathers and
their connections with each other, government as described in the Declaration of Independence,
and the failures of the Articles of Confederation. This will be accomplished through students
investigating the lives of the Founders and examining the text of the Declaration of
Independence and the Articles of Confederation.
The next unit in the overall course schedule is on the U.S. Constitution, and is the final unit
for the quarter in this semester-long class. I chose the lessons in the learning segment as a way
of setting the foundation and the context for the Constitution, such as why it was written the way
it was and why the Founders decided to structure the federal government the way they did. I
know that you can understand and know the basic functions of government by reading the
Constitution, but I believe that to really understand it and know it you must have knowledge
about the men who wrote it as well as the documents and government that came before. Each
lesson informs the next one. In addition, Lesson 2 (Declaration of Independence) will help
students get used to reading government documents like this, because Lesson 3 (Articles of
Confederation) will utilize the same skills from Lesson 2 to a greater extent. The Articles of
Confederation are much longer and more complex, so giving the students a similar assessment
on a smaller scale will help build them towards Lesson 3.
Lesson 1 (Founding Fathers and relationships in government) is a lesson that is very
important to me personally based on my previous work experience at the state legislature. The
purpose of the lesson is to analyze biographical details and then draw connections between the
Founders, those connections being their relationships with each other. In my own personal
experience working in government, relationships are incredibly important and underrated. While
the purpose of the U.S. Government class is for students to learn about the purposes, structure,
and functions of government, the most important facet of government (humans making the
decisions) is forgotten about. I have seen great things accomplished in government because
strong relationships and understandings were able to overcome partisan differences. I have also
seen political deals and compromises completely fall apart because of a lack of relationships or
understandings. While not outlined in any standards, I believe that the applications for
understanding the human side of government are incredibly valuable, which is why Lesson 1 is
included in the learning segment.]
b. Given the central focus, describe how the standards and learning objectives within your
learning segment address
facts and concepts

inquiry, interpretation, or analysis skills

building and supporting arguments or conclusions

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Secondary History/Social Studies
Task 1: Planning Commentary

[There are four different standards that are guiding the learning segment: three that are from the
Minnesota Social Studies Standards and one that is from the Minnesota English Language Arts
Literacy Standards for History/Social Studies.
In Lesson 1, the standards require students to define and provide examples of the ideas
of government in the founding American documents, as well as to analyze the Founding Fathers
principles and ideals. This will be accomplished through research into biographical details about
the Founding Fathers, in which students will document the Founders opinions in an
assessment. They will then be required to compare and contrast various Founders and draw
connections, showing how through their relationships and understandings of each other they
were able to begin and lead a new nation.
In Lesson 2, the standards require students to define and provide examples of these
ideals of government again, and also to determine the central ideas of a text. The text being
examined is the Declaration of Independence. The text is being broken up into segments for
student groups to analyze and articulate to the class. Literacy standards are included because
the lesson is based around examining the text of the Declaration of Independence as a primary
source.
In Lesson 3, students will be describing the government under Articles of Confederation
by examining the Articles themselves. The standards support this by looking at the arguments
for and against the Articles, and determining central ideas of the Articles through examination.
In each lesson, basic foundational facts and information will be given to students before
they begin their reading and analysis of the texts. This foundation is meant to provide support
and background for students in their analysis, interpretations, and arguments about each text.]
c. Explain how your plans build on each other to help students make connections
between facts, concepts, and inquiry, interpretation, or analysis skills to build and
support arguments or conclusions about historical events, a topic/theme, or a social
studies phenomenon.
[Each lesson plan builds on each other in a couple of different ways. First, chronologically: we
examine the lives of the men who began our country and wrote the founding documents, and
then we examine the documents in chronological order. By examining the people who wrote the
documents, it will put a human face on the documents that come in subsequent lessons.
Students will be able to make the connections between the lives and beliefs of the Founders, as
well as their prior knowledge of historical events of the time period, to the ideas expressed in
early founding documents of the United States.
Secondly, Lesson 2 and Lesson 3 are structured in such a way to help achieve student
success for Lesson 3. Lesson 3 will require a lot of reading and analysis of the Articles of
Confederation, so Lesson 2 provides student groups with small segments of the Declaration of
Independence so the students will be more familiar with the style of writing that are in the
Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation. While still an important assessment,
chunking out the Declaration in smaller segments is meant to prepare the students for the larger
segments of the Articles that they will be reading.
The assessments in each require students to make their own judgments, connections, and
analysis of the Founders and the founding documents. The first unit of the school year was
based around the foundations of government, so students have already become familiar with
the role of government in society. The final assessment at the end of the learning segment will
be a quiz that incorporates the concepts and analysis that students will have been exploring
throughout the learning segment.]
2. Knowledge of Students to Inform Teaching
For each of the prompts below (2ab), describe what you know about your students with
respect to the central focus of the learning segment.

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Secondary History/Social Studies
Task 1: Planning Commentary

Consider the variety of learners in your class who may require different strategies/support
(e.g., students with IEPs or 504 plans, English language learners, struggling readers,
underperforming students or those with gaps in academic knowledge, and/or gifted
students).
a. Prior academic learning and prerequisite skills related to the central focusCite
evidence of what students know, what they can do, and what they are still learning
to do.
[All students that are in the class have taken United States History in their 10th grade year, save
for two students who are foreign exchange students from Italy and Germany. Many of them
have a passing familiarity with the subjects of the Declaration of Independence and the Articles
of Confederation. The two units that we have covered in class so far have been on the
foundations of government and political ideology, parties, and the electoral college. We have
very briefly gone over some concepts that are in the Declaration, but have not yet discussed it
more in depth. Because it has been two years since the students covered these topics in their
U.S. History course, I will be covering the basic background information on these themes and
concepts before students begin their analysis.
Students also have experience analyzing documents to determine their meaning and
importance. We have done this throughout the class with political issue analysis, political ad
analysis, and their analysis of things has been largely very good.
Students are still conceptually learning about government: what it means, what it looks like
in action, and how it is supposed to work. That has been the real challenge: making it relevant
to their own realities. These lessons are meant to give them firsthand experience with these
documents and the men that wrote them, and it is structured in a way to demystify the Founders
and the documents that they wrote.
I have also administered a pre-assessment, asking students to rate their familiarity with
some terms that will be involved in their assessments as well as the key themes of all of the
lessons. While some students were familiar with the terms and could very sparsely articulate
things about the Declaration or Articles, it is plain to see that they are not very familiar with the
themes and concepts within.]
b. Personal, cultural, and community assets related to the central focusWhat do you
know about your students everyday experiences, cultural and language
backgrounds and practices, and interests?
[The students in the class are all seniors in high school, and many of them are 18 and will be
able to participate and vote in the upcoming election for the first time in their lives. This,
combined with the uniqueness of this election, provides a great opportunity to engage with
students in examining the very foundations of the federal government in the United States. The
government is already at the forefront of things that they see right now through the election, so
that hyperawareness of what is being said in the media, by their parents, and online is being
brought into class every day.
Many students come from a variety of political ideologies, and have already examined how
their political ideology may influence how they feel about issues or what end of the political
spectrum that they may be on. I see this, as well as with the election year, as a great opportunity
to introduce the students to the founding documents and what they contain. Different ideologies
may interpret things in different ways, and it will be good to have the discussions with students
with different interpretations of concepts.
The most challenging thing about this class is that it is my 8th hour U.S. Government class.
Many students are not motivated by what we are doing in class, and are only thinking about
being able to leave school in 50 minutes or less. This represents a challenge for engagement
and motivation, though I have noticed that the lack of motivation, engagement, or participating in

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Secondary History/Social Studies
Task 1: Planning Commentary

learning activities has not necessarily translated to lower assessment scores for all students, but
there are a select few that are not doing well in class and it is reflected in their behavior.]
3. Supporting Students History/Social Studies Learning
Respond to prompts below (3ac). To support your justifications, refer to the instructional
materials and lesson plans you have included as part of Planning
Task 1. In addition, use principles from research and/or theory to support your
justifications.
a. Justify how your understanding of your students prior academic learning and personal,
cultural, and community assets (from prompts 2ab above) guided your choice or
adaptation of learning tasks and materials. Be explicit about the connections between
the learning tasks and students prior academic learning, their assets, and
research/theory.
[All of the students in class (save two foreign exchange students) have taken U.S. History, so
they are familiar with the terms. Prior to the learning segment, I administered a pre-quiz relating
to vocabulary and concepts of the learning segment, in order to gain information on the
students prior knowledge. This would help me understand how much time I would have to
spend on basic information or frontloading in order to help students be successful in their
learning. Based on the results, I knew that I would need to frontload with basic contextual
information for the lessons. Frontloading is meant to give all students the background for their
own readings, rather than the reading being the sole learning experience for them (Buehl,
2011), and it will help students to engage with texts such as the Declaration of Independence or
the Articles of Confederation and remove the contextual barrier for them. This will prove
especially important for Lessons 2 and 3. In Lessons 2 and 3, which was based around
interpreting and analyzing the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation,
both of which are complex for readers not used to the kind of language structure present in
those texts. Another choice that I made for Lesson 2 is to use the jigsaw method for cooperative
learning, developed by Elliot Aronson. By dividing up the preamble of the Declaration into 6
sections, each group of students will become experts on their small section. They will work
together, teaching themselves and then teaching the whole class. This allows them to be
directly involved and actively learning from each other (Aronson, 1971). The challenge will be
keeping them motivated, since this is the last class period of the day.
There is only one student in the class who has a 504 plan, and it is for anxiety. Thus far in
the school year there has not been any hint of anxiety or incidents related to anxiety for the
student, but the supports in the 504 plan will be used if need be. These include letting the
student leave class if need be to see a counselor, get a drink of water, or take a brief walk
around the school to calm down.]
b. Describe and justify why your instructional strategies and planned supports are
appropriate for the whole class, individuals, and/or groups of students with specific
learning needs.
Consider the variety of learners in your class who may require different
strategies/support (e.g., students with IEPs or 504 plans, English language learners,
struggling readers, underperforming students or those with gaps in academic
knowledge, and/or gifted students).
[All lessons are meant to be scaffolded, and the strategies within each are meant to build off of
each other. Lesson 1 is about the men who actually wrote the Declaration of Independence, the
Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution, and began the system of government that we
are studying in class. After learning about these men, and their connections to each other, we

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Secondary History/Social Studies
Task 1: Planning Commentary

examine their actual work in the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation.
The Articles of Confederation are also a more complex text to read and understand than the
Declaration, so reading and analyzing the Declaration will help build students familiarity with
these types of texts.
Students will also be working in groups, which will benefit students through different
perspectives and processing of what they are reading and analyzing (Marzano, 2007). This will
also be important in class because there is a couple groups of students that never work on
anything during worktime or when class is in the computer lab, so I will be grouping the students
by numbering them off, rather than choosing their groups.]
c. Describe key misconceptions within your central focus and how you will address them.
[Students may not fully comprehend the meaning of the Declaration of Independence or Articles
of Confederation from their history classes, and have only studied them as historical events
rather than significant texts about the role, structure, and purpose of government. The pre-quiz
that I administered has supported this, as many students were not able to show any knowledge
about the principles of government as laid out in the Declaration of Independence or the Articles
of Confederation. My lessons will address these misconceptions by having the students look at
the actual text through the lens of government, not history, and the questions posed to them on
assessments and analysis activities are structured to guide their analysis this way.]
4. Supporting History/Social Studies Development Through Language
As you respond to prompts 4ad, consider the range of students language assets and
needswhat do students already know, what are they struggling with, and/or what is new to
them?
a. Language Function. Using information about your students language assets and
needs, identify one language function essential for students to learn the history/social
studies content within your central focus. Listed below are some sample language
functions. You may choose one of these or another more appropriate for your learning
segment.

Analyze Compare/contrast Construct Describe Evaluate

Examine Identify Interpret Justify Locate


[I have chosen Analyze as the one word that will be essential for my students to learn the
content within the central focus of the learning segment. They will have to interpret the primary
sources that they read, but it is the first step towards understanding the texts that they are
reading. When they analyze the Declaration of Independence, for example, they wont just be
answering the question What does this say? they will be answering the questions What does
this mean? and Why is this important?. Analysis is also one of the skills that my high school is
putting an emphasis on in the social studies classrooms.]
b. Identify a key learning task from your plans that provides students with opportunities to
practice using the language function identified above. Identify the lesson in which the
learning task occurs. (Give lesson day/number.)
[In Lesson 2, which will be on the third day of the learning segment, the class will be studying
the Declaration of Independence. Students will then be broken into groups to analyze the
Declaration in small pieces, with each group getting one segment. Their task will be to fill in a
Say/Mean T-Chart. One side of the T-Chart says What does it say?, asking the students to
paraphrase in their own words what their segment says. The opposite side of the T-Chart, says
What Does it Mean?, asking students to determine the true meaning, importance, and

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Secondary History/Social Studies
Task 1: Planning Commentary

principles that are laid out in the segment. They will accomplish this through their analysis of
their text. Each group will present their analysis to the rest of the class.]
c. Additional Language Demands. Given the language function and learning task
identified above, describe the following associated language demands (written or oral)
students need to understand and/or use:
Vocabulary/symbols

Plus at least one of the following:

Discourse

Syntax

[Students will be required to know and understand a lot of basic vocabulary, mostly historical
details that contextualize the documents and historic political figures that they are analyzing.
Vocabulary includes Declaration of Independence, Congress, Continental Congress, Articles of
Confederation, Great Compromise, Federalists and Anti-Federalists, 3/5s Compromise,
Founders, Colonies, Confederation, and other vocabulary terms related to the early history of
the United States government. Students will also have to use the skills of analysis and
compare/contrast, and understand what those words mean to complete each assessment in
class.
Based on the standards that are followed for the lessons, students will be required to
articulate their analysis and interpretations of various ideas about government and the functions
of early government as laid out in the opinions of the Founders, the text of the Declaration of
Independence, and the Articles of Confederation. This discourse will be accomplished through
their own written assessments and presentations to the class.]
d. Language Supports. Refer to your lesson plans and instructional materials as needed in
your response to the prompt.
Identify and describe the planned instructional supports (during and/or prior to the
learning task) to help students understand, develop, and use the identified language
demands (function, vocabulary/symbols, discourse, or syntax).

[In prior lessons we have briefly mentioned the Declaration of Independence and Articles of
Confederation, which are the cornerstones of this learning segment. Much of the planned
instructional supports to help students understand the language demands occurs in the lecture
section of each lessons. The lectures are meant to provide contextual information for students,
giving them a frame of reference for their analysis.]
5. Monitoring Student Learning
In response to the prompts below, refer to the assessments you will submit as part of the
materials for Planning Task 1.

a. Describe how the planned formal and informal assessments provide direct evidence of
how students learn and use facts, concepts, and inquiry, interpretation, or analysis skills
to build and support arguments or conclusions about historical events, a topic/theme, or
a social studies phenomenon throughout the learning segment.
[In Lesson 1, students will be completing two parts of a Founding Fathers Social Network
(Formal Assessment 1.1 and 1.2) which will give them biographical information and the
opportunity to compare/contrast the Founders with each other based on the information found.

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Secondary History/Social Studies
Task 1: Planning Commentary

The evidence will be in these completed assessments. After listening to some songs from the
musical Hamilton relating to the relationships between Washington, Hamilton, and Jefferson and
the following class discussion, students will be given an exit ticket question that allows them to
analyze the class activities for the day, and gives me a way of measuring the depth of their
understanding and give some feedback to build on their answers. For students who were gone,
class activities will be uploaded to Google Classroom, as well as a set of questions to answer
after listening to the songs from Hamilton (Modified Formal Assessment 1.1) to replicate the
class discussion.
In Lesson 2, students will be given one assessment, a Declaration of Independence
Say/Mean chart (Formal Assessment 2.1). In this assessment students will, split into 6 groups,
interpret their section of the Declaration of Independence into their own words. This will be
recorded on the Say side of the chart. On the Mean side of the chart, students will actually
analyze the meaning and importance of what the Declaration is saying, as what the document is
saying about the role and purpose of government. The students will record all of this on their
worksheets, and each group will present their interpretations and analysis to the class. On the
assessment is space for students to record the other groups findings.
In Lesson 3, students will have the opportunity to read and analyze the role of the state and
federal governments in the Articles of Confederation (Formal Assessment 3.1). They will have to
look for specific roles, powers, and procedures of how the Articles functioned. Their inquiry into
the text of the Articles, aided by notes to provide context, will end with an analysis on the
weaknesses and failings of the Articles on their final quiz.
The final quiz (Summative Assessment 3.1) will all be questions related to the government
content covered within the learning segment. The Declaration of Independence and Articles
questions will be specifically designed around analysis. Students will be asked to consider 3
weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation and why they were weaknesses, and 2 specific
principles of American government that are in the Declaration of Independence and their
implications.]
b. Explain how the design or adaptation of your planned assessments allows students with
specific needs to demonstrate their learning.
Consider the variety of learners in your class who may require different
strategies/support (e.g., students with IEPs or 504 plans, English language learners,
struggling readers, underperforming students or those with gaps in academic
knowledge, and/or gifted students).
[In this class there is only one student with a 504, and it is related to anxiety, not academic
ability. There have not been any anxiety related incidents so far in the school year, but if the
need arises I will follow the scenarios laid out in the students 504 plan, which include leaving
the classroom for a short break if she begins to feel any anxiety.]

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