Literacy Module 2: Standards


Standards.  Common Core.  CCSS.  Georgia Standards.  GPS.  NCSS.  All of these mean the same thing.  A list of things your child needs to master before moving on.  

I'm sure you've heard a great deal about the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), but it is here and it's not all bad.  It just hasn't been explained very well.  As discussed in the Explicit Instruction section of this professional learning segment, students do better work when they know what's expected of them.  So do parents!  So do teachers!

We will work through the standards and I will present them in a simplified format.  There are two sections below and all have a few bullet points to help you understand what you, the teacher, and the state want your child to be able to master by the time they graduate high school. Each section will be followed by three strategies or activities to help you support your child's efforts at home.  

While this may not seem directly related to literacy studies, we have discussed that we need explicit instruction and clear goals to make progress and all of these skills are required to master social studies content.  By working these activities into your daily lives, you will be supporting both the content and process literacy in your child and they will have more success in school.

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Georgia Performance Skills Matrix

Firstly, matrix just means 'big table to help you understand something complex' but sometimes it just makes it overwhelming.  The pictures below are links to the official pages, but let me simplify them for you here.   

This information has been pulled from the official list of objectives for students in grades K-12. While there are more detailed sections, this is what the teacher wants your child to be able to do.  As the child gets older the tasks will be more complex, but all of these skills are necessary for life, not just social studies.  These skills are required for most, if not all, fields your child will work in for the rest of their lives

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Information Processing Skills

Information processing is a fancy way of saying that your child should have a strategy for approaching new information and should be able to use the best strategy to process that information and add it to their own knowledge.  Let's have a look at what your child should be able to do.

  • Look at new information thoughtfully and put it into context of what they already know.
  • Put facts in order from oldest to newest.
  • Determine what are facts and what are opinions.
  • Determine what was written while an event was happening and what was written after the event happened.
  • Create and defend their own opinions based on facts.
  • Check to make sure they are correct.
  • Use material they have learned to help them make sense of new material.

GPS Social Studies Matrix

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Map and Globe Skills

Your child doesn't have geography class anymore, did you know that?  They've merged it with social studies.  I, personally, have a problems with this because I loved geography, but this is a part of social and reading literacy that you can really make a difference with at home.  These skills spill over into science and math classes and, as you know, will make them look clever in a real life setting.

  • Know north, west, east, and south.  (Cardinal directions)
  • Follow instructions and directions using the map.
  • Use information directly from the map to answer questions.
  • Compare and contrast different regions.  (Mountains v. Valley or Desert v. Rain forest)
  • Use latitude and longitude to figure out where they are.
  • Compare maps and look for historical differences.
  • Use map information and their own knowledge to form opinions based on fact.


GPS Social Studies Matrix
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Cox, K. (n.d.). Literacy standards for reading in history/social studies [PDF]. Atlanta: Georgia Department of Education.

Cox, K. (n.d.). Social studies skills matrix [PDF]. Atlanta: Georgia Department of Education.

Geocaching. (n.d.). Retrieved April 8, 2015, from https://www.geocaching.com/?guest=1

Sue, C. (n.d.). Geocaching. Retrieved April 8, 2015, from http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/encyclopedia/geocaching/?ar_a=1 Encyclopedic entry from National Geographic.

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