Course Standards
General Course Information and Notes
General Notes
M/J Geography - The social studies curriculum for this course consists of the following content area strands: World History, Geography, and Economics. The primary content for this course pertains to the usage of geographic concepts, tools, and skills to draw conclusions about historical physical and human patterns in the regions of Asia, Oceania, and Africa. Content should include, but not be limited to the understanding of the impact of historical cultural and ethnic perspectives, societal roles and customs, law and politics, religion, and physical geography on the development of these regions. Students will be exposed to the multiple dynamics of geography including economics and world history. Students will study methods of historical inquiry and primary and secondary historical documents.
Mathematics Benchmark Guidance - Social Studies instruction should include opportunities for students to interpret and create representations of historical events and concepts using mathematical tables, charts, and graphs.
Special Notes:
This course is one of the courses of a three year sequence in the Connections, Challenges, and Choices program. M/J Geography; Asia, Oceania and Africa (2123030) and M/J Florida: Challenges and Choices (2103050) complete the sequence.
Additional content that may be contained in the NAEP Grade 8 Geography assessment includes:
- regional patterns of function
- geographic factors contributing to conflict and cooperation in a variety of settings
The NAEP frameworks for Geography may be accessed at http://www.nagb.org/content/nagb/assets/documents/publications/frameworks/gframework2010.pdf
Instructional Practices
Teaching from well-written, grade-level instructional materials enhances students' content area knowledge and also strengthens their ability to comprehend longer, complex reading passages on any topic for any reason. Using the following instructional practices also helps student learning:
1. Reading assignments from longer text passages as well as shorter ones when text is extremely complex.
2. Making close reading and rereading of texts central to lessons.
3. Asking high-level, text-specific questions and requiring high-level, complex tasks and assignments.
4. Requiring students to support answers with evidence from the text.
5. Providing extensive text-based research and writing opportunities (claims and evidence).
Literacy Standards in Social Studies
Secondary social studies courses include reading standards for literacy in history/social studies 6-12, and writing standards for literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects 6-12. This course also includes speaking and listening standards. For a complete list of standards required for this course click on the blue tile labeled course standards. You may also download the complete course including all required standards and notes sections using the export function located at the top of this page.
English Language Development ELD Standards Special Notes Section:
Teachers are required to provide listening, speaking, reading and writing instruction that allows English language learners (ELL) to communicate information, ideas and concepts for academic success in the content area of Social Studies. For the given level of English language proficiency and with visual, graphic, or interactive support, students will interact with grade level words, expressions, sentences and discourse to process or produce language necessary for academic success. The ELD standard should specify a relevant content area concept or topic of study chosen by curriculum developers and teachers which maximizes an ELL’s need for communication and social skills. To access an ELL supporting document which delineates performance definitions and descriptors, please click on the following link: https://cpalmsmediaprod.blob.core.windows.net/uploads/docs/standards/eld/ss.pdf
General Information
- Class Size Core Required
Educator Certifications
Student Resources
Original Student Tutorials
Learn how to interpret histograms to analyze data, and help an inventor predict the range of a catapult in part 2 of this interactive tutorial series. More specifically, you'll learn to describe the shape and spread of data distributions.
Click HERE to open part 1.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn how to create a histogram to display continuous data from projectiles launched by a catapult in this interactive tutorial.
This is part 1 in a 2-part series. Click HERE to open part 2.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn how to calculate and interpret the Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) of data sets in this travel-themed, interactive statistics tutorial.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn how to make and interpret boxplots in this pet-themed, interactive tutorial.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn how arguments are formed with claims, reasons, and evidence. In this interactive tutorial, you'll read several short speeches from students hoping to be elected president of the Student Council. We'll trace the claim made by each student and the reasons and evidence they use to support it.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Investigate the limiting factors of a Florida ecosystem and describe how these limiting factors affect one native population-the Florida Scrub-Jay-with this interactive tutorial.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Learn what genetic engineering is and some of the applications of this technology. In this interactive tutorial, you’ll gain an understanding of some of the benefits and potential drawbacks of genetic engineering. Ultimately, you’ll be able to think critically about genetic engineering and write an argument describing your own perspective on its impacts.
Type: Original Student Tutorial
Problem-Solving Tasks
Students are given a context and a dotplot and are asked a number of questions regarding shape, center, and spread of the data.
Type: Problem-Solving Task
Using the information provided, create an appropriate graphical display and answer the questions regarding shape, center and variability.
Type: Problem-Solving Task
Student Center Activity
Students can practice answering mathematics questions on a variety of topics. With an account, students can save their work and send it to their teacher when complete.
Type: Student Center Activity
Tutorials
In this video, you will see two ways to find the Mean Absolute Deviation of a data set.
Type: Tutorial
This video shows how to find the value of a missing piece of data if you know the mean of the data set.
Type: Tutorial
This video demonstrates how to construct a box plot, formerly known as a box and whisker plot.
Type: Tutorial
In this video, we organize data into frequency tables and dot plots (sometimes called line plots).
Type: Tutorial
Learn how to create histograms, which summarize data by sorting it into groups.
Type: Tutorial
Virtual Manipulatives
In this activity, students use preset data or enter in their own data to be represented in a box plot. This activity allows students to explore single as well as side-by-side box plots of different data. This activity includes supplemental materials, including background information about the topics covered, a description of how to use the application, and exploration questions for use with the Java applet.
Type: Virtual Manipulative
This is an online graphing utility that can be used to create box plots, bubble graphs, scatterplots, histograms, and stem-and-leaf plots.
Type: Virtual Manipulative
Users select a data set or enter their own data to generate a box plot.
Type: Virtual Manipulative
This virtual manipulative histogram tool can aid in analyzing the distribution of a dataset. It has 6 preset datasets and a function to add your own data for analysis.
Type: Virtual Manipulative
In this activity, students can create and view a histogram using existing data sets or original data entered. Students can adjust the interval size using a slider bar, and they can also adjust the other scales on the graph. This activity allows students to explore histograms as a way to represent data as well as the concepts of mean, standard deviation, and scale. This activity includes supplemental materials, including background information about the topics covered, a description of how to use the application, and exploration questions for use with the java applet.
Type: Virtual Manipulative