Instruction and Pedagogy
All of the books are available in the Teachers' Democracy Project's Library. Books can be checked out for two weeks and can be renewed upon request.
Contact us at 410-554-1110 or email us at democracyproject@icloud.com to check out a book.
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What does it mean to a kid to be labeled attention-deficit disordered (ADD)? Or to have "hyperactive" added to the label (ADHD)? What can teachers do to boost the success of students with attention and behavioral difficulties? Are we relying too much on medication for these kids and not enough on new perspectives on learning, child development, the child's socioeconomic and cultural background, biological and psychological research, and the learner's emotional and social needs? Armstrong urges educators and parents to look for the positive characteristics in learners who may carry the ADD/ADHD label. Mastering the multiplication tables by forming a conga line, moving around the classroom counting from 1 to 30 out loud, and on every multiple of 3 shaking their hips and legs. Showing patterns of molecular bonding in chemistry class through a "swing your atom" square dance.
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"To respect the many differences between people"—this is what Howard Gardner says is the purpose of learning about multiple intelligences (MI). Now, in the 2nd edition of "Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom," Thomas Armstrong has updated his best-selling practical guide for educators, to incorporate new research from Gardner and others. Gardner's original studies suggested that the mind comprises seven intelligences—linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. This new edition includes information on the eighth intelligence (the naturalist), a chapter on a possible ninth intelligence (the existential), and updated information and resources throughout the text to help educators at all levels apply MI theory to curriculum development, lesson planning, assessment, special education, cognitive skills, educational technology, career development, educational policy, and more. The book includes dozens of practical tips, strategies, and examples from real schools and districts—as well as solid outcomes of MI, including improved test scores and discipline.
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This revised and expanded edition includes new essays on science and environmental education, immigration and language, military recruitment, teaching about the world through mathematics, and gay and lesbian issues. Creative teaching ideas, compelling classroom narratives, and hands-on examples show how teachers can promote the values of community, justice, and equality while building academic skills. Nowhere is the connection between critical teaching and effective classroom practice clearer or more accessible. A great resource for new and veteran K-12 teachers, as well as teacher education and staff development programs.
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The new companion volume to the original Rethinking Our Classrooms is packed with compelling articles about teaching, as well as curriculum ideas, lesson plans, and resources, all grounded in the realities of the classroom. Like the bestselling first volume, Rethinking Our Classrooms, Volume 2 is an invaluable tool for educators striving to promote social justice and high-quality student learning.
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Games for Actors and Non-Actors is the classic and best selling book by the founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, Augusto Boal. It sets out the principles and practice of Boal's revolutionary Method, showing how theatre can be used to transform and liberate everyone – actors and non-actors alike!This thoroughly updated and substantially revised second edition includes: two new essays by Boal on major recent projects in Brazil Boal's description of his work with the Royal Shakespeare Company a revised introduction and translator's preface a collection of photographs taken during Boal's workshops, commissioned for this edition new reflections on Forum Theatre.
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With For a Better World, Randy and Katherine Bomer present a new vision of curriculum - one that invites students to read with important social ideas in mind and write with the purpose of making the world a better place. Developed in years of classroom experience with diverse children, the book will help more experienced teachers take the next step in their professional growth, while providing newer teachers with a picture of how the largest purposes in democratic education connect to the details of teaching. A unique, reader-friendly guide for bringing critical literacy into reading and writing workshops, For a Better World demonstrates how to: support students' writing for public purposes and connect their personal writing to important social issues facilitate more meaningful talk in the classroom develop students' language and concepts for discussing significant social and political ideas in response to literature help students inquire into the daily politics of classroom life integrate social studies, writing, and literature in experiential, inquiry-based ways assure that all students have access to a rich and meaningful education for social justice.
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In a history workshop, the teacher encourages students to become young historians — practicing history in imitation of professionals — to make the people and events of the past meaningful and relevant. Connecting with the Past is the first book to explore the history workshop approach at the middle and secondary levels. The book provides both the theoretical framework and the step-by-step details of how to put history workshops into practice. Chapters describe precisely how the author made each decision, from the planning stage through to final student presentations. Extensive samples of student discussions and writing are presented and analyzed. Readers will identify with the process described and are invited to transform their own history teaching.
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Assertive Discipline®: Positive Behavior Management for Today s Classroom, Fourth Edition outlines a three-step approach for positive behavior management by creating a classroom discipline plan that includes: rules that students must follow at all times; positive support that students will receive consistently for following the rules; and corrective actions that the teacher will use consistently when students choose not to follow the rules. The book emphasizes the last two steps to help teachers provide nonjudgmental feedback to students in a way that recognizes their efforts but also corrects their actions. The book stresses the importance of building positive relationships with students, which is vital for their success. Finally, the new edition features a special addendum that introduces the real-time coaching model (in which a coach sits in the classroom and actively cues the teacher with regard to repeating directions, providing feedback, or taking disciplinary action) and explains how to establish a school wide Assertive Discipline program.
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Looking for a way to increase engagement, differentiate instruction, and incorporate more informational text and student writing into your curriculum? Teaching with Text Sets is your answer! This must-have resource walks you through the steps to create and use multi-genre, multimodal text sets for content area and language arts study. It provides detailed information support you as you choose topics, locate and evaluate texts, organize texts for instruction, and assess student learning. The guide is an excellent resource to help you meet the Common Core and other State Standards.
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Step-by-Step Skill-Builders for Your Classroom. Help students become better readers and writers. Lessons include note taking, lead sentences, editing, punctuation, and more. Complete step-by-steps, photos, student samples, and ideas for using popular children's literature as models.
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Middle school history teachers confront the same challenge every day: how to convey the breadth and depth of a curriculum that spans centuries, countries, and cultures. In Making History Mine, Sarah Cooper shows teachers how to use thematic instruction to link skills to content knowledge. By combining thought-provoking activities and rich assessments, Sarah encourages teachers to challenge students to make history personal and relevant to their lives. A one-page description at the beginning of each chapter explains the embedded skills and shows how the lessons correlate to state and national history standards. Making History Mine includes dozens of short activities, in-depth projects, guiding questions, and effective strategies to help teachers bring history to life in the classroom. Students will learn how to imagine themselves in the past, making decisions that changed the world. Through role playing, debates, and service learning they will gain the skills to make their own histories count.
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Includes a collection of words for every occasion, a compendium of things and people Hispanic, a resource of instructional words for language arts and the content area, some good ideas for implementing a theme-oriented approach to teaching and ten fruitful themes to get you started, a catalog of imaginative ideas to promote reading, writing listening and speaking.
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Comprehension and Collaboration: Inquiry Circles in Action occurs at the intersection of comprehension, collaboration, and inquiry and serves as a guide for teachers who want to realize the benefits of well-structured, student-led, cross-curricular projects. Stephanie Harvey (Strategies That Work and The Comprehension Tool kit series) and Harvey "Smokey" Daniels (Literature Circles and Mini-Lessons for Literature Circles):
- lay the foundation for inquiry circles by chronicling the current research and practices behind comprehension instruction and classroom collaboration
- explain nine fundamental classroom conditions needed for active, small-group learning
- provide 26 practical lessons in comprehension, collaboration, and research
- offer how-to instructions for four types of inquiry circles-mini-research projects; curricular inquiries; extensions of literature circles; and open inquiry projects
- address characteristic management concerns, such as how to use the Internet for research and how to assess and monitor student achievement.
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This volume is a collection of theoretical and practical cooperative strategies, models, and frameworks which support and enhance the improvement of thinking in the classroom. Chapter authors provide educators with a wide range of effective cooperative thinking approaches for both small- and large-group cognition and metacognition, and show the value of such constructs in improving student thinking performance. Using classroom vignettes and supportive research, contributors illustrate how cooperative small-group learning is more effective than traditional whole-class learning in helping children to think effectively. Each chapter also includes suggestions for practice and implementation of the authors' ideas.
This collaborative book is written by the very young people who dreamt and built Baltimore’s only youth-run youth center—The Dream House. A nonfiction, how-to book, it provides a model for other youth, youth workers and non-profit organizations. It includes best practices for youth work, lessons learned, and examples of programming that focuses on real-world, project-based, community building curriculum.
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Drawing on his own experience of feeling undervalued and invisible in classrooms as a young man of color and merging his experiences with more than a decade of teaching and researching in urban America, award-winning educator Christopher Emdin offers a new lens on an approach to teaching and learning in urban schools. He begins by taking to task the perception of urban youth of color as unteachable, and he challenges educators to embrace and respect each student’s culture and to reimagine the classroom as a site where roles are reversed and students become the experts in their own learning. Putting forth his theory of Reality Pedagogy, Emdin provides practical tools to unleash the brilliance and eagerness of youth and educators alike—both of whom have been typecast and stymied by outdated modes of thinking about urban education. With this fresh and engaging new pedagogical vision, Emdin demonstrates the importance of creating a family structure and building communities within the classroom, using culturally relevant strategies like hip-hop music and call-and-response, and connecting the experiences of urban youth to indigenous populations globally. Merging real stories with theory, research, and practice, Emdin demonstrates how by implementing the “Seven C’s” of reality pedagogy in their own classrooms, urban youth of color benefit from truly transformative education.
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The tasks that are outlined in the reading and math sections are designed for children who have not mastered the basic skills whatever their age or grade level. Segments were used initially with tenth-grade disadvantaged children. Others were developed expressly for primary children.
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Teachers often find themselves facing a variety of classroom situations never covered in initial training. This valuable resource helps teachers increase skills, enhance professional development and maximize classroom learning time. Discover why Love and Logic works in the school environment and understand the psychological reasons for its effectiveness. Jim Fay and David Funk's truly positive approach and time-tested ideas and strategies will empower teachers to effectively manage classroom dynamics while bringing the joy back to teaching.
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For thirty years Henry Giroux has been theorizing pedagogy as a political, moral and cultural practice, drawing upon critical discourses that extend from John Dewey and Zygmunt Bauman to Paulo Freire. This impassioned book opens by discussing the crucial role of pedagogy in schools before extending the notion to the educational force of the wider culture.Giroux focuses on five crucial elements associated with critical pedagogy. First, he presents an overview of the term as it applies to schooling and to larger cultural spheres. Second, he analyses the increasingly empirical orientation of teaching, focusing on the culture of positivism. Third, he examines some of the major economic, social, and political focus undermining the promise of democratic schooling in both public and higher education. Giroux then outlines increasing attempts by both right wing and liberal interests to reduce schooling to training and students merely to customers. Finally the book focuses on the legacy of Paulo Freire and issues a fundamental challenge to educators, public intellectuals, and others who believe in the promise of radical democracy.
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This text frames and develops a coherent, practical, and engaging approach to teaching and learning elementary social studies. The authors combine the latest research on learning patterns, curriculum structure and presentation, and assessment with practical issues like classroom management, goal establishment, and creative lesson planning. Elementary Social Studies is organized according to four commonplaces of education—learners and learning, subject matter, teachers and teaching, and classroom environment—to help teachers create a powerful learning environment for their students.
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Your favorite differentiated instruction text just got better! If you're in need of a single resource to put differentiated instruction immediately into practice, then follow the lead of 100,000+ teachers and look to Gregory and Chapman's ground-breaking text. With new strategies, updates throughout, a Common Core lesson-planning template, and a larger format, the third edition is an even richer resource with: A deep research base coupled with immediately useable examplesA start-to-finish six-step process, beginning with establishing a classroom climate, then getting to know studentsAn emphasis on formative assessment before, during, and after learning70+ templates, tools, and questionnaires
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This classroom-ready resource makes instructional models clear and relevant for readers by placing them within a standards-based and instructionally aligned process. Based on current research and best practice, the more than one dozen models provided in this text are closely linked to the preparation of objectives, differentiation practices, and assessment options.
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Join brave and terrified youngsters walking through a jeering mob and up the steps of Central High School in Little Rock. Listen to the vivid voices of the ordinary people who manned the barricades, the laborers, the students, the housewives without whom there would have been no civil rights movements at all. This remarkable oral history brings to life country's great struggle for civil rights as no conventional narrative can. You will hear the voices of those who defied the blackjacks, who went to jail, who witnessed and policed the movement; of those who stood for and against it—voices from the heart of America.
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Practical guide for teachers wishing to implement cooperative learning processes as opposed to the more traditional individual is used and competitive learning environments. Four broad areas where cooperative skills are needed are identified and discussed. They include forming groups, working and problem solving as a group, and managing differences. Includes a list of references and further reading suggestions, sheets that can be photocopied, and an index. Susan Hill is a senior lecturer in curriculum studies at the South Australian College of Advanced Education and Peter Hill is a psychologist and lecturer in Human Development.
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In Teaching Community bell hooks seeks to theorize from the place of the positive, looking at what works. Writing about struggles to end racism and white supremacy, she makes the useful point that "No one is born a racist. Everyone makes a choice." Teaching Community tells us how we can choose to end racism and create a beloved community. hooks looks at many issues-among them, spirituality in the classroom, white people looking to end racism, and erotic relationships between professors and students. Spirit, struggle, service, love, the ideals of shared knowledge and shared learning - these values motivate progressive social change. Teachers of vision know that democratic education can never be confined to a classroom. Teaching - so often undervalued in our society — can be a joyous and inclusive activity. bell hooks shows the way.
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In Teaching Critical Thinking, renowned cultural critic and progressive educator bell hooks addresses some of the most compelling issues facing teachers in and out of the classroom today.In a series of short, accessible, and enlightening essays, hooks explores the confounding and sometimes controversial topics that teachers and students have urged her to address since the publication of the previous best-selling volumes in her Teaching series, Teaching to Transgress and Teaching Community. The issues are varied and broad, from whether meaningful teaching can take place in a large classroom setting to confronting issues of self-esteem. Addressing questions of race, gender, and class in this work, hooks discusses the complex balance that allows us to teach, value, and learn from works written by racist and sexist authors. Throughout these essays, she celebrates the transformative power of critical thinking. This is provocative, powerful, and joyful intellectual work. It is a must read for anyone who is at all interested in education today.
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In Talking, Drawing, Writing: Lessons for Our Youngest Writers Martha Horn and Mary Ellen Giacobbe invite readers to join them in classrooms where they listen, watch, and talk with children, then use what they learn to create lessons designed to meet children where they are and lead them into the world of writing. The authors make a case for a broader definition of writing, advocating for formal storytelling sessions, in which children tell about what they know, and for focused sketching sessions so that budding writers learn how to observe more carefully. The book's lessons are organized by topic and include oral storytelling, drawing, writing words, assessment, introducing booklets, and moving writers forward. Based on the authors' work in urban kindergarten and first-grade classes, the essence and structure of many of the lessons lend themselves to adaptation through fifth grade.
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This comprehensive text provides research and practical strategies on how to implement a positive behavioral support (PBS) plan in the classroom. In this book you will examine the origins of PBS in public education explore the possibilities and boundaries of the support process within today's schools learn a planning protocol for the entire support process from concept to revision, along with assessment practices address the practical details of planning, designing, and implementing support processes for individual students link behavioral support concepts to the broader practices of school communities and society This book also includes photocopiable forms to aid preservice and in-service educators as they begin to assess children with challenging behavior and plan effective interventions. And vignettes, accompanied by thought-provoking questions for the reader, give a peek into the reality of PBS in action.
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In Tools for Teaching, Dr. Jones describes the skills by which exceptional teachers make the classroom a place of success and enjoyment for both themselves and their students. Tools for Teaching integrates the management of discipline, instruction and motivation into a system that allows you to reduce the stress of teaching by preventing most management headaches. Dr. Jones helps you reduce student disruptions, backtalk, helpless hand raising and dawdling while helping you increase responsible behavior, motivation and independent learning. These skills are made access able by practical, down-to-earth language and many examples and illustrations that provide the next best thing to attending one of Dr. Jones' workshops.
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The phrase "teaching for social justice" is often used, but not always explained. What does it really mean to teach for social justice? What are the implications for anti-oppressive teaching across different areas of the curriculum? Drawing on his own experiences teaching diverse grades and subjects, Kevin Kumashiro examines various aspects of anti-oppressive teaching and learning in six different subject areas. Connecting practice to theory through new pedagogical elements, the revised edition of this bestselling text features: A new and timely preface that considers the possibilities of anti-oppressive teaching and teaching for social justice in the face of increasing pressure from both the Right and the Left to accept neoliberal school reform policies.The new pedagogical components of the revised edition will offer K-12 teachers and teacher educators the tools they need to teach against their common sense assumptions and continue the evolution of social justice in education.
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Calls for renewed moral education in America's schools, offering dozens of programs schools can adopt to teach students respect, responsibility, hard work, and other values that should not be left to parents to teach.
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Effective, intentional teaching begins with a strong set of beliefs, but even the best teachers — including Debbie Miller — struggle to make sure that their classroom practice consistently reflects their core convictions. In Teaching with Intention, Debbie shares her process of defining beliefs, aligning practice, and taking action to ensure that children are the true beneficiaries of her teaching. Reading with Meaning, chronicled a year in her own classroom, Teaching with Intention brings us into classrooms of teachers and children she has met over the last five years in her work as a literacy consultant. From setting up the classroom environment to the intentional use of language, from comprehension instruction to lesson design, Debbie is explicit about what she does and why. In an environment where the handing down of scripted programs and "foolproof" curricula is increasingly the norm, Teaching with Intention offers a compelling reminder that truly transformative teaching is built from the ground up, and is rebuilt every year, by every teacher, in every classroom, with every new group of students.
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An incredible, informative, collection of essays, articles, analysis, interviews, primary documents and interactive & interdisciplinary teaching aids on civil rights, movement building, and what it means for all of the inhabitants of the planet. With sections on education, economic justice, citizenship, and culture, it connects the African-American Civil Rights Movement to Native American, Latina, Asian-American, gay rights, and international struggles; while highlighting the often-ignored roles of women in social justice movements.
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Social Studies Today: Research and Practice inspires educators to think freshly and knowingly about social studies education in the early years of the twenty first century. Written by the field’s leading scholars, this collection provokes readers to consider the relationship of research and practice as they think through some of the most interesting challenges that animate social studies education today. Each chapter tackles a specific issue and includes discussion of topics such as teaching history, learning tolerance, assessment, globalization, children’s literature, culturally relevant pedagogy, and teaching about genocide. Walter Parker not only pulled these chapters together but also contributes two of his own—-both of which are sure to be cited as key works of this era.
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Explore the knowledge and skills young children should have as they progress along the continuum of oral language growth. Speaking and Listening for Preschool Through Third Grade will encourage you to make your classroom a noisy place, full of rich conversation about ideas, opinions, stories, school subjects, and language itself a place where spoken words are at the heart of a community of teaching and learning. Our titles promote reading by providing professional development to continuously advance the quality of literacy instruction and research.Research-based, classroom-tested, and peer-reviewed, IRA titles are among the highest quality tools that help literacy professionals do their jobs better.
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In this book, Barbara Rogoff puts into practice the theoretical account she presented in her highly acclaimed book Apprenticeship in Thinking. Here, Rogoff collaborates with two master teachers from an innovative school in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she conducted extensive research into what is involved when people learn—students, parents, and teachers alike. Illustrated with observations by participants in this school, this book shows that children and adults learn by participating within a community of learners. Their experiences will speak to all those interested in school improvement and in how people learn through engaging together in activities of mutual interest.
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Of all the things that are essential to high performing schools, nothing is more important than the teacher and what that person knows, believes and can do. A teacher's skill makes a difference in student performance, not only in achievement scores, but also in students sense of fulfillment in school and their feelings of well-being. Twenty chapters capture a blend of research and practitioner-developed approaches for using the research in the classroom. Each chapter lays out a known repertoire of strategies to help teachers fulfill a particular kind of mission from the spiritual imperative of communicating high expectations to the abstract challenge of planning lessons.
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Where you live shapes who you are, yet learning about Baltimore is often absent from classrooms. In order to become active, change-making citizens, every student in Baltimore needs to have an understanding of the social, political, and economic forces at play in their city. The Baltimore Textbook is a guide to the city's past, present, and future that will empower students and residents of all ages.
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Explaining the "whats," "whys," and "how-tos" of functional behavioral assessment, this practical and engaging book is packed with real-world tools and examples. Effective procedures are presented for evaluating challenging behavior in K–12 students, organizing assessment data, and using the results to craft individualized behavior support plans. The authors draw on extensive school-based experience to provide sample reports, decision trees, and reproducible checklists and forms—all in a large-size format with lay-flat binding to facilitate photocopying.
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Inspired by the author's research and work with preservice and beginning teachers, this book presents a unique framework to help educators (grades 3- 8) embed their efforts to teach social studies for social justice within the context of literacy. It is a resource for using primary and other sources that will offer students new ways of thinking about history while meeting Language Arts Common Core Standards demands for information text and critical thinking. Grounded in the daily realities of today's public schools, the framework offers a way of planning that takes into account teaching factors that include pressures for content coverage, preparation of students for high-stakes tests, and the low importance placed by many districts on including social studies in the curriculum. Each chapter explains how teachers can restructure, reshape, and work with mandated curriculum materials to teach from a critical perspective. The book also discusses how to meet Common Core Standards by teaching language arts and social studies as complementary subjects.