Educational Excellence
PAL Meets and Exceeds National Standards!
Course of Study
Teachers should maximize and expand students’ knowledge through the use of integral tools, including cooperative learning, large and small group discussions, hands-on activities, current technology, and the use of primary sources. Students benefit from a positive learning environment that challenges and encourages their efforts and progress. In addition, effective teachers recognize the strong need for a sense of belonging exhibited by this age group and therefore provide cooperative learning experiences where students develop a sense of personal identity as well as a sense of responsibility to the group.
“We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.” ~ Abigail Adams
National Curriculum Standards:
Social Studies Mandates
Executive Order on Establishing the 1776 Commission: In order to better enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776, and, through this, form a more perfect Union, it is hereby ordered as follows:
The American founding envisioned a political order in harmony with the design of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” seeing the rights to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness as embodied in and sanctioned by natural law and its traditions.
The path to a renewed and confident national unity is through a rediscovery of a shared identity rooted in our Founding Principles. Thus, it is necessary to provide America’s young people access to what is genuinely inspiring and unifying in our history, as well as to the lessons imparted by the American experience of overcoming great national challenges.
This is what makes possible the informed and honest patriotism that is essential for a successful republic. Parents and local school boards must be empowered to achieve greater choice and variety in curriculum at the State and local levels. The best way to preserve the story of America’s Founding Principles is to live it in action by local communities.
Course of Study Alignment
Due to their emotional and social development, this is the optimal time to assist in their understanding of history by involving them in discussions that include differing viewpoints and opinions of others. As students begin to explore multiple ideas and perceptions, they become more respectful of others’ viewpoints and actions.
Middle School students are interested in acquiring a deeper understanding of cultures and political opinions that differ from their own. These students benefit from a positive learning environment that challenges and encourages their efforts and progress. As they enter into transitional stages characterized by physical, cognitive, and social changes, they begin to analyze and evaluate relationships between ideas and practices. Their curiosity can be utilized to help them identify important concepts and ideas embedded in the history of the United States.
Effective teachers utilize a variety of instructional strategies and assessment tools to address various learning styles. Rather than providing all the answers, innovative teachers help students develop critical-thinking skills by encouraging them to evaluate their own opinions as well as those of others.
Academic Realms
Culture: The learner can compare similarities and differences in the ways groups, societies, and cultures meet human needs and concerns. Students can explain why individuals and groups respond differently to their physical and social environments and/or changes to them on the basis of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs
Time, Continuity, and Change: The learner can compare and contrast different stories or accounts about past events, people, places, or situations, identifying how they contribute to our understanding of the past. Students can identify and use processes important to reconstructing and reinterpreting the past, using a variety of sources… providing, validating, and weighing evidence for claims, checking credibility of sources, and searching for causality
People, Places and Environments: The learner can examine the interaction of human beings and their physical environment, the use of land, building of cities, and ecosystem changes in selected locales and regions. Students can describe ways that historical events have been influenced by, and have influenced, physical and human geographic factors in local, regional, national, and global settings
Individual Development and Identity: The learner can identify and describe ways family, groups, and community influence the individual’s daily life and choices. Students can explore factors that contribute to one’s own personal identity such as interests, capabilities, and perceptions as well as describe personal connections to place, as associated with community, nation, and world.
Individuals, Groups, and Institutions: The learner can demonstrate an understanding of concepts such as role, status, and social class in describing the interactions of individuals and social groups. Students can identify and describe examples of tensions between belief systems and government policies and laws
Power, Authority, and Governance: The learner can examine the rights and responsibilities of the individual in relation to social groups such as family and peers. Students can examine persistent issues involving the rights, roles, and status of the individual in relation to the general welfare as well as analyze and explain ideas and governmental mechanisms to meet the needs of citizens, regulate territory, manage conflict, and establish order and security.
Global Connections: The learner can investigate concerns, issues, standards, and conflicts related to universal human rights, such as the treatment of children, religious groups, and effects of war. Students can demonstrate understanding of concerns, standards, issues, and conflicts related to universal human rights
Production, Distribution, and Consumption: The learner can give examples that show how scarcity and choice govern our economic decisions. Students can describe the influence of incentives, values, traditions, and habits on economic decisions as well as use economic concepts such as supply, demand, and price to help explain events in the community and nation. The learner can also provide examples of economic systems that affect how goods and services are to be produced and distributed and explain the difference between private and public goods and services. Students illustrate how values and beliefs influence different economic decisions and differentiate between economic systems according to who determines what is produced, distributed, and consumed
Science, Technology, and Society: The learner can show examples how science and technology have changed people’s perceptions of the social and natural world. Students can describe examples in which values, beliefs, and attitudes are influenced by scientific and technological knowledge as well as explain the need for laws and policies to govern scientific and technological applications.
Civic Ideals and Practices: The learner can identify key ideals of the United States’ democratic republican form of government, such as individual human dignity, liberty, justice, equality, and the rule of law, and discuss their application in specific situations. Students can identify and practice selected forms of civic discussion and participation consistent with the ideals of citizens in a democratic republic as well as examine the origins and continuing influence of key ideals of the democratic republican form of government, such as individual human dignity, liberty, justice, equality, and the rule of law. The learner can identify and interpret sources and examples of the rights and responsibilities of citizens as well as locate, access, analyze, organize, and apply information about issues which recognize multiple points of view and are matters of public concern. Students practice forms of civic discussion and participation consistent with the ideals of citizens within a democratic republic such as the United States.
PAL meets and exceeds all standards!
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” ~ Thomas Jefferson