Social Studies can be an effective tool to prepare students to complete the PARCC Test. The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) is a group of states working together to develop a set of assessments that measure whether students are on track to be successful in college and their careers.
Teachers can use Social Studies/ History text to prepare students for the PARCC examination. One of the reading test require students to study three varied text: a poem, a narrative text and a cartoon or picture. Students are to interpreted these documents in relation to CCSS Reading Standards 1-5 and 8.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6.1
Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6.2
Determine a central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6.3
Analyze in detail how a key individual, event, or idea is introduced, illustrated, and elaborated in a text (e.g., through examples or anecdotes).
Craft and Structure:
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6.4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6.5
Analyze how a particular sentence, paragraph, chapter, or section fits into the overall structure of a text and contributes to the development of the ideas.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.6.8
Trace and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, distinguishing claims that are supported by reasons and evidence from claims that are not.
Using these standards students are required to read the text and determine the common/shared theme associated with the documents.
The first thing you would do is find three informational text related to a particular historical event or experience. The texts should include 1) a picture; 2) a poem ; and 3) a narrative text discussing a historical event or experience.
Next you should review the process students will use to interpret the several documents. Below are three documents relating to American slavery. The theme of the documents could be “To be a slave was a life full of mistreatment” , or “Slavery was a situation in which cruelty and mistreatment of human beings was the norm”.
Distribute the documents. First, have students study the picture. Choose one student to come up to the white board or blackboard to record the students’ evidence of what is taking place in the picture. Review the student statements and encourage students to arrive at a consensus of what the picture or cartoon documents. Explain to the students they should probably look for elements in the narrative and poem that agrees with the action(s) occurring in the illustration.
Distribute the narrative . Use guided reading techniques to read the narrative. Stop after reading the highlighted sentences. Tell the students to underline the highlighted passages to simulate annotation of the text. Ask students if the highlighted passages agree with the message(s) found in the illustration. Discuss the highlighted passages.
Finally, distribute the poem. Apply guided reading strategy to read the poem. Discuss the highlighted passages from the poem. Ask the students if the highlighted passages relate to the theme of the picture and narrative.
Return to the assignment on the first page. Tell the students to write their response to the text beginning with the common theme of the three text. Explain to them the theme they chose must be supported by textual evidence. Chose several students to read their responses to the three documents.
After completing this guided exercise teachers should find three documents the students can analyze themselves.
Sample Parcc Test
Below you have three non-fiction text. They include a cartoon , a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called The Slave’s Dream, and an excerpt from Frederick Douglas’ speech in Sheffield, England, on September 11, 1846. Examine carefully the cartoon and , the speech by Frederick Douglas and the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. While you read the texts annotate or highlight important points and phrases you believe support the theme of the informational text you have read. After reading the informational text. Write a response to these documents using details/ information from the textual material you have read to determine the common theme shared by the texts. In your response cite specific details from each source document to support your response.
Document 1
“THE SLAVE HAS NO RIGHTS …”
Frederick Douglas made this speech in Sheffield, England, on September 11, 1846. (Excerpted)
The full speech is at: http://docsouth.unc.edu/douglass/support5.html
…the slave in the United States is one who is in the possession of an irresponsible owner, who
can do with [him] what he pleases. God has given to the slave a mind; but that mind may be
improved only as the slave owner may choose…If he supposes that teaching a slave to read
militates against the value of the slave, he has power to withhold that knowledge from him, and
he exerts upon him that power. If he thinks that religion militates against his interest, he
withholds it from the slave, who only lives for his master, not for himself…
The slave has no rights; he is a being with all the capacities of a man in the condition of the
brute. Such is the slave in the American plantations. He can decide no question relative to his
own actions; the slave-holder decides what he shall eat or drink, when and to whom he shall
speak, when he shall work, and how long he shall work; when he shall marry, and how long the
marriage shall be binding, and what shall be the cause of its dissolution—what is right and
wrong, virtue or vice. The slave-holder becomes the sole disposer of the mind, soul and body of
his slave, who has no rights, all of which are taken from him. This is the condition of three
millions of human beings in the United States.
I am not one of those slaves in the United States who have experienced much cruelty in my own
person. Nevertheless … I have known what it is to be dragged fifteen miles to the human flesh
market and be sold like a brute beast. I am from a slave-breeding state—where slaves are reared
for the market as horses, sheep, and swine are … The slave is driven by the beating of the lash,
and often, immediately he is landed, is branded with the hot iron, often his ears are cut and his
teeth drawn, so as to mark him in case he runs away, when he advertises him and so brings him
back to bondage.
I have seen women, with their frantic children surrounding them, tied to a post, and lashed by an
overseer until their blood covered their garments. The children were screaming for the release of
their mother, while the husband was standing by with his hands tied, and after his wife was
castigated, he received the same punishment. This is the state of things in Maryland, where
slavery exists in its mildest form; but these things are necessary for the support of slavery in the
United States. These cases are not the exceptions; they are of every-day occurrence in the slavestates
of America, and also in every large plantation. Men not only confess that they do these
things, but publish the facts to the world, thus showing that so far from being like exceptions to
the rule, or condemned by public opinion, they are sustained and upheld by public opinion.
All these cruelties are necessary for the maintenance of slavery. The slave-holder could not
maintain his slaves without the right to torture them. The fear of death must be exercised. As my
brother Garrison said, men do not go voluntarily to take upon them the yoke of slavery; they
must have the fear of death before them, or they will not become slaves, at least profitable slaves.
If we grant slavery to be right, then we must grant all its machinery to be right—such as the
thumb-screw, the dungeons, the cat-o'-nine tails, and all the paraphernalia which are
indispensable for the maintenance of slavery.
Document 3
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
The Slave’s Dream
BESIDE the ungathered rice he lay,
His sickle in his hand;
His breast was bare, his matted hair
Was buried in the sand.
Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep, 5
He saw his Native Land.
Wide through the landscape of his dreams
The lordly Niger flowed;
Beneath the palm-trees on the plain
Once more a king he strode; 10
And heard the tinkling caravans
Descend the mountain road.
He saw once more his dark-eyed queen
Among her children stand;
They clasped his neck, they kissed his cheeks, 15
They held him by the hand!—
A tear burst from the sleeper’s lids
And fell into the sand.
And then at furious speed he rode
Along the Niger’s bank: 20
His bridle-reins were golden chains,
And, with a martial clank,
At each leap he could feel his scabbard of steel
Smiting his stallion’s flank.
Before him, like a blood-red flag, 25
The bright flamingoes flew;
From morn till night he followed their flight,
O’er plains where the tamarind grew,
Till he saw the roofs of Caffre huts,
And the ocean rose to view. 30
At night he heard the lion roar,
And the hyena scream,
And the river-horse, as he crushed the reeds
Beside some hidden stream;
And it passed, like a glorious roll of drums, 35
Through the triumph of his dream.
The forests, with their myriad tongues,
Shouted of liberty;
And the Blast of the Desert cried aloud,
With a voice so wild and free, 40
That he started in his sleep and smiled
At their tempestuous glee.
He did not feel the driver’s whip,
Nor the burning heat of day;
For Death had illumined the Land of Sleep, 45
And his lifeless body lay
A worn-out fetter, that the soul
Had broken and thrown away!
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