On the surface, teaching geography can seem pretty straight forward. Simply have students memorize locations on a map, right? I’d have to say this is a common misconception! You’re not alone if you haven’t put in much more thought than that. For many middle school standards, simply recalling and memorizing locations on a map is just the starting point. Geography skills can extend much further and require students to analyze or interpret information or data drawn from maps. 

It is important to scaffold, or tier, your students’ learning. This will allow students to move from a beginning level of understanding to extend their level of understanding past the requirements of the state’s standard. Once you are able to break down your standard and develop a strategy to scaffold student learning, you will be able to easily determine the standard’s mastery levels. 

Georgia’s state test (Georgia Milestones) places students into 4 categories: beginning, developing, proficient, and distinguished learners. So, the Georgia Department of Education  offers teachers a guide to this progression of knowledge called Achievement Level Descriptors (ALDs). The ALDs offer a description of what each category of learner should be able to do and is broken down by each standard.

These ALDs are a great resource to use as a starting point, but it can leave us teachers feeling like we need a little more. First, it only lists a brief description statement without many examples or suggestions. Second, there are only ALDs for 5th and 8th grade Social Studies, leaving 6th and 7th grade Social Studies on their own. I’d like to help you fill in those gaps! 

In this blog post, I’ll cover the basics, but I’ll leave you with some resources that will take you on a deep dive of your specific grade level’s Georgia standards! 

As you explore Georgia’s ALDs guide, you will notice that the verbiage used for each level is similar to the verbiage used when discussing Depth of Knowledge (DOK) levels. Middle school students are expected, in many cases, to expand past the “recall” or “identify” level of understanding. Generally, students begin with “describe”, then extend to “explain”, and further extend to “interpret” or “analyze”.  

This concept can be mirrored when scaffolding your students’ learning. You can follow the same progression when teaching. 

Let’s use an example from Georgia’s 5th Grade Social Studies - SS5G2a, a standard covering how factors influence spatial patterns of economic activities. First, we’ll break down the standard, and then use our DOK level knowledge to place the skill into a chart that shows the progression of knowledge. 

This can be used to scaffold/tier learning, differentiate instruction, or determine mastery levels.  

Standard Breakdown / Deconstruct the Standard

1. Look for multiple parts of the standard. How many “skills” must the students master?

   Any time you see the word “and” in your standard, that’s a sign that you must split the standard into more than one skill to master. For this standard, you might find your students have an easier time locating the primary agricultural and industrial locations than they do explaining how these locations were influenced. 

2. Notice the verbs in your standard. What are students expected to DO?

   This standard asks students to “locate” and “explain”. These are two very different skills to master and should be taught accordingly. 

3. Align the standard’s verbs to a DOK level. 

   Aligning the standard’s verbs will help you to determine what must lead up to the skill or what can be extended from the skill. In this case, “locate” falls into DOK level 1, while “explain” falls into either DOK levels 2 or 3. 

With all of that, we can scaffold learning in the following strategy:

Students will: Locate agricultural and industrial locations → identify factors that can influence these locations → explain how these factor influence locations → draw conclusions/interpret data 

If you scaffold your teaching with this in mind, then your students’ levels of mastery will be broken down in a similar manner. Below is an example with a 5th grade Georgia Social Studies standard over locations in history.

Now, let’s look at another example! This time, let’s tackle a 6th grade standard.

SS6G1b. Locate on a world and regional political-physical map the countries of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and Panama.

While this standard does not require students to know the nations’ climate, population, or distribution of natural resources, we know that a later standard will require students to know this information (SS6G3a). So, we’ll pull in some of that information to help students extend past the requirement of this standard in a way that will help them in another standard. 

6th Grade Scaffold Learning Strategy: 

Students will locate Latin America on world map → Distinguish Latin America among other regions → locate countries on world AND regional map → Distinguish the countries among others

To recap, geography skills should extend much further than memorization and require students to analyze or draw conclusions from maps. Scaffolding your teaching will allow students to move from a beginning level of understanding to extend their level of understanding past the requirements of the state’s standard. Once you understand this process, you can easily determine mastery levels of the standard.