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CCOG for ABE 0792 Spring 2024

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Course Number:
ABE 0792
Course Title:
Social Studies for GED and College Prep
Credit Hours:
0
Contact Hours:
40-48

Course Description

Provides basic information about civics and government, U.S. history, economics and geography to assist in the preparation of the GED Social Studies Exam and/or the transition to post-secondary education. Analyzes the interrelatedness of social studies topics and their impact on today's society. Requires: CASAS Reading placement 235 or higher.

Addendum to Course Description

Recommended: CASAS Reading placement 239 or higher.

Total contact hours: 40-48

Intended Outcomes for the course

Upon completion of the course students will be able to:

  • Use reading and writing strategies to analyze basic social studies topics including civics and government, U.S. history, economics, and geography.

  • Apply a range of strategies including activating prior knowledge and cultural understanding to monitor and enhance comprehension of basic social studies topics.

  • Apply the understanding of these topics on the GED Ready and GED Exam.

Aspirational Goals

  • Exhibit persistence, self-motivation, self-advocacy, and personal responsibility

  • Reflect upon, assess, identify, and celebrate one’s own learning gains

  • Explore, develop, and monitor appropriate academic and professional goals

  • Advance knowledge and skills to make independent choices as a citizen, family member, worker, and life-long learner

Outcome Assessment Strategies

  • Complete CASAS reading test

  • Pass GED Practice test in Social Studies

  • Take college placement test (if college bound)

  • Create portfolios, including reflections, drafts and final writing pieces about basic social studies topics

  • Develop projects, presentations, and debate

  • Assess comprehension with quizzes, multiple choice questions, written response, and discussion questions

  • Complete a computer-based assignment

Course Content (Themes, Concepts, Issues and Skills)

Themes: development of modern liberties and democracy, human and civil rights from ancient civilizations to the present, dynamic responses in societal systems

Concepts :goal setting, critical thinking, decision making, confidence building, collaborative team-work, media literacy, cultural literacy, student success skills


Issues: barriers to student success, access to resources, communication skills, learning differences, test and school anxiety, and behavior appropriate to academic and professional settings
Skills:

  • Recognize the 3 branches of government

  • Understand the purpose of each branch of government

  • Understand the major occurrences in United States history

  • Recognize the basic concepts of economics

  • Locate major geographic regions of the United States and some of the world

  • Analyze how history plays a role in today’s society

  • Draw on prior experience, research, new knowledge, and one’s own questions, interests and observations to generate ideas for writing about basic social studies topics

  • Choose among a variety of strategies appropriate to planning and organizing texts types

  • Develop and organize ideas and information in varied genres, including the presentation of an argument

  • Summarize and paraphrase ideas in a text while avoiding plagiarism

  • Draw from a broad vocabulary that includes words needed for specialized and/or academic purposes

  • Express one’s own thoughts and ideas in a way that is clear and compelling

  • Read regularly for own purposes

  • Identify, clarify, and/or prepare for complex social studies related reading

  • Recognize on sight syllable patterns/types, root words, and affixes in multi-syllabic words

  • Acquire and apply meanings of most words and phrases found in everyday and academic texts, including terms related to specialized social studies topics

  • Accurately read text composed of dense or long, complex sentences and paragraphs with appropriate pacing, phrasing, and expression

  • Evaluate and/or apply prior knowledge of the content and situation, including cultural understanding, to support comprehension

  • Use strategies easily and in combination to pronounce and/or discern the meanings of unfamiliar words found in a complex social studies text

  • Choose from a range of strategies, including some sophisticated ones, and integrate them to monitor and/or enhance text comprehension (e.g. scan/skim, make inferences, mark text and/or make notes, organize notes and/or make graphic organizers and text maps, write a summary to check understanding, discuss with others)

  • Use text format and features (e.g. search engines, drop down menus, headings) to enhance comprehension

  • Locate, analyze, and critique stated and unstated information, ideas/arguments, and/ or themes in a complex functional, informational, or persuasive text

  • Determine, analyze and summarize the author’s central idea and major points over multiple paragraphs/pages

  • Evaluate the reliability, accuracy, and sufficiency of information, claims, or arguments

  • Draw conclusions related to the structural elements of a complex literary work, using literary terms

  • Analyze and evaluate an author’s style, attending to the use of language and literary techniques and to influences on the writing

  • Integrate the people/characters, events, information, ideas/arguments, themes, or writing styles in lengthy or multiple complex tests with each other and/or with knowledge of the world to address a complex reading purpose

  • Agree or disagree with an idea/argument/claim or theme, and explain reasoning

  • Follow complex, multi step directions, integrating written and graphic information (e.g., science experiment)

  • Compare and Contrast people/characters, events and ideas in different social studies related texts

  • Combine, compare, contrast and/or critique ideas/arguments/claims or themes in different texts

  • Analyze the cause and effect of past events