North Cook News

The Pennoyer School District 79 board of education held a meeting that reviewed its social studies education.

“I will tell you, we try to incorporate the four main domains and the Illinois social studies standards, which are civics, geography, economics and financial literacy, and history,” Meghan Loring, a teacher for the district, said during the meeting. “We also included several inquiry skills and all of the state mandates in Illinois.”

The district offers other topics such as English Language Arts, Math and Science.

Loring, a third-grade teacher and the department chair for the social studies department, presented their new curriculum plan to the board for their approval. The committee for the subject includes her as the 3-5 representative, Kiera Strecker and Rachel Micheals as K-2 representatives, and Julia Peters as the 6-8 representative.

The Chicago Tribune reported the elementary school district was needing repairs ranging from lead in the water to leaking ceilings. Though voters said no to its $10 million bill.

As a part of the district’s long term plan, they developed the curriculum through the 20-21 school year, had it validated in the 21-22 school year, and are now doing the resource selection, proficiency scale writing, assessment writing and creating their standards-based grading in the 22-23 school year. This is the first time they are doing standards-based grading in social studies.

The board will be meeting again at 7 p.m. on Oct. 12 at 5200 North Cumberland Avenue in Norridge.

Loring gave a breakdown of the focus of the curriculum in each grade. They start very small in Kindergarten, by having students think about their everyday lives. As they go to first and second grade, they begin to feel about their families and their neighborhoods, going into their cities and state in third and fourth grade, eventually getting to the whole country and globe in fifth and sixth grade.