First Choice Educational Publishing is proud to announce the forthcoming publication of Exploring the Grade 8 TEKS through Primary Sources. The basic idea behind this book is to closely align a series of excerpts from primary sources with the TEKS for Grade 8 Social Studies. Students will be able to improve their skills in interpreting primary sources while improving their understanding of the TEKS at the same time. Students will actually be “doing history” as well as reading about it by analyzing, evaluating and piecing together evidence from multiple sources offering a variety of perspectives.

For years, average STAAR results for Grade 8 Social Studies across Texas have remained stagnant. In Spring 2018, only 34% of test-takers were at the “Meets Grade Level (or higher)” and only 64% were at the “Approaches Grade Level (or higher).” By working with primary sources, students will be able to focus on those TEKS that they find the most difficult.

Exploring the Grade 8 TEKS through Primary Sources is not intended to replace Mastering the Grade 8 Social Studies TEKS or your course textbook. It does not provide a continuous narrative describing the major events of early American history. Instead, it delves into some key issues in greater detail and gives students a chance to read, interpret and apply primary sources as part of their course work—an essential skill for critical readers and one that is tested by short excerpts on the STAAR test.

Please also note that this new resource is not available from Jarrett Publishing Company or Education Plus. The sole-source vendor providing this resource is First Choice Educational Publishing.