Frequently Asked Questions for the MN Studies 6th Grade Curriculum

Is there a textbook?

No. Think of the course resources as your text. There are text pages, videos, links and occasionally PDF files that provide the content for the course. In many cases there are Teacher Pages in the course that are labeled and hidden from students.

In the case of student activities, those same resources are embedded. This makes the text infinitely more usable since students can perform searches in it, copy/paste, click on links, etc.

If a teacher wants the materials printed then those pages can be printed out or saved as PDFs. Those pages could be correlated into a collection but many of the resources that include videos, interactive maps and websites would be excluded.

The most valuable aspect of having course materials in this format is that you have the ability to edit, rearrange, combine or subtract from without having to skip around.

Is this an online course? or Can I use this course if my students don’t have computers?

No. The goal of this project is not to turn this course into an online course for MN students. These materials may be used in a wide variety of settings from face-to-face, synchronous instruction, to allowing students to work at their own pace and to allow teachers to include their own materials and resources in an effective and efficient manner. Having said that, the potential is there if a district wanted to offer this as an online course.

Teachers who want students working offline in their notebooks can continue to offer that. Many activities are off-line activities that require group work and class discussion. In some cases a teacher may want to put materials on the projector or print of specific pages for student review.

Student accounts can be given to the teacher’s copy of the course and students can access what they need from anywhere at any time.

Is there a Teacher Edition?

Additional Teacher resources and instructions for introducing or conducting particular lessons are included in the course where they are referenced. Individual activities designated as quizzes have the answers included and are typically auto-graded.

Since this resource will be shared openly attention was paid to focus more on open-ended responses and higher order thinking skills for many of the activities. This would make it less likely for a student to simply search for the answers online. The information must be embedded within their responses to these questions. This makes it more difficult for cheating and plagiarism.

Is the Course Aligned to State Standards?

Yes. The course provides an alignment document that lists specific academic benchmarks with content and assessments. Additionally, each unit plan lists the benchmarks to be covered in that section.

Using this course as a digital resource with your students will also address many, if not all, national technology standards. Link

What happens if a link breaks?

It’s possible that the link to a website or video might break. This is a danger for referring to any web-based materials. Every effort is made to incorporate resources that have a likelihood of sticking around. Content hosted by educational institutions, government sites, and PBS programming are safer than a privately hosted website.

In the event that a link breaks, there is a Feedback Form in the course where issues like this can be reported. In that case, a suitable replacement would be found and added to the Master Copy of the course that would be available for download.

Is this course iPad friendly?

Every effort has been made to find materials that can be displayed on an iPad. For some course materials (mainly some videos and interactive charts/graphs/maps) this is not the case. If an embedded object is found to be incompatible with iPads then that has been noted in the resource title or where it is referred to. In some cases, transcripts of those videos are provided.

Who wrote this course?

There is an attribution link at the end of the course that lists specific authors. The course is a multi-district collaborative effort that involved curriculum directors, teachers, technology integrationists and other interested administrative staff.