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U-46 proposes integrated middle-school social-studies sequence, recommends TCI and NextGen materials
Summary
District staff presented a new grades 6–8 integrated social-studies curriculum sequence emphasizing inquiry-based units, civic and financial literacy, a phased rollout in 2025–26 and full implementation in 2026–27, and recommended commercial resources and training.
School District U-46 staff on May 19 presented a recommendation for a new integrated middle-school social-studies curriculum that would reorganize grade 6 as Global Studies, grade 7 as Civic and Economic Studies, and grade 8 as American Studies and move the district to inquiry-driven, vertically aligned assessments.
Jacob Van De Mortel and Brian Tennyson told the Board of Education the proposed sequence integrates geography, history, civics and economics across the three grades rather than treating each strand as separate, with repeated inquiry methods and common formative and summative assessments across grades. The update cited new Illinois 6–8 learning standards and said the new course design responds to state mandates and to the district’s strategic goals.
Recommended instructional materials included TCI’s History Alive series for the sixth- and eighth-grade units, the TCI Civics Alive materials for seventh-grade civic foundations and functions, and NextGen Personal Finance’s free online middle-school course for personal financial literacy modules. Administrators said NextGen is free online but that printed teacher or student materials would be bound and provided, and estimated annual consumable costs at about $24,680; district staff estimated a per-pupil cost of roughly $96.79 over the adoption period to cover licenses and materials depending on adoption choices.
The implementation plan called for making resources available to teachers in the 2025–26 year for voluntary piloting and feedback, providing professional learning during that year, and requiring full implementation across the district in 2026–27 with ongoing data monitoring and revisions through 2030. Administrators described an intent to use common assessments to compare outcomes between early adopters and standard-practice classrooms and to use the data to guide professional learning.
The presentation outlined costs for books, licenses and professional learning; no formal board vote on the adoption was recorded in the transcript at the May 19 meeting.
