Social Studies in Action: Teaching for Understanding
How do we plan for learning? In this session, you will examine the Teaching for Understanding Model, a framework for unit planning developed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. You will use the framework to analyze unit planning in classroom videos, plan for social studies units, and see how a pictorial timeline of U.S. History can shape an entire year of learning.
Social Studies in Action: Using Resources
How can students use a variety of resources well? In this session, you will focus on how to make the most of resources that can be used in teaching social studies, from artifacts and primary sources to children's literature and the Internet. You will see how children's literature can be used to examine what constitutes a good citizen, how to analyze artifacts, and to develop a lesson of your own.
Social Studies in Action: Making Connections
How do we connect social studies to life beyond the classroom? In this culminating session, you will explore the connections between social studies content and real-world applications. You will see classroom video examples that illustrate effective ways of bridging social studies concepts and the world beyond the classroom, match teaching goals with strategies for making connections, and develop a lesson of your own.
Social Studies in Action: Teaching Social Studies
Why do we teach social studies? This session focuses on the relevance of teaching social studies and discusses strategies for helping students gain a deeper understanding of social studies content. Along with the onscreen teachers, you will review standards and themes developed by the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS) and view video clips from the Social Studies in Action video library to identify examples of powerful teaching and learning.
Social Studies in Action: Applying Themes and Disciplines
What do we teach? Working from the NCSS themes and standards, and related disciplines, you will identify building blocks for teaching social studies, and approaches to integrating disciplines while teaching social studies content. Classroom video segments illustrate effective strategies for developing a comprehensive curriculum and provide an opportunity for you to reflect on teaching practices. Finally, you will develop a lesson plan that incorporates a variety of themes and disciplines.
This course meets the scheduled Arkansas history requirement as set forth in the Rules Governing Professional Development and required by Act 969 of 2013.
Social Studies in Action: Assessing Students' Learning
How do we know students are learning? Because assessment often provides only small snapshots of learning, this session provides you with a variety of tools and strategies to assess students' learning in formal, informal, ongoing, and culminating ways. You will analyze classroom video segments, develop criteria for assessment, and learn how to incorporate assessment strategies in your practice.
Making Civics Real: Freedom of Religion
Ninth-grade civics teacher Kristen Borges involves her students at Southwest High School in Minnesota in a simulation of a U.S. Supreme Court hearing on a First Amendment case.
Students assume the roles of Supreme Court justices, attorneys for the school district, and attorneys for the families. They first work in groups to prepare for the hearing, then participate in the hearing, and finally, debrief their experiences and write short papers stating their positions on the case.
The methodologies highlighted in this lesson include questioning strategies and mock trials.
Making Civics Real: Electoral Politics
This program shows the conclusion of a twelve-week civic engagement unit developed by the national Student Voices program.
Jose' Velazquez's twelfth grade students at University High School in New Jersey divide into small groups to brainstorm and research community issues, prioritize the issues on the basis of what they have learned, present their findings to the class both orally and through a visual presentation, and develop a whole-class consensus on a youth agenda that they present to the mayoral candidates in a televised question-and-answer forum.
The methodologies highlighted in this lesson include issue identification and consensus building.
Making Civics Real: Public Policy and the Federal Budget
Leslie Martin’s ninth-graders at West Forsyth High School in North Carolina create, present, revise, and defend a federal budget, and then reflect on what they have learned. After assuming the roles of the President and his or her advisors to create a federal budget, students are introduced to the actual 2001 federal budget, and in a whole-class discussion, discuss some key concepts involved in creating it. Next, students return to cooperative learning groups, revise their budgets based on what they learned, present their revised budgets, and simulate a Congressional hearing. This lesson highlights the integration of teacher-directed instruction with small-group work.
Making Civics Real: Constitutional Convention
Matt Johnson teaches an Advanced Placement (AP) Comparative Government class to seniors at Benjamin Banneker Senior High School in Washington, DC. In this lesson, his twelfth grade students create a constitution for a hypothetical country called Permistan. Matt Johnson uses this lesson to help students review for their final exam and the AP exam by having them draw on what they have learned during the semester about international governments. Students work in cooperative learning groups to discuss and debate issues relating to the executive and legislative branches of government. The lesson closes with a simulation of a constitutional convention. Simulation is the primary methodology highlighted in this lesson.