Our So
cial Studies Leadership Team meeting launched with the English Proverb, “A picture is worth a thousand words!” Administrators and teacher leaders from every school participated in an icebreaker activity by sharing a photo from their phone. We learned so much about each other’s families, vacations, childhood memories, and even pets! The next icebreaker A Penny for Your Thoughts allowed teachers to share a personal memory or historical event from the date found on their randomly chosen penny. Some of the years included birthdays, World Series Championships, The Cold War, Presidential Elections, Desert Storm, and even the Bicentennial celebration of Tappan!
We participated in the Learning Protocol Save the Last Word for Me using an article from Education Week called “History Lessons Blend Content Knowledge, Literacy,” by Catherine Gewertz.
We identified several significant ideas from the article and shared in small groups. Each participant commented or asked questions about each other’s ideas. We discussed how to create lessons and activities for students to take an active role in Social Studies as an Investigator or detective trying to solve a mystery, starting Social Studies unit or lesson with an Essential Question, seeing social studies as a narrative or story (and not just facts ), and how primary and secondary sources give students an opportunity to form multiple perspectives and answers, while using evidence to support their point of view.
Finally, the group looked at sample questions from the new Global Regents Exam and explored new resources (such as Padlet) and how these types of questions might inform our instruction. This, combined with the opportunity to explore new resources (i.e., Padlet and New Visions School Regents Prep), led to great discussions at all grade levels about how we can continue to help students to see history as more than information in a textbook.
The day concluded with watching a video clip of the Seinfeld Episode on teaching history.
Written by:
Mark Stanford, Instructional Literacy Coach (6-12) &
Joe Onativia, Instructional Literacy Coach (K-5)
