Social Studies Webinars

The Going the Distance Educator Virtual Symposium was an exclusive Professional Development conference focused on teaching to enhance distance learning.

Students learn best when engaged in active inquiry that integrates Social Studies content and real-world problem-based tasks. These tasks take specific shape in the Social Studies classroom to include Civic Discussions, Project-Based Learning, and DBQ Activities. Come to this session to experience a variety of inquiry models to engage students. We will model pedagogical strategies to support student experiences with inquiry that are collaborative, creative, experiential, exploratory, and evidence-based.

This session supports strategies and best practices to increase student engagement and productive dialogue in the Social Studies classroom. Participants will learn how to create classrooms that are rich with active student participation and interaction with the content. These strategies will help students develop routines for analyzing primary and secondary source content. The presenter will focus using Social Studies content (images, readings, sources, video, digital interactives, etc.) that help students develop ideas, debate, and discuss content and support arguments and claims with evidence. Learn how active classroom strategies promote critical thinking and increase student engagement and talk in the Social Studies classroom.

Create literate, confident, and independent citizens through the use of informational texts and primary sources to practice important critical thinking skills. Help students build content and academic vocabulary development that encourages students to support arguments with evidence. This session will support the development of critical literacy skills in the Social Studies classroom and promote strategies to help students demonstrate understanding through reading, writing, listening, and speaking in the classroom and beyond!

This session will support student engagement with Social Studies content through the power of story and historical perspective that builds empathy and understanding. Participants will learn strategies that immerse students through the use of primary and secondary sources, analyzing multiple perspectives, sensory supports, and technology. Help students critically examine the past and develop personal connections in the Social Studies classroom.

This interactive workshop will demonstrate how inquiry learning provides students the opportunity to explore Social Studies topics through the analysis of primary & secondary sources to develop and support their arguments with evidence. Inquiry learning leads to the development of important literacy skills in all four communication strands. Participants will learn classroom strategies to incorporate collaborative inquiry learning.

To unlock the mystery of inquiry one must go on an arduous journey…Only the truly gifted educator will be able to complete this odyssey. Hyperbole aside, social studies teachers might be experiencing fatigue as inquiry teaching and learning can sometimes be made to seem akin to reaching educational enlightenment. But, experience shows us that inquiry is how we learn best. Rather than thinking of inquiry as something new, we will spend time making current practices of inquiry visible. Then, we will spend time delving more deeply into the Inquiry Design Model (IDM) (http://www.c3teachers.org/idm) and the way in which the model helps to support both teachers and students engaged in inquiry.