NCSS annually presents Summer Workshops, designed to strengthen classroom techniques. These workshops take place around the nation during the summer months, and feature in-depth, hands-on information. The 2008 summer workshops were held in July. Please check back in the spring for information on next year's summer workshops.
1 Reading Strategies to Unlock the Social Studies
What are the important reading strategies for the secondary social studies classroom? What are the organizational patterns of text structure that can help unlock the social studies content? What impact do they have on planning, delivery, and assessment of social studies content?
This practical, hands-on workshop for secondary-level educators will focus on strategies and approaches that help students with nonfiction reading in the social studies. Eight organizational patterns of text structure will be examined, including description, cause and effect, compare / contrast, problem/solution, concept definition, sequence, proposition / support, and goal / action / outcome. Participants will identify and find examples of each in social studies texts, acquire and apply reading strategies appropriate for each type of text structure, and determine ways of using strategies in both instruction and assessment. In addition, participants will acquire and apply other strategies that help students unlock social studies content in the secondary classroom, including vocabulary strategies, anticipation guides, summarizing, synthesizing and evaluating information, making inferences, and making predictions. Participants are asked to bring a grade-level text to use during the workshop.
2 Powerful and Authentic Social Studies (PASS): A Teacher Training Institute
Powerful and Authentic Social Studies (PASS) is a professional development program that trains social studies teachers in curriculum design, assessment, and instruction in a standards-based environment. This institute will provide participants with the materials and expertise necessary to lead their own PASS training workshops in their schools and school districts.
Participants will learn about PASS criteria and standards for curriculum design, assessment construction, and effective instruction. In small learning communities, participants will examine videotaped K-12 vignettes of teaching and examples of curriculum and assessment tasks, and create examples of curriculum and assessment of their own to share with their learning community.
PASS materials consist of videotapes, a general manual outlining PASS principles and specialized manuals for different grade levels. There are three different PASS sets—elementary, middle and high school. Participants will receive a free PASS set at the level of their choice (value: $279.00), and deep discounts will be offered on other sets.
PASS is an effective means of training pre-service as well as in-service teachers. This institute will interest NCSS members at all educational levels.
More information on PASS
3 Teaching with Documents and Works of Art: An Integrated Approach
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM), and National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) present “Teaching with Documents and Works of Art: An Integrated Approach.” This two-and-a-half day workshop will provide a varied program of lectures, demonstrations, collaborative work, and analysis of documents and works of art to introduce teachers to the holdings of the National Archives and the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Workshop attendees will participate in and develop classroom activities that utilize both visual images and primary source documents as teaching tools in ways that sharpen students’ skills and enthusiasm for history, social studies, and the humanities. The content focus will be on Westward Expansion and the Civil War.
The education departments at NARA and SAAM have been working in successful partnership with educators and students for decades to promote the use of primary sources, in a variety of media, as teaching tools.
Teachers may read more about the workshop at americanart.si.edu/education/programs/professional_dev.cfm
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See the Teaching With Documents collection, which is free online to NCSS members, at www.socialstudies.org/twd.
