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Social Studies can be SPECtacular

Social Studies can be SPECtacular. Anthony J Fitzpatrick Vice President for Professional Development Services The American Institute for History Education. Looking for SPECs in your classroom:.

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Social Studies can be SPECtacular

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  1. Social Studies can beSPECtacular Anthony J Fitzpatrick Vice President for Professional Development Services The American Institute for History Education

  2. Looking for SPECs in your classroom: • State standards, textbook objectives, and writing outlines are almost always written in a form of SPEC or other helpful anagrams. • So what is it?

  3. We need a formula! • Other subject areas have formulas to help students “show their work” and have a path to figure our problems. • History and Social Studies can be considered in the same way . . .

  4. SPEC • Social • Having to do with people in groups, their living together, includes issues such as gender, economic status, and ethnicity. • Political • Having to do with gaining, seeking, and organizing power, events related to the function of government: making laws, enforcing laws, and interpreting laws. • Economic • Having to do with how people meet their basic material needs; the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services; includes such issues as domestic and international trade, monetary policies, and taxation. • Cultural • Having to do with the technology, arts, and institutions of a given group of people at a given time. It is a tangible representation of interactions.

  5. Common Core Connection • Explain how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text, identifying which reasons and evidence support which point(s). • Integrate information from several texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably. • By the end of the year, read and comprehend informational texts, including history/social studies, science, and technical texts, at the high end of the grades 4–5 text complexity band independently and proficiently.

  6. A sample from Grade 8 • Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. • 2. Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to supporting ideas; provide an objective summary of the text. • 3. Analyze how a text makes connections among and distinctions between individuals, ideas, or events (e.g., through comparisons, analogies, or categories).

  7. You don’t have to capitalize the C • Often the most confusing theme is Culture as students may confuse it with Social. • It’s quite acceptable to use SPE first until they get the SPEcial nuance that separates social and cultural.

  8. Let’s Try It: • What do you know about Abraham Lincoln?

  9. OK • Let’s Take that content and begin to analyze it for its SPEC significance!!!

  10. Grade Level Appropriateness • Students of ALL ages and grade levels can begin to investigate SPEC in thoughtful and meaningful ways. • The key is to engage the standards in different ways, scaffold the skill and then spiral it so keeps unlock deeper meaning.

  11. Now: • Let’s take the list and use SPEC to categorize and organize our answers.

  12. TOPIC

  13. Get out your SPECtacles. • Let’s examine some primary source documents for some SPECifics.

  14. The result: • Absent of an initial clear vision of an informational text – armed with SPEC – students will be able to approach content with a plan in order to use what they know to formulate a response.

  15. Let’s move it past just the generation of ideas . . . • Graphic Organizers. • Scavenger Hunts. • Extension into an interactive notebook. • Make generalizations that will lead to . . . • THE WRITING PROCESS!

  16. Common Core Writing Expectations • Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content. • Introduce a topic clearly, previewing whatis to follow; organize ideas, concepts, and information into broader categories; include formatting (e.g., headings), graphics (e.g., charts, tables), and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension. • Develop the topic with relevant, well-chosen facts, definitions, concrete details, quotations, or other information and examples. • Use appropriate and varied transitions to create cohesion and clarify the relationships among ideas and concepts. • Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to inform about or explain the topic. • Establish and maintain a formal style. • Provide a concluding statement or section that follows from and supports the information or explanation presented.

  17. SPECulate • In need of a conclusion that doesn’t “tell me what you told me” – have the students take a calculated risk!

  18. What is the goal? • Have students providing a broad SPECtrum of thesis statements and conclusions that show their content mastery and their historical thinking capabilities.

  19. Thank You • Questions, comments, modifications? • afitzpatrick@aihe.info

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