GWC 500-24 Global Studies: Increasing Student Engagement in Social Studies Through Critical Reading Strategies

Event Sponsor: 

Century High School

Event Contact Name:

Mary Palmer

Position or Title: 

Instructional Coach

Event Contact Phone: 

(701) 323-6522

Event Contact Email: 

mary_palmer@bismarckschools.org

Event Location: 

Century High School

Event Start Date: 

Event End Date: 

Objective and Outcomes: 

• Participants will collaborate with department to determine student needs (problem areas) in reading and writing within global studies.
• Participants will research and implement effective content specific vocabulary strategies.
• Participants will be able to confidently instruct and model disciplinary literacy skills.
• Participants will determine and implement several strategies to improve disciplinary literacy instruction.
• Participants will reflect and share best practices in disciplinary reading instruction.

Resources/Course Materials: 

• Mary Palmer, instructional coach
• AVID Reading for Disciplinary Literacy
• Reading Strategy Lessons for Science and Social Studies by Laura Robb
* Teaching Reading in the Content Areas: If not me, then who? by Vicki Urquhart and Dana Frazee
• https://www.edutopia.org/article/balancing-instruction-social-studies

Attendance: 

paper roster check

Evaluation and Evidence of Learning and Application: 

1. Reflections on New Learning (Describe the information sharing or collaboration options your participants will engage in as evidence of reflection upon the session content.)
• Throughout the year, our global studies PLC will meet on a weekly basis to share observations, research, and plan application of critical reading strategies in our content areas. We will share strategies and discuss student progress in each unit of study. Teachers are encouraged to ask questions and search for evidence/research to move the work forward.
• Each teacher will show student growth in the area of content comprehension via reading and engagement strategies by choosing 3-5 students or one class to track and monitor growth; teachers will also reflect on the correlation of skills addressed with academic achievement. At the end of the semester, teachers will share with their cross-content colleagues at a staff meeting – share their approach, their strategies, and their successes.

2. Application of New Learning: (Describe what participants will be asked to do to show evidence of application of the session content to their work.)
• Global Studies teachers are expected to explicitly teach literacy skills and show student growth (via Socratic webs, student annotations, writing samples, Night student journals, Student notebook samples, and collect exemplars, and samples from student focus groups to measure growth/effectiveness etc.).