The purpose of this seminar is to provide experience and support in using research skills for thoughtful and systematic inquiry into classroom practice that makes use of digital historical documents to deepen students’ understanding of curriculum and develop their literacy skills. Participants will explore questions that are relevant to use of primary source documents in their own classrooms while providing support to one another in a collaborative setting. As they conduct inquiry, teachers develop understanding of their students’ learning and of their own teaching that enables them to make more informed decisions about instruction.
While teachers will shape their own classroom investigations, the following central question, cast three ways, frames the inquiry for the seminar participants:
What are my plans for integrating primary sources/historical documents into the curriculum? Where do questions for inquiry come from? What is my question?What are the expectations for this project? How do I begin my inquiry? Participants begin observing and reflecting in their logs.
calendar_2007-8.doc
Seminar_description_expectations.doc
Class1_Sept_handouts.doc
How do I find historical sources for my lessons? How do I design and submit my lessons to the Primary Source Learning website? How do I find out more about what interests me? How do I look at what I’m curious about? What is data? What does the data tell me? How do I revise my question? Implementing lessons and collecting data.
october_agenda.doc
October_handout_materials.doc
Inquiry_Proposal.doc
Where does the data lead me? What else do I want to know? More focused data collection.
What am I learning from the data? What questions are emerging from the data? What is my question now? Continue data collection; reviewing and analyzing data.
How am I making sense of the data? What does the data mean? Data analysis.
Looking at my data as a whole, what is my question now and what do I think I’ve learned? Complete major data collection and begin exploratory writing. Individual conferences.
Courtney will be available March 25 at Lemon Road from 4:30 - 7:30 for individual conferences and help.
As I write what am I learning? How can I best show what I have learned? Where are there gaps in my inquiry? Continue draft writing.
How do I make use of my colleagues’ response to my writing? Sharing and responding to report drafts.
TPSNVA will pay for registration for teachers from this course who present their research findings at this conference, typically in a roundtable discussion setting. Please fill out the proposal document and send it to TPSNVA to be submitted. Please note the deadline for proposal submission to Fairfax County has been extended to February 29th, therefore please get proposals to TPSNVA prior to that date.
What can I say, at this point, I’ve learned? What questions do I want to study further?
Deadline Draft of Report due. Sharing of inquiry findings and implications.
How do I find historical sources for my lessons? How do I design and submit my lessons at http://www.PrimarySourceLearning.org?