After spending the morning in cross-curricular groups, learning about Inductive Reasoning and the ways it can deepen student learning, we will spend the afternoon talking about the ways that Inductive Reasoning is specifically beneficial in the social studies classroom.
There will be 2 sets of lesson materials for teachers to explore and consider whether and how they might incorporate inductive reasoning tasks. The goal is for teachers to see how they can make small changes, using the same materials that they already have, while giving students more opportunities to improve their historical thinking. The lesson materials will be about voting rights (relevant to U.S. History and Government) and human rights (relevant to World).
The morning of day 2 is focused on empowering and supporting students to ask “juicy” questions that are open-ended and encourage critical thinking and exploration. During the afternoon, we will talk about asking good questions in the context of research. Templates and handouts will be provided with ideas for getting students to practice asking questions as a regular practice in class. Additionally, there will be lessons and activities to help scaffold students creating questions for projects, and research assignments.
To sign up for days 1 and 2 of the critical thinking PD opportunity, sign up here.
In addition to the PD opportunity listed above, three half-day, course-specific PD opportunities will be offered (one half-day per course). While attending the Inductive Reasoning PD is helpful, it’s not a necessary prerequisite for the following PD opportunities.
In each of these afternoon sessions participants will receive a set of lesson materials including primary and secondary sources (written words, speeches, photos and/or art), potential prompts to use with the texts, and other supporting documents (student handouts, graphic organizers, scaffold guides, etc)
The first part of the session will include a short discussion of what inductive reasoning is and how it helps to develop students' critical thinking skills with the majority of the time being set aside for teachers to explore the materials and discuss with each other how they might use or modify the prompts and/or lesson materials. The goal is not for teachers to completely change a chunk of a unit, but rather to consider smaller shifts in their existing plans to incorporate more inductive reasoning.
The second part of the session is optional where teachers can choose to remain for an additional 60 minutes after the end of the contract day (compensated at the hourly rate) for work time to re-write lesson plans, modify materials, and/or collaborate with other teachers.
Course-Specific Session dates:
Thursday 11/13/25 - US History
Tuesday 2/3/26 - Government
Wednesday 4/8/26 - World History
The topic focus for each session will be provided in the Fall. To sign up for any of these afternoon sessions, click here.
If you have any questions, please contact Viviana_Torres@fuhsd.org
When: Monday, November 17, 2025
Intended Audience:
ALL FUHSD TEACHERS interested in revising/creatings lessons with multilingual learners in mind! (Elective/CTE Teachers: this one is for YOU, too!)
If you’ve ever thought:
“I know my students who are English language learners need language support, but what does that actually look like?”
“Am I scaffolding this right?”
"What does an "sheltered" Amplified! course really look like in my subject-area?”
…then THIS is the professional development session for you!
See EL page for detailed information and registration.