Student Voice and Choice in the Social Studies Classroom
PLO Goals: The Future of Global History
The goal for this series of Workshops in Summer 2017 was to expose teachers to the changes occurring to the Global History Regents starting in June 2019. Additionally, I used these workshops to develop an outline which I distributed to my students at the end of every unit as their culminating task. As a teacher, my core values are promoting student voice and student choice in my high school Social Studies classroom. I use essays as performance tasks in my classes, but I develop writing prompts that give students the opportunity to pick topics that they want to research. This PLO helped me promote and encourage student voice and choice in Global History and also in other non-Regents electives.
PLO Learnings:
I spent my time at the PL sessions sharing ideas with other teachers on modifying curricular materials to prepare students to use primary and secondary sources to answer multiple choice questions, short-response questions, and an Enduring Issues essay prompt. We reviewed state and city memos about changes to the Regents exam.
Integration of Technique
I used structured planning time to create new essay templates while at my PLO; I also shared resources and received feedback from colleagues and the PLO facilitators. This structured planning time provided me with real-time integration of my professional learning into my regular classroom practice!
Impact and Conclusion
This PLO has had a positive impact in my classroom. Students are given choice in determining the topic(s) and focus of their essays. I developed several culminating writing assignments at the end of each unit. The turn-in rate for these assignments improved 50% Students are excited to learn about topics in world history because they are able to understand and interpret the “story” and the role people have in shaping history.
This PLO has had a positive impact on my teaching practice. The PLO sessions have provided a safe space to build on my repertoire of teaching strategies and quickly integrate new ideas in the classroom.
Next Steps
Transform current Thematic Essay outline templates to match expectations and form of the Enduring Issues Essay.
Create a Critical Friends Group for Global History teachers in the transfer school district within the DOE as a space to collaborate and share resources aligned to the New NY State Social Studies Framework-based Global History & Geography Regents. Our schools have very unique challenges in terms of students' diverse abilities and also because frequently there is only one Global History teacher in the History department. This Critical Friends Group will connect Global History teachers across all five boroughs of our district; we will share resources, materials, and ideas so that no Global teacher feels alienated or frustrated by the new exam.