What We Do

Our Focus

The focus of our work is teachers and students in urban schools. We emphasize culturally relevant curriculum and research-based practices designed to meet the needs of a diverse student body. We work with schools and district to customize professional learning that is hands-on and collaborative.
Examples of our offerings include:

Reading and Writing in the Social Studies Classroom:

• Annotation strategies for use with primary and secondary sources. We provide the source sets for this work and use the new English Language Arts Development Standards to design model activities.
• Writing strategies to support the development of evidence-based argumentative writing.

Speaking and Listening in the Social Studies Classroom

We emphasize strategies that promote small group collaborative conversations that enable all students to participate.

Curriculum Design

This can include:

• Planning for the Common Core. Working with teachers to develop pacing guides using backwards planning to embed Common Core skills, essential questions, and historical investigation/inquiry activities.
• Integrating educational technologies (edtech) into social studies/history classroom.
• Creating history investigations/inquiry lessons in collaboration with teachers to promote historical thinking and the development of skills aligned to the California Standards.
• Introduction to the History Blueprint as a model of Common Core based curriculum.

Instructional Support

• Utilization of Lesson Study as a process to improve instruction and student outcomes.
• Development of teacher leaders.

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