Our Work
Since 2010, we have created a unique collaborative model amongst BC K-12 teachers who are trying to get the most out our students and our own professional development. Our approach to teaching and guiding focus centres on creating thinking classrooms that provide authentic connections between curriculum, identity, and place, primarily in the context of Social Studies. Read more about our long-term project, the TTSP plot.
Thinking It Through: A Social Studies Sourcebook
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This Sourcebook will help students develop their critical thinking skills as they explore selected topics from the revised BC Social Studies 9 Curriculum.
Thinking it Through is organized according to CONTENT STANDARDS, each with four case studies in critical thinking: Revolution and Change, Imperialism and Colonialism, Migration and Shifting Population, Nationalism and Nation-Building, Regional and Global Conflict, Injustices and Rights, Land and People. The authors have selected primary and secondary sources, all kinds of questions, and suggested extension activities for 28 topics or case studies. Each one is a sandbox for teachers and students to explore CURRICULAR COMPETENCIES and apply historical (and geographic) thinking concepts. Students will push their thinking about what they can learn from evidence, and realize how the account changes depending on the evidence they use. Finally, by developing the ability to think through historical, social, or geographic evidence, students will learn how BIG IDEAS have shaped the past and the present. This resource began as a project of the Pacific Slope Consortium and has now been published by Pearson Education Canada. Product link here. |
Revised BC Social Studies Curriculum
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Check out the links at thielmann.ca
Human Geography 11/12Rob Lewis, a consortium director, has put together a gainful site with resources for this new course, offered to many Grade 11 students in BC this year and set to become one of the core Grade 12 Social Studies electives in 2018-19. Follow the ongoing development of the course here.
New BC Social Studies 8New BC Social Studies 9New BC Social Studies 10Assessment Framework
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Resource ReviewPlease let us know if you'd like us to have a look at an educational resource you've developed and for which you'd like feedback or help sharing.
SNAPSHOTS IN TIME: Significant Events in Canadian History
Link: A review & suggested gameplay by the Pacific Slope. This is a set of 50 cards that form a visual timeline. It can be used as a learning game, teaching resource, or assessment tool. It is produced by The Critical Thinking Consortium <https://tc2.ca>. Social Studies curriculum and classroom activitiesWe create and collect resources related to performance-based assessment, role-play/simulations, critical thinking activities, heritage projects, and working with primary sources. Please contact us if you would like to access or contribute to our Dropbox.
Learning Design, Professional Communities, and Public Education AdvocacyIf you would like to discuss a training session, professional development workshop, keynote presentations, or program evaluation, please contact us and we can go into more detail with you in person. The heart of our work relates to critical thinking in secondary Humanities and Social Studies classrooms, but we have some mad skills in other educational areas, too.
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Design for New Curriculum
What elements of design should guide us as we put the new BC Social Studies curriculum through its paces? What kind of frameworks can we use to make sense of the swirling mass of competencies, skills, and content? Is it that easy to pick and choose from among the (vast) content areas (now even vaster with the curriculum re-org) in order to address competence, or is SS more like Math in that there is some core content that is necessary for students to encounter in sequence? What's the difference between history and SS? What if we used a geographic framework to understand our role as SS teachers, or sociological or anthropological for that matter? Our recent discussions at Mumbleypeg 2015 included a look at the "curricular juggernaut" presented by the new BC Social Studies 9 as well as the relatively straightforward new BC Social Studies 8. Here is the New SS8 Curriculum at a Glance. Here is the New SS9 Curriculum at a Glance.
UPDATE: Social Studies content shifting, curriculum overview, and ideas for new Social Studies course outlines: http://www.thielmann.ca/new-bc-curriculum.html
UPDATE: Social Studies content shifting, curriculum overview, and ideas for new Social Studies course outlines: http://www.thielmann.ca/new-bc-curriculum.html
Staff Meeting Assessment Tool
A well designed and executed staff meeting results in affirmation of diverse and successful practices, needed change or solutions to challenges, improved morale, greater unity of purpose, a reduction of problems among staff and students, more confidence in achieving academic and social goals (to start with!). A poorly designed staff meeting erodes all of these accomplishments, and leaves staff feeling bored, cynical, reluctant, frustrated, or upset. A successful staff meeting has positive reverberations for students, sending teachers, administration, and support staff back into the halls with energy and resolve for improving the learning experiences of students. While it takes a whole staff to “win or lose” a staff meeting, there is a strong role for the administrative team who sees the meeting as their chance to make an impact and craft a memorable learning event for others. It is no coincidence that this is the same approach that a successful teacher takes in designing a lesson for students.
Check out a sample tool for assessing intention and design process in staff meetings.
Check out a sample tool for assessing intention and design process in staff meetings.