Social Studies and Humanities pose distinct challenges for struggling learners, including extensive discipline-specific vocabulary, difficult informational texts – including complex primary sources – and a need for background knowledge. However, authentic sources, important ideas, and compelling stories also offer tools for differentiation and a vital means to motivate students.
This fully-online graduate course supports content and instruction for teachers of History/Social Studies/Humanities and for Special Education teachers. Employing primary sources and analysis tools, it is grounded in innovative practice by historians, civic educators, and based on current research and classroom practices in Special Education:
*Gain and apply practical classroom strategies
*Integrate History of People with Disabilities in the study of citizenship, private and government responsibility to provide services, and struggles for empowerment.
*Create/adapt lessons: Universal Design for Learning and brain-based language learning.
The course will run 2.5 hours per week for six weeks. You may complete it at convenient times for you. There will be two scheduled 60-minute webinars (with the option to watch recordings). Each week will include a mix of readings, online activities, and video clips. You will write responses to prompts in a class forum, and reply to your classmates' posts. Over the six weeks, you will find and create a text set of primary sources and write a lesson plan that employs techniques of access for students with disabilities.
Special fee of $100 thanks to a Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Eastern Region mini-grant.