PDTCA 2020

For many years, Iraq has been a vital piece of the puzzle that is the Middle East due, in part, to nationalistic fervour. Come explore the tense situation that exists in Iraq between the various factions, as well as the role the international community has historically played (and should play) in order to achieve stability. Connections will be made with with grade eleven and twelve Social Studies curricula, and participants will be able to ask questions, and have access to ready-to-use materials in the classroom on Monday morning.

Calgary, Alberta is the hotbed of recruitment for extremist groups such as ISIS. Delve into the appeal of such groups, what ideology these groups follow, and how such groups completely reject liberal principles. Through his photojournalist adventures, Gavin has had numerous encounters with ISIS, as well as the groups that are currently fighting against them. The session also looks at the international community’s response to ISIS thus far, and what nations of the world need to do to stem the violence surrounding such groups. Connections will be made with grade eleven and twelve Social Studies curricula, and participants will be able to ask questions, and have access to ready-to-use materials in the classroom on Monday morning.

Discussing writing with students can be a dull and often frustrating topic. Many students struggle with it, yet writing skills are essential to student achievement. This session will help you to remove the stigma to 'teaching writing'. The session will provide you with easy to use rubrics, classroom activities and student self- assessment strategies that will make your students more confident and successful in their writing. It will also assist you in using assessments summatively and formatively and help you streamline your marking process.

In this session we will look at how you can incorporate government open data and data from other sources into your social studies class. You will be introduced to Callysto, a free online platform that is capable of engaging data visualizations, big data processing, coding, and text formatting. We'll use curriculum-aligned resources, and help you create or edit modules of your own if you are interested.

Want to bring history to life in your classroom? Want your students to experience history? Want your students to think critically and build skills? This session will walk you through simulations and other interactive and engaging activities for your students! Activities include a Black Death Simulation, engaging resources (videos, graphic novels, etc), and primary source documents to encourage critical thinking and analysis skills. Your students will be actively engaged in their learning and WANT to know more! They will have opportunities to put themselves into history and become the characters that before they merely read about! Lots of humanities cross curricular opportunities! You will walk away with the complete simulation packages, activities, projects and resources.

Often students are exposed to issues that seem impossible to resolve. Hope is fostered when students understand that they have the power to influence issues important to them. Strong democracies require citizens who are active, engaged and work in solidarity to address injustices and to stand up for the principles of democracy. This workshop features the Aspen Foundation for Labour Education’s new teaching unit titled Citizens in Action: More Than Just Voters. It challenges students to consider active engagement that goes beyond just voting periodically. Various lessons encourage students to examine current issues and then find ways to address ones that matter to them. The unit, while aimed primarily at grade six, has applications for social studies outcomes from grades 4 to 12. Attendees will receive the resource.

Want to bring history to life in your classroom? Want your students to experience history? This session will walk you through a series of simulations that you can run to explore the fur trade and the colony of New France. Your students will be actively engaged in their learning and WANT to know more! They will have opportunities to put themselves into history and become the characters that before they merely read about! Lots of humanities cross curricular opportunities! You will walk away with the complete simulation packages, tasks and assessment for multiple simulations that connect together to teach various stages of the fur trade as well groups that played a significant role in its development.

This social studies-based session provides lessons and projects to teach industrialization, collectivism and globalization. It focuses on historical narratives, songs and experiences of various groups of immigrant women who worked at the Great Western Garment (GWG) factory. The teaching resource GWG: Piece by Piece: A Resource for Alberta Teachers Grades 9, 10 and 12 will be provided free to participants.

• Pre-Registration is required.
Research shows that “...names provide a powerful image of a person and influence people’s reactions to them.” (The Guardian, 2007) For teachers, the importance of learning students names on the first day of school is emphasized when promoting teacher-student relationships. What happens when the first time a teacher and her students meet there is no exchange of names, no about me speeches, and no question and answer dialogue? Instead, students are met by a pleasant smile, a story, and are asked not to share their names for the next few days. This presentation will focus on the presenters’ experiences and pedagogical approach to tackling social studies curricula while inquiring into the tradition of name giving. Questions that emerged during the inquiry process and the culminating project of creating a paper star quilt will be deconstructed to show how embracing the topic of names fostered a sense of community that allowed students and teachers to understand identity as fluid and complex; a collection of living experiences that requires autobiographical investigation.

Using a variety of activities, attendees will explore their own emerging wonderments, build community, create a star quilt, and inquire into their own names. Workshop participants will be invited to engage in active, hands-on learning and will be given resources to integrate the star quilt and name traditions into their teaching practice.

Do your students find learning about economics boring? Do they complain about having to learn it? Come to this session to learn some engaging and interactive activities to help them understand economic concepts. You will learn different games or interactive activities to help them understand the concepts from both a theoretical as well as practical standpoint. Other activities to engage your students are primary source analysis, critical thinking activities as well as engaging videos to support learning. You will walk away with full lesson plans, activity instructions and resources that you can take directly to your classroom.