The Shorewood Intermediate School Social Studies Department, consisting of teachers Kristina Stridde, Krystle Thomas, and Sarah Kopplin, attended and presented at the annual Wisconsin Council for the Social Studies (WCSS) Conference in Madison March 17-18.
The Wisconsin Council for Social Studies is the professional organization for Social Studies educators in Wisconsin that provides professional development, publications, and educational opportunities to educators in the state.
The SIS Social Studies Department presentation was called “Student Voice and Choice: Creating project-based learning experiences that build student ownership.” Their focus was to help teachers use backward design to plan project-based learning experiences as assessments, demonstrate how to use learning stations to differentiate and provide student choice during instruction and to model how to structure student conferencing to encourage metacognition and a growth mindset for students in the classroom.
They were able to share with all of the session attendees the different types of purposeful authentic learning experiences their students are experiencing in social studies classes at SIS. Their session received very positive feedback from districts across the state and attendees left with meaningful strategies to use in their classrooms to implement student voice and choice in project-based learning.
Sarah Kopplin was also recently elected to the WCSS Board of Directors for the next three years. Her role on the board will be to help plan and organize the WCSS Conference to provide professional development opportunities for social studies teachers in Wisconsin and to help work with the DPI and the Shorewood School District to roll out the newly adopted Wisconsin Standards for Social Studies.
To learn more about the WCSS Conference, visit: http://www.wcss-wi.org/