Social Studies Workshops

Expanding students' knowledge through social studies builds the essential background and vocabulary that form the foundation of true literacy. Studies show that students with strong background knowledge achieve higher comprehension, recall information better, and acquire new insights faster. Our professional development equips teachers with proven strategies to seamlessly integrate reading and writing, empowering students as confident readers and critical thinkers. Elevate literacy through the transformative power of reading and writing in social studies with s3! 

  • Want to increase engagement in your classroom? Discover easily implemented strategies to support active learning, encourage critical thinking and empower students to take ownership of their learning. Participate in student-centered learning experiences and leave with a variety of techniques to better meet the needs of all students. Come have FUN and be ACTIVELY ENGAGED!!

  • Consider how to meet the needs of struggling and resistant readers. Equip teachers with powerful strategies to support reading comprehension and students with tools to tackle expository text. Experience pre-reading, during reading and post-reading strategies to engage learners. Yes, we all teach reading!

  • Vocabulary matters! Equip educators with a comprehensive approach to teaching, reviewing and applying the vocabulary critical for success on the standardized tests. Participants leave with a variety of ways to lessen the obstacles of problematic vocabulary. This aligned, comprehensive vocabulary piece could be just the powerful tool your educators need to equip their students to excel! Use these exceptional resources all year long!

  • Embrace lessons learned from remote learning to redefine and improve instruction. Examine the power and options found in a station rotation model to blend engaging strategies and effectively use technology in a face-2-face learning environment. Engage students with powerful strategies for collaboration, differentiation and meaningful learning!

  • Embrace lessons learned from remote learning to redefine and improve instruction. Examine the power and options found in a whole group rotation model to blend engaging strategies and effectively use technology in a face-2-face learning environment. Engage students with powerful strategies for collaboration, differentiation and meaningful learning!

  • Consider how to embrace lessons learned from remote instruction to redefine and improve what comes next for educators. Focus on blending engaging strategies and effective uses of technology in a face-2-face learning environment. Explore how to embrace, support and implement blending-learning models to expand opportunities to enhance instruction. Experience powerful strategies for student collaboration, academic conversations and quality station-rotation instruction embracing the best of both worlds.

  • Discover how to use notebooks as a powerful teaching and learning tool for students. Teach organizational skills and strategies for capturing and processing newly learned content in meaningful ways. Invite students to catalogue not only their papers, but also their ideas and thoughts as they create a personal “Book of Knowledge”.

  • Provide teachers practical ways to create a classroom culture where students are motivated by curiosity and make meaning of their learning. Address the critical importance of aligning instruction to the complexity of the standards. Create curiosity and questioning opportunities to boost thinking. If we want to students engaged in meaningful thinking, we must model, teach and practice ways to think “strategically” around our content. If they aren’t thinking, they aren’t learning.

  • Help each student discover the “power of potential” in the classroom. Experience strategies and gather tools to create and support a collaborative community. Equip teachers and empower learners to thrive in the classroom.

  • Do your students struggle with the vocabulary critical to content mastery? Experience powerful strategies to teach, reinforce and help students retain problematic vocabulary. Eliminate the assign, define and memorize approach to vocabulary as you experience a variety of tools and techniques to put Marzano’s theories to practical application for acquisition of vocabulary.

  • What must you and your students do to be successful on the STAAR 2.0? Examine the concepts and complexities of the new test and determine how it impacts teaching and testing in non-tested grades. Equip your students with powerful strategies to support the evidence-based thinking necessary for success. Gather tools to move your classroom beyond basic skills practice and memorization to meaningful learning with student-centered, active strategies.

  • Build capacity in your district by identifying powerful change-makers and then equipping them to be successful. Determine how your instructional coaches can effectively support educators with engaging tools and techniques to establish and implement objectives for growth and positive change for both your instructional coaches and teachers. Accelerate growth in your schools, improve retention and improve student achievement with a step-by-step approach to help teachers effectively help their students.

  • Let s3strategies partner with you to coach your educators. You identify the objectives and initiatives. We will provide a quality s3 team member(s) to build relationships, model, observe, provide quality feedback and support growth. Together we can do it!

  • Let s3strategies develop lessons and support materials to address your district’s identified areas of concern! Analyze your data, then bring your concerns to us. Let us put tools in your educators’ hands to deepen student comprehension and increase retention. This level of targeted support leads to increased student engagement and improved performance on high-stake tests. Let us be your personal curriculum writers!

  • Teach your students to think like a historian! Educators must identify the components of rigorous instruction for deep understanding and develop a culture of historical inquiry. Participants will experience effective strategies that support the instructional shifts necessary to create a learner-centered classroom, align vertically and spiral appropriately to build a strong foundation for every student K through 12. Sessions customized for grade-level and/or content specific audiences.

  • Consider how to meet the needs of your diverse students as you identify your teaching style and your students’ learning needs. Learn how to differentiate content, the classroom process and student products according to student intelligences, readiness and interest in a standards-driven classroom. Experience strategies that excite students and ignite their passion for learning

  • Learn instructional strategies that utilize questioning to expand student knowledge and encourage students to think creatively. Questions play an important role in every classroom. Student questions and teacher questions create an environment that supports inquiry. This highly interactive workshop equips teachers to create an active learning environment that encourages students to ask and answer questions.

  • So, your teachers utilize a variety of tools to assess student learning. But, do those assessments truly inform what teachers and students do next? If not, they’re not formative! Experience multiple ways to respond to data through processes to revisit, reflect, revise, review, reteach and reboot when determining how to use feedback to feed students forward in their learning!

  • Consider the role assessment plays in your classroom. Do your assessments accurately reflect student achievement? Do they help students improve? Do they impact what you, the instructor does? Learn powerful, easily implemented strategies to make assessment a friend to both teacher and student - a tool for learning, not just of learning

  • Improve language arts achievement with your social studies curriculum! Elementary teachers experience a variety of strategies that emphasize language arts standards in the social studies classroom. Special emphasis is placed on the use of visuals and primary source documents. ELA and SS? The perfect marriage of instruction to create a “two for one” learning experience!

  • Classroom culture is critical to student success. Know your students and how to best meet their needs to help them achieve their full potential. Learn a variety of ways to better know your learners to create an “I can!” culture that invites and encourages all to join the learning experience.

  • Embrace the importance of literacy skills to all content areas. Experience reading strategies to improve comprehension and retention of critical content. Discover a variety of writing techniques that allow students to deepen their learning experiences and demonstrate their mastery of content. The ability to communicate and question is critical in and beyond our classrooms. Literacy matters!

  • Help students navigate the history they are living. Consider how to address difficult topics and help students recognize bias. Begin to address social injustices by teaching beyond the standards. Help students expand their vision as they deepen their thinking. What missing pieces of history can you include to tell the stories of multiple cultures, celebrate diversity, and develop historical empathy? The change we desire to see begins with us.

  • Vocabulary support? Make it fun! Making it meaningful! Make it intentional! The single, largest obstacle to student success…vocabulary! Not just identified, often, complex academic vocabulary but also problematic Tier II vocabulary. Experience more fast-paced, easily implemented strategies to equip your educators to teach, review and support acquisition of critical vocabulary necessary for success! Join us to enrich those vocabulary tool kits.

  • Students must be taught to “read” images. Reconsider the power of effectively utilizing visuals in your instruction. Teach inference, main ideas, supporting details, bias, point of view and create excitement with strategies to teach critical content and concepts in social studies. Picture This! A classroom with students engaged with visuals, asking questions and tackling the difficult issues of history. What a picture!

  • Maximize student achievement through the use of learner-centered strategies designed not only to review but also diagnose gaps in knowledge and skills. Experience a variety of review strategies designed to reinforce recall but also to challenge students to make powerful connections and meaningful applications. Put new tools in your teacher tool kits for student success! These materials energize teachers to equip their students to improve their test scores. How we review matters!

  • Maximize student achievement through the use of learner-centered strategies designed not only to review but also diagnose gaps in knowledge and skills. Experience a variety of review strategies designed to reinforce recall but also to challenge students to make powerful connections and meaningful applications. Put new tools in your teacher tool kits for student success! These materials energize teachers to equip their students to improve their test scores. How we review matters!

  • Maximize student achievement through the use of learner-centered strategies designed not only to review but also diagnose gaps in knowledge. Experience a variety of strategies designed to reinforce recall but also to challenge students to make powerful connections and meaningful applications. How we review matters! Put new tools in your teachers’ tool kits for student success!

  • What must we do in our classrooms to prepare our high school students for AP success? What must students be able to do? Identify the necessary components for success and build a strong foundation to equip more students to step up to the AP challenge. Experience powerful strategies to engage students in active questioning, analysis, and the construction and communication of oral and written arguments. Maximize your instruction and student success as you eliminate duplication of efforts and omission of skills by scaffolding curriculum from one grade level to the next.

  • What must we do in our classrooms to prepare our advanced students for AP success? What must students be able to do? Identify the necessary components for success and build a strong foundation to equip more students to step up to the AP challenge. Experience powerful strategies to engage students in active questioning, analysis, and the construction and communication of oral and written arguments. Maximize your instruction and student success as you eliminate duplication of efforts and omission of skills by scaffolding curriculum from one grade level to the next.

  • Consider the power of Project Based Learning and the research behind the process. Create a classroom culture where students are motivated by curiosity and meaningful learning. Experience strategies to support critical thinking and empower students to take ownership of their learning. Come dive deep into Project Based Learning.

  • Prepare students for the new short constructed responses now required for STAAR Success. Explore and experience a variety of writing strategies that focus on analysis of stimuli and evidence-based thinking. Equip your educators to empower students with these engaging strategies. Come have FUN and be ACTIVELY ENGAGED!!

  • Maximize student achievement through the use of learner-centered strategies designed to not only review but also diagnose student knowledge gaps. Build student confidence and comfort with comprehensive review materials that engage students with critical content and practice the necessary skills for EOCEP success. Challenge students to understand the significance of identified individuals, events and concepts in US history. Activate higher-ordered thinking and require students to make application and connections. These techniques and materials are designed to energize and empower students to improve their scores on the U. S. History and Constitution end of course exam.

  • Maximize student achievement on the Georgia Milestone Assessments in US High School through the use of learner-centered strategies designed to not only review but also diagnose student knowledge gaps. Activate higher-ordered thinking and require students to make applications and connections. Challenge students to understand the significance of the events and identified individuals in the Georgia Standards of Excellence. Experience and receive intensive review materials designed to support student retention of the critical content and necessary skills to build student comfort and confidence. These materials energize teachers to equip their students to improve their test scores.

  • Maximize student achievement on the Georgia Milestone Assessments in 8th Grade Social Studies through the use of learner-centered strategies designed to not only review but also diagnose student knowledge gaps. Activate higher-ordered thinking and require students to make applications and connections. Challenge students to understand the significance of the events and identified individuals in the Georgia Standards of Excellence. Experience and receive comprehensive review materials designed to support student retention of the critical content and necessary skills to build student comfort and confidence. These materials energize teachers to equip their students to improve their test scores.

  • Maximize student achievement through the use of learner-centered strategies designed not only to review but also to diagnose gaps in knowledge and skills. Experience a variety of review strategies designed to reinforce recall but also to challenge students to make powerful connections and meaningful applications. Put new tools in your teacher tool kits for student success! These materials energize teachers to equip their students to improve their test scores. How we review matters!

  • Maximize student achievement on the 8th Grade STAAR exam through the use of learner-centered strategies designed to not only review but also diagnose student knowledge gaps. Activate higher-ordered thinking and require students to make applications and connections. Challenge students to understand the significance of the events and identified individuals in the TEKS. Experience and receive comprehensive review materials designed to support student retention of the critical content and necessary skills to build student comfort and confidence. These materials energize teachers to equip their students to improve their test scores. How we review matters!

  • Maximize student achievement on the USHS End of Course Exam through the use of learner-centered strategies designed to not only review but also diagnose student knowledge gaps. Activate higher-ordered thinking and require students to make applications and connections. Challenge students to understand the significance of the events and identified individuals in the TEKS. Experience and receive comprehensive review materials designed to support student retention of the critical content and necessary skills to build student comfort and confidence. These materials energize teachers to equip their students to improve their test scores. How we review matters!

  • Maximize student achievement on the Middle School Civics assessment through the use of learner-centered strategies designed to not only review but also diagnose student knowledge gaps. Activate higher-ordered thinking and require students to make applications and connections. Challenge students to understand the significance of the events and identified individuals in the standards. Experience and receive intensive review materials designed to support student retention of the critical content and necessary skills to build student comfort and confidence. These materials energize teachers to equip their students to improve their test scores. How we review matters!

  • Maximize student achievement through the use of learner-centered strategies designed to not only review but also diagnose student knowledge gaps. Build student confidence and comfort with comprehensive review materials that engage students with critical content and practice the necessary skills for EOC success. Challenge students to understand the significance of identified individuals and events in US history. Activate higher-ordered thinking and require students to make application and connections. These techniques and materials are designed to energize and empower students to improve their scores on the high school U.S. history exam.

  • Rigor is not what we teach – it’s how we teach! Experience strategies that challenge students to move beyond memorization to powerful application of knowledge. Spiral thinking and deepen comprehension with carefully crafted open-ended questions. Create opportunities for students to make deeper connections for transfer of knowledge. Challenge and engage students! Rigor is not more, it’s different!

  • Consider how instructional strategies for reading, writing, speaking and listening are critical for student success. Provide teachers with tools for teaching and supporting English Learners in any classroom. Educators will experience strategies to implement that are powerful for all learners but essential to success for English Learners.

  • STAAR and EOC…first and foremost – what’s new in STAAR 2.0? What is the most important “need to know” information and how does it impact teachers and students? What must we do in the classroom to equip students for success? It's all about THINKING! Experience learner-centered strategies to integrate skills and higher-order thinking around critical content. Let’s think on that!

  • Why “tell” your students when you can create opportunities for them to grapple with and discover the important elements of events? Use primary sources to engage learners, tap into their curiosity and challenge them to think as they “do social studies!” Learn a variety of ways to create opportunities for students to preview, ponder and then predict attitudes, events and ideas related to critical content. We remember what we do!

  • Don’t let student engagement be a choice in your classroom! Consider how to effectively manage time as you vary instruction to challenge students and support higher-ordered thinking every day. Experience a variety of reading, writing, notebook and assessment strategies to use when planning your instruction to maximize your and your students’ efforts

  • Write in your classroom – early and often to eliminate the “oh no” response to writing. Engage students with meaningful, authentic tasks to extend their thinking. Pick up that pen to work out thinking, deepen comprehension and demonstrate mastery. Empower students and elevate rigor with a variety of easily implemented writing strategies for the elementary classroom!

  • Examine easily implemented ideas to integrate content and writing! Write “a little a lot” to engage students in meaningful opportunities to make authentic writing a common practice. Empower students to analyze, synthesize and evaluate as they spiral from main ideas and supporting details, to the powerful and meaningful writing necessary to attack even a DBQ! Writing can be fun - for you and your students!