1. Social Studies can be SPECtacular
Anthony J Fitzpatrick
Vice President for Professional Development Services
The American Institute for History Education

2. Looking for SPECs in your classroom:
State standards, textbook objectives, and writing outlines are almost always written in a form of SPEC or other helpful anagrams.
So what is it?

3. SPEC Social Political Economic Cultural
Having to do with people in groups, their living together, includes issues such as gender, economic status, and ethnicity.
Political
Having to do with gaining, seeking, and organizing power, events related to the function of government: making laws, enforcing laws, and interpreting laws.
Economic
Having to do with how people meet their basic material needs; the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services; includes such issues as domestic and international trade, monetary policies, and taxation.
Cultural
Having to do with the technology, arts, and institutions of a given group of people at a given time. It is a tangible representation of interactions.

4. You don’t have to capitalize the C
Often the most confusing theme is Culture as students may confuse it with Social.
It’s quite acceptable to use SPE first until they get the SPEcial nuance that separates social and cultural.

5. Disclaimer 2 Are you limited to SPEC? ABSOLUTELY NOT!
There are other themes appropriate to bring into your classroom (Geography, Religion as example)
SPEC is just a wonderful starting point, and very versatile.
There are ways to introduce the other themes while keeping SPEC as the foundation.

6. Grade Levels
Students of ALL ages and grade levels can begin to investigate SPEC in thoughtful and meaningful ways.
The key is to engage the standards in different ways, scaffold the skill and then spiral it so keeps unlock deeper meaning.

7. We need a formula!
Other subject areas have formulas to help students “show their work” and have a path to figure our problems.
History and Social Studies can be considered in the same way . . .

8. Let’s try it out: Generate ideas and find the SPECs
1. Name a figure or event central to the content:
Abraham Lincoln.
2. Call out anything you know about this topic.

9. Now:
Let’s take the list and use SPEC to categorize and organize our answers.

10. The result:
Absent of an initial clear vision of Abraham Lincoln – armed with SPEC – students will be able to approach content with a plan in order to use what they know to formulate a response.

11. Get out your SPECtacles.
Let’s examine some primary source documents for some SPECifics.

12. Let’s move it past just the generation of ideas . . .
Graphic Organizers.
Scavenger Hunts.
Extension into an interactive notebook.
Make generalizations that will lead to . . .
THE WRITING PROCESS!

13. TOPIC
S P E C
Information

14. The Table Top:

15. SPECulate
In need of a conclusion that doesn’t “tell me what you told me” – have the students take a calculated risk!

16. What is the goal?
Have students providing a broad SPECtrum of thesis statements and conclusions that show their content mastery and their historical thinking capabilities.

17. Thank You
Questions, comments, modifications?