1. Dana Austin Michelle Knox Jodi Mathe

2. We will understand how to incorporate powerful ideas into our multicultural curriculum.

3.  The big, powerful ideas that people tend to remember and that facilitate understanding and transfer of knowledge are called concepts and generalizations.  Powerful ideas help students organize and synthesize large amounts of information  Example: Most people can’t give all the battle names and dates from the American Revolution, but can you remember why the war was started and how it progressed?

4.  Facts: low-level, specific empirical statements  Concepts: words or phrases that enable people to categorize or classify a large class of observations and reduce the complexity of their world  Generalizations: tested or verified statements that contain two or more concepts and state how they are related – These are the BIG IDEAS!

5.  Key concepts and generalizations are taught and developed at an increasing degree of complexity and depth throughout the grades

6. Help Students:  Develop an understanding of how knowledge is constructed  Create awareness that knowledge is influenced by biases, experiences, and perceptions of historians, textbook writers, and other researchers.

7.  Construct their own versions of the past, present, and future.  Make thoughtful decisions  Reflect on their moral choices  Have courageous conversations  Ask intelligent questions

8. Values Education  Provides students an outlet to act on their moral decisions. Why?  Powerful concepts like discrimination and prejudice are shaped by ones values and/or morals.

10. Give students opportunities to develop “democratic values” by stimulating value discussion and decision making (p.72) 1. Define and recognize value problems 2. Describe value-relevant behavior 3. Name values exemplified by behavior 4. Determine conflicting values in behavior 5. Hypothesize about possible consequences of behavior

11. 6. Name alternative values 7. Hypothesize about those possible consequences 8. Choose value preference 9. State reasons, sources, consequences: justify, hypothesize, predict

12.  Make value choices you can defend in a democratic society  How we construct knowledge is just as important as the knowledge itself.  As stated by a world-known, social studies instructor, Mr. R., “Don’t always believe what you hear.”