Investing in Teachers to Transform Schools

In partnership with the District of Columbia Public Schools system, Center for Inspired Teaching is building teacher capacity and supporting strategic application of the Common Core State Standards for content area literacy in the social studies at the middle school level. Below, a teacher participant describes a lesson taught through the Literacy Design Collaborative's module structure, and its importance in her classroom:

"The students were given a compelling problem to solve, and tasked with creating a product that served a purpose. A few of their letters were sent to an Egyptian Art Administrator, who sent me feedback on their arguments, then distributed their work amongst his colleagues in Cairo, in an effort to show that American students are advocating for the return of their precious artifacts. It blended social studies content with literacy skills. Students were focused on the evidence-finding and argument-building, which are really research and writing skills. But to be able to make sense of the documents, students had to have a basic understanding of Ancient Egyptian civilization. With this basic understanding, they were able to soak in the documents and gather new information about Ancient Egypt."