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High School History Department: Professional Development

August 25, 2020

On August 19 and 20, High School History teachers met in room 111 of Zheng Tao Building for the department professional development. This activity was led by Mr. Aaron Ingham, the deputy head of the High School History Department. Various topics were covered during this meeting which aimed to further improve teaching quality and get everyone ready for the new semester.

Day I

Firstly, the teachers discussed the 10 competency factors in order to improve comment writing. By reading the sentences carefully, the teachers solved problems related to replication and vagueness. Then, joint efforts were made to compile a list of the history teaching goals for SHSID students, including understanding of contents, relevancy, skepticism, etc. Next, the teachers had a discussion focusing on: “What skills we want our students to achieve by the end of the year?” Skills to organize information properly, compare and contrast, find cause and effect, understand continuity and synthesis are to be cultivated through presentation, group discussion, and other forms of thinking, interacting and writing. In the afternoon, teachers discussed the new syllabus in groups.

Day II

The teachers began the second day by discussing writing skills. Aaron handed out an essay skeleton as the foundation of the discussion. Other teachers then shared ideas about how to help students improve . A lot of activities were proposed and rich experience was shared. The modified skeleton is very useful in that it can be applied in a very generic way. In the afternoon, the focus of the meeting was on making a draft for the new semester project. Students will be required to write articles and make artifacts for museum exhibts. The teachers concluded the day by fine-tuning thenew syllabus. They added guiding questions for each unit. These guiding questions will help the students summarize, connect and reflect what they have learned.

All the attending teachers prepared themselves well for the new semester through this two-day professional development.

(Written by Shen Zhou Pictures by Yunuo Li, Shen Zhou)