TCI has released a social studies curriculum that helps teachers engage students when teaching with an interactive whiteboard or in a one-computer classroom. The lessons use a variety of activities that target different learning styles to ensure that all students grasp difficult concepts. In addition, the program provides teachers with ideas for differentiating lessons for specific student populations such as English language learners and advanced learners.
Instructional strategies include Visual Discovery, in which teachers use a whiteboard or other projector to share an image of a historical event or person with students. Students answer a series of questions that spiral in difficulty to help them analyze the image. Teachers might spend 20 minutes on an image, asking increasingly more complex questions. Then, students are assigned a person or object in the image and come to the screen to act out what the person might be thinking or doing. Other interactive learning activities include the American Revolution tug-of-war, the “dot game” that recreates Cold War hysteria and a search of a sunken ship to learn about European explorers.
