Featured Resource: The UC Irvine History Project

11/4/2020

Jiali Wang

The UC Irvine History Project (UCIHP) strives to help teachers integrate primary sources into classroom so that students can engage with texts like historians. Students will not learn by memorization; instead, they acquire historical thinking and strategies to think through and analyze texts. View the video below for an overview about what UCIHP's professional development is about and in what ways it supports history/social science teachers.

For full video click here.

UCIHP's Mission

"The UCIHP provides an institutional framework for collaboration between the UCI History Department and K-12 history-social science teachers in Orange County. The UCI History Project is dedicated to the mission of providing a space for history teachers at varying points in their career, from credential candidates to veteran teachers, to engage in high-quality professional development. Teacher participants will experience a collaborative, scholarly environment that supports the development of historical thinking, content knowledge, and pedagogical expertise.

The UCI History Project is one member of a broader program, the UCI Teacher Academy, that provides opportunities for teachers at all stages of their careers to collaborate, inspire, and lead. For more information on these other UCI programs, please visit the Center for Educational Partnerships (CFEP). In addition, the UCI History Project is a regional branch of the California History-Social Science Project (CHSSP), a statewide umbrella organization that promotes university-public school collaboration."

Learn more here!

Resources provided by UCIHP

The main goal of the teacher learning opportunities provided by UCIHP is to improve students' inquiry-based learning and historical thinking. Some opportunities include:

Content workshops
Curriculum

Content workshops that help teachers focus on a topic and organize lessons using strategies that facilitate students' inquiry-based learning.
EXAMPLE: Building Students’ Media Literacy for Civic Engagement Workshop

Workshops on assessments — provide support for both formative and summative assessment for analytical reading and writing); training in SBAC.

Lesson study training where teachers practice building lessons on a specific topic in a collaborative and research-based approach.

Curriculum Resources: for history/social science teachers in K-12. Resources are organized by grade level and strategies. The image below showcases the curriculum offered through UCIHP.

"The History Blueprint initiative is designed to provide educators research-based and standards-aligned resources to develop student critical thinking, literacy skills, and historical content knowledge." The image below showcases the unit of study offered by UCIHP.

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