Teacher's Curriculum Institute

Start the year off right by getting your students interested and engaged in the study of history!
Unfortunately many students come to you trained to believe history is nothing more than a laundry list of facts, names, and dates to be memorized…
But this quick activity helps students understand and appreciate the challenges historians face as they [...]

I’m fired up about the Interactive Student Notebook!
Last week, I had the pleasure of conducting an ISN training with an intelligent and enthusiastic group of teachers in East Texas. It was so energizing to hear their success stories! And today, I worked with a group of teachers in New Mexico who hadn’t heard of the [...]

It’s always exciting to observe good teachers. It’s even more exciting to observe a teacher using a unique teaching strategy to introduce an important concept!
Michelle Bouchillon in Conroe ISD generously invited me into her classroom to video a few minutes of her Pre-AP World Geography class. Michelle understands the importance of vertical alignment among Pre-AP [...]

Whether you’re on the coast, in the mountains, or on the plains; all of us at TCI want to wish you the very best this holiday season.
We are blessed to work with so many amazing teachers and administrators who bring social studies alive in classrooms around the nation. May you have a peaceful and rejuvenating break!

Calling all world cultures teachers! TCI is developing World Cultures Alive! a tech-only program for middle school and we need your help.
The old way we did things was to have a few teachers pilot lessons for us. All of the amazing technology at our disposal, however, allows us to gather feedback from teachers nationwide before [...]

I’m extremely excited to announce that TCI has begun to create online trainings for our six core teaching strategies to bring social studies alive!
One of my favorite strategies is Visual Discovery. Students view, touch, interpret, and bring to life compelling images, turning what is usually a passive, teacher-centered activity–lecturing–into a dynamic, participative experience.
This 10-minute Visual Discovery training [...]

Ever wonder why group work doesn’t always work? Or why students are reticent to share ideas during class discussion?
 
Often we expect students to magically have the interpersonal skills necessary for higher-level cooperative learning activities. But part of our job is to teach, model, and reinforce these skills so that students with various learning styles can be successful. [...]

 
September Update: Option 1 is the Winner! It was a very close race so thank you all for voting. We’ll be coming back to you soon asking for all different kinds of feedback. So get your thinking caps ready!
TCI is creating a brand new online program called World Cultures Alive!. If you teach about cultures around [...]

I’ll be the first to admit I hate icebreakers when I’m half asleep during an early morning summer staff development session. But I’ll also admit they usually wake me up and get me to interact with other teachers even though I’m not quite feeling up to snuff. So when I started using icebreakers and team [...]

I’m loving this website lately!  www.classtools.net
You can quickly create fun, simple review games for vocabulary and to test basic content in a unit. Select the template “Game Generator,” enter your vocab or content questions, and then the website creates a game for you (using Flash).  Save the URL or embed the game into your blog, wiki, or class website [...]