Common Core Professional Development Packages
CICERO Systems' Professional Development division offers workshops, seminars, colloquia, institutes, and discussions in various models and delivery systems
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Click the images below to learn more about Common Core challenges, benefits of implementation and using Common Core Standards to bridge the gap between Language Arts and Social Studies teachers.
Results That Matter!
Independent evaluators, following requirements of Federally funded grant programs, provide conclusive evidence that our Professional Development programs deliver results!
Professional Development
Increase in teacher content knowledge compared to comparison groups of like teachers.
Increased Student Achievement
Increase in test score percentages for students of teachers who participated in Professional Development versus a comparison group*
Half Day
Custom Packages From:
$3,500
- All Inclusive!
- Common Core Aligned
- Skills-based Cross Curricula
- 1 or 2 Topics/Strategies
Multi Day
Custom Packages From:
$4,000
- Includes 1/2 day plus...
- All Materials included
- 1 or 2 Additional Topics
- Optional Work Session
View our extensive list of Common Core Professional Development Topics
Hover over the topics below to learn about each session. Our Common Core Professional Development is customized based on the topics you want most!
Close Reading of Informational Text
A.R.T.I.S.T. is a method of primary source analysis that takes into account the Author, Reason, To Whom, Immediate Impact, Subsequent Impact, and Time Period. It allows students to create a framework that will assist them in delving deep into a document’s meaning and place within the historical narrative. This foundational tool for analyzing primary source documents combats presentism and allows students to explore historical circumstance. (PPT Available, Book)
Questioning improves comprehension by fostering interaction with the text, creating a motivation to read, clarifying information in the text and supporting inferring beyond the literal meaning. Effective readers of informational text ask questions before, during and after they read, thereby assuming responsibility for their learning. (PPT Available)
Academic Vocabulary is a critical component of concept understanding. When students are unfamiliar with key content-specific terms, they lack the ability to effectively read text. (PPT Available)
A systematic process that helps students break down and analyze informational sources, classify the information and use their findings to help create and defend a thesis topic. (PPT Available, Book)
Identify a particular figure’s views by sifting through various primary sources attributed to that figure or historical concept. (PPT Available)
Truth is a complex concept. Effective readers of fiction understand the three types of truth: literal truth, artistic truth and historical trueness. This understanding supports students in becoming critical readers. (PPT Available)
Informational and narrative text differ in purpose, language and organizational pattern. In this activity, participants will learn the key differences between narrative and informational text and explore the seven (7) organizational patterns of informational text. (PPT Available)
Visual literacy is the ability to analyze and interpret information presented in the form of an image. It is based on the idea that images (paintings, photographs, political cartoons) can be “read” in the same way that informational text is read. (PPT Available)
Effective readers of informational text discern which information to focus on and which information to retain. Note-taking provides a structure for recording and re-organizing information for retention and recall. (PPT Available)
Incorporate newspapers in a new and engaging way by allowing the pages to reinforce the strategies you’re already using! (PPT Available)
R.E.A.D. & S.E.E.D. is a process by which history and social studies teachers create meaningful assignments that challenge students and produce a finished product. Teachers use the process to plan activities while noting the inherent difficulties of various sources and devising ways to get students through those hurdles. It also employs the use of opposing viewpoints where appropriate. (PPT Available)
A Teacher’s Lesson Preparation Process for Teaching a Primary Sources Activity First: Read the entire document, and become very familiar with it Second: Evaluate its intent — Why was it written? What is its purpose? Third: Assess its effects on future events, issues or behaviors Fourth: Fingerprint: See what fingerprints are on the document. What antecedent documents, issues, or events contributed effects through your curriculum? (PPT Available)
These activities allow students to critically analyze a primary source and determine its overall impact in a fun way. Students will write, cite and create thesis statements based on these primary sources. (PPT Available, Book)
Most familiar and comfortable with narrative, students find informational text challenging and difficult to read and comprehend. To engage with, and make meaning of, historical documents and texts, students need to gain skills like using prior knowledge, understanding structure, discerning key ideas and learning how to understand visuals as sources of information.
Prior knowledge is the foundation for the effective integration of new content and concepts. When students lack prior knowledge and are introduced to new content material, they struggle to place that material in a broader context. Prior knowledge also supports students in making connections to the content and in asking effective questions. (PPT Available)
Contextualizing Informational Text
An extension of the ARTIST process that helps students understand the historical context of primary sources as well as cross the boundary between what is known and what is unknown. Students begin to construct a deeper and personal understanding of the past. (PPT Available)
Make history come alive by including the physical world and the hidden historical markers that link our local environment to big historical events and narratives. (PPT Available)
S.P.E.E.C.H. takes themes and assesses their impact on history and the historical narrative. It works seamlessly with the advanced stages of the writing process and allows students to consider the impact of their research and its part in the greater historical canon. Allows students to critically analyze primary sources and concepts and link them to their impact on history. S.P.E.E.C.H. = Social, Political, Economic, Environmental, Cultural and Historical (PPT Available, Book)
Sow, Sew, So’ing history is a teaching strategy that inspires students to become active readers, research a historiographical thesis, thread supporting subsequent documents and events to validate the thesis. It is a hands-on strategy that allows students to hold subsequent events up to an idea and see where the similarities and differences exist, as well as their change over time. (PPT Available, Book)
True to Their Word is a classroom method that utilizes the inaugural addresses and State of the Union addresses to give students a framework for some of the larger events in American history. Students will examine the speeches and link them to key events; then they will research the extenuating circumstances that either validate or complicate the relationships between the words in the speech and the reality. (PPT Available, Book)
An exciting way to problematize primary sources that helps unlock state and Common Core standards by establishing the 5 W’s of Who, What, When, Where and Why. (PPT Available)
Solve for Y is a teaching method that employs the use of patterns, symbols, and memory to increase cultural literacy. This allows students to uncover subtle meaning and richness in political cartoons, audiovisual sources and newspaper articles while increasing their ability to include those components in their own work. (PPT Available)
E.Q.U.A.L. is a strategy used to better understand a primary source document by looking at it from an historical perspective. To properly understand a document written by Americans in the 1780s, for example, a teacher would use E.Q.U.A.L. as a guide to the time period, the mindset of the people involved and the antecedent documents that were influential. (PPT Available)
An extension of the ARTIST process that helps students understand the historical context of primary sources as well as cross the boundary between what is known and what is unknown. Students begin to construct a deeper and personal understanding of the past. (PPT Available)
Students will learn to identify and analyze the impact of Geographic, Economic and Political forces in relation to historical events, issues, documents and personalities.
SPEC, which stands for Social, Political, Economic and Cultural, allows students to employ a formulaic approach to history. SPEC allows social studies students to work through abstract ideas of history and contribute to the organizational, thinking and writing processes. (PPT Available, Book)
Comparing Informational Texts
Effective readers of informational text understand that there are multiple ways to interpret information. An author’s perspective is influenced by purpose, intentions and goals, as well as by his/her assumptions, world views and beliefs. (PPT Available)
White Out! is a teaching strategy that allows students to use context clues in textual and visual sources to discover historical content and concepts, as well as their change over time. The strategy employs excerpts from speeches and political cartoons and links them with historical figures to give the students various events and times to consider when employing critical thinking skills. (PPT Available, Book)
Missing Links is a teaching method that traces origins of our founding principles by linking them to their historical antecedents. Students identify themes and concepts and trace their intellectual lineage throughout time. It can also be used to look forward at the influence the same concepts have had on our development as a nation.
Just Janus is a teaching strategy that allows technological turning points and times of great innovation to be presented in the classroom within the traditional historical narrative by examining economic benefits and costs, social impact and political connections. (PPT Available)
A systematic process that allows students to see how historical sources complement and refute each other by getting students inside vital historical sources, and help break them down and compare and contrast the important ideas and interpretations they contain. (PPT Available)
An extension of the ARTIST process that helps students understand the historical context of primary sources as well as cross the boundary between what is known and what is unknown. Students begin to construct a deeper and personal understanding of the past. (PPT Available)
Identify a particular figure’s views by sifting through various primary sources attributed to that figure or historical concept. (PPT Available)
This method of teaching history is a constructivist approach to education. Students will research a myriad of resources to produce presentations while also anticipating what their colleagues will create. Students will then present these projects to the class. (PPT Available)
Developing Historical Thinking
An extension of the ARTIST process that helps students understand the historical context of primary sources as well as cross the boundary between what is known and what is unknown. Students begin to construct a deeper and personal understanding of the past. (PPT Available)
The historical method is at the foundation of most state history standards as well as of the Common Core State Standards for literacy in social studies and history. Teachers are required to align their instructional practices to the skills identified as the foundation of historical thinking and reading.
A strategy that helps students see how causation and effect have a tremendous on the way that history has unfolded. (PPT Available)
An instructional technique designed to help students build a functional personal framework to acquire historical knowledge. The end result is development of historical understanding as opposed to factual compilation. This technique is based on essential questioning, content chucking and building conceptual understanding. (PPT Available)
A method that takes a contentious event or movement in history and poses it as a problem for students to solve. This method fosters an environment of student engagement and higher order critical thinking about the past including counterfactual thinking. (PPT Available)
Bracketing is a classroom activity that allows students to locate key historical events within a timeline by activating prior knowledge and employing research skills and standard deductive reasoning. (PPT Available)
An instructional strategy that uses two common analogies to help students understand the forces that have pushed and pulled America in different directions throughout the past. Teachers use things that are familiar to students to help them understand that which is unfamiliar. (PPT Available)
A strategy for teaching primary sources that has students read, systematically analyze and interpret a variety of sources as well as study them from the broadest analytical concepts to a sophisticated evaluation of the salient points. (PPT Available)
An instructional strategy that focuses on building conceptual understanding of the past rather than relying on fact-based knowledge as the end product. Students learn to build concepts through analysis and evaluation of facts and other pieces of historical information. (PPT Available)
Thinking historically means acquiring and practicing the skills and thought processes used by historians, including certain fundamental historical assumptions to develop a deeper and fuller sense of the historical process. (Document Available, Book)
Binary Paideia is a teaching method that allows students to logically compare two societies or factions of a society in order to better understand the motivations and other driving forces in their histories. (Documents Available)
Validate the strength of an argument or thesis by comparing the document to the various parts of the body.
An analytical tool broken down into nine principles for teaching the principles of military and political engagement. (Documents Available)
A logical way to study the elements of warfare through use of a COAT of arms and the anagram of the letters. (Partial PPT available)
The use of local history to reinforce macro-level American history topics offers hope to the classroom teacher. Local history enlivens national events and makes instruction realistic. It is crucial to connect the news to the local neighborhoods where you teach. Many of today’s scholars feel that history can be best studied from the ground up, making constant connections for students. (Documents Available)
Helps students see where an idea, policy or tradition originated and the effects that idea may have had over time.
Students delve deep into historical thinking while examining U.S. Supreme Court cases while unlocking new evidence and subsequent events to construct more sophisticated decisions.
This method is a two-part process based on mimicking the thinking and actions of historians while being anchored with an easily-understood analogy. (PPT Available)
Historical Investigations
Elementary, My Dear Watson! - This model for classroom allows you to construct lessons and activities that allow your students to uncover the pearls of the past. (PPT Available)
Utilize music in your classroom that is lively and content-rich at the same time. (PPT Available)
This method helps students show how various immigrant groups fit into the “8 Ates” model of immigration. The “8 Ates” model has been used in many middle and high school classrooms to help students appreciate why immigrants made the hard decision to leave their homelands and come to the United States. The “8 Ates” project is a takeoff of both Oscar Handlin’s “Uprooted” theory and John Bodnar’s “Transplanted” theory. It helps students investigate how immigrants were first alienated from their own society and it ends with an investigation of how American ethnics celebrate their past and the ordeals they faced along the way. (PPT Available)
This activity allows a Penny saved to be a Penny LEARNED. Unlock terrific historical figures, events and the study of economics by emptying your pockets. (PPT Available)
Making Tough Choices in History – Students will have to investigate those watershed turning points in history and make the tough choices leaders had to make.
Constitutional History & Cases – looking at American history through Constitutional changes and through cases that changed the interpretation of the Constitution.
Catch My Campaign is a classroom method that allows students to examine the campaign songs of the presidential candidates throughout American history. They match the song and the values it expresses with the party platform and the subsequent events for which the politician is remembered. (PPT Available)
Historical Examination through Observation – Students will make structured observations of historical issues, events and personalities as Aristotle had and then formulate cogent conclusions.
Perfect for the geography classroom or lesson, this activity promotes physical location as a catalyst for history.
VIRTUE promotes and reinforces literacy and literacy skills, along with good citizenship skills. This method examines historic figures as heroes to be modeled. Students will see the historic figures as mortal, human beings with human weaknesses, who were able to step beyond themselves and do heroic things. Each unit will include reading short biographies of figures that exemplify “Good Citizenship” characteristics: Veracity—- those honest and truthful Integrity—those who do the right thing when no one is looking. Rectitude—those who are models for moral uprightness or righteousness Trustworthiness— those who are loyal Understanding— those who exhibit empathy and compassion Enterprise— those undertaking task that are difficult and require boldness, energy, perseverance and tenacity. Students will read about men and women who exemplify these heroic good citizenship virtues and they will conduct research on historical figures that they believe exemplify these virtues and defend their arguments.
Utilize primary sources to determine how cultures and societies view themselves and others.
A review of learned content that incorporates the use of a physical laminated tree and leaves that encourage student questions and responses.
Writing in History
These activities allow students to critically analyze a primary source and determine its overall impact in a fun way. Students will write, cite and create thesis statements based on these primary sources. (PPT Available, Book)
R.E.A.D. & S.E.E.D. is a process by which history and social studies teachers create meaningful assignments that challenge students and produce a finished product. Teachers use the process to plan activities while noting the inherent difficulties of various sources and devising ways to get students through those hurdles. It also employs the use of opposing viewpoints where appropriate. (PPT Available)
The History Notebook is a note-taking process that allows students to have contact with the historical content multiple times while linking it to key themes and state standards while also developing a reflection that will later serve as the basis for an original thesis. (PPT Available, Book)
A strategy that helps students make reasonable observations of historical artifacts, paintings and photographs, through disciplined stream of consciousness writing.
A writing activity that allows students to write and build layers onto a cake.
A systematic guide to writing successfully and scaffolding the teaching of writing. (Partial PPT available)
Effective readers of informational text discern which information to focus on and which information to retain. Note-taking provides a structure for recording and re-organizing information for retention and recall. (PPT Available)
Slice of Life: A fun activity that allows students to practice making determinations based on brainstorming and categorization.
Cross Disciplinary
Teachers will look at the local Science, Language Arts, and Mathematics curricula and state standards as the starting point. They create lessons that infuse history content and skills into the other discipline’s curricula. These lessons will not necessarily meet the history or social studies curricula directly, but they will allow teachers in other disciplines to use lessons that place the content in those disciplines in their historic background. Students will then learn the stories and faces of Science, Literature, and Mathematics. History and social studies teachers will be able to use these lessons when appropriate.
Teachers examine the core state content standards in the disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. They employ the AIHE TESTOT process of creating lessons to meet and exceed the state standards and prepare assessments as part of the lesson. The teachers’ lessons infuse the requirements of the other disciplines, meeting those standards and fully meeting the history standards, looking to prepare the students for state or local assessments.