1. Inquiry Design Model: Session 2 Tasks
This slide introduces the second component of the Inquiry Design Model—Tasks.
The Inquiry Design Model (IDM) features a variety of performance tasks that both provide opportunities for learning and provide teachers multiple opportunities to evaluate what students know and are able to do. Knowing that it is helpful to use assessments for instructional purposes as well as evaluation, the IDM features both formative and summative performance tasks.
This presentation is organized into two parts:
Part I: How do we know what students know? This section explores the foundations of assessment by examining a) what it is social studies teachers are trying to measure and b) the opportunities and limitations of assessing students social studies knowledge and skills.
Part II: How is assessment represented in the inquiries? This section explains the variety of performance tasks that are outlined within the inquiry. This includes summative performance tasks, formative performance tasks, and modular performance tasks (e.g., summative extensions and taking informed action opportunities).
Each section includes interactive tasks for participants. In Part I, participants view a student documentary featured in Staging the Question within the 7th Grade annotated inquiry, “Can words lead to war?”. Participants parse the video for the student’s content and conceptual knowledge, as well as the skills that are evident within the video. Participants consider the limitations of the medium and the tricky nature of assessment. That is, that evaluating what students know and are able to do is mediated by a range of skills including writing, reading, speaking and listening, and in the case of the video, technology. This exercise sets the stage for two exercises in Part II of this presentation in which participants consider the critical role of the IDM formative performance tasks in preparing students for the summative tasks.
NOTE: To modify this presentation to less than an hour, presenters could cut slides 2 through 8 and begin with Part II.

2. Part I: How do we know what kids know?
Part I: How do we know what students know? This section explores the foundations of assessment by examining a) what it is social studies teachers are trying to measure and b) the opportunities and limitations of assessing students social studies knowledge and skills.

3. What do we want to know about what kids know?
Content Knowledge
Conceptual Knowledge
Skills:
Disciplinary Skills
Inquiry Skills
Literacy Skills
Technology Skills
This slide is intended to provoke audience members’ thinking about the role of assessment in measuring the key elements of social studies knowledge, including students content knowledge (e.g., NY content specifications), conceptual knowledge (e.g., Conceptual Understandings), and skills (e.g., key practices, C3 Framework Inquiry Arc, and common core literacy skills).
Presenters could use the several conceptual dimensions represented in the NYS Social Studies Framework and within the 7th grade inquiry, “Can words lead to war?” featured in this professional development series. For example:
Key Idea 7.7 highlights reform movements: “Social, political, and economic inequalities sparked various reform movements and resistance efforts. Influenced by the Second Great Awakening, New York played a key role in major reform efforts.” One of the Conceptual Understandings (7.7b) associated with this Key Idea relates to the abolitionist movement: “Enslaved African Americans resisted slavery in various ways in the 19th century. The abolitionist movement also worked to raise awareness and generate resistance to the institution of slavery.” These two statements provide the conceptual underpinnings that students would need to grasp.
Students would also need to understand the content specifications, which according to the NYS K-12 Social Studies Framework include the following:
Students will examine ways in which enslaved Africans organized and resisted their conditions
Students will explore efforts of William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman to 
abolish slavery
Students will examine the impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the public perception of slavery
Students will investigate New York State and its role in the abolition movement, including the locations 
of Underground Railroad stations.
Further, the Inquiry Arc from the C3 Framework offers teachers an overall structure in planning their units of study and outline important skills including the four dimensions. As the red and blue arcs suggest, the content expressed is united under one or more Unifying Themes and is associated with the Common Core Literacy Skills and Social Studies Practices.
As social studies teachers, we are trying to measure all of these components making assessment a tricky but essential endeavor.

4. Your task
Evaluate the documentary: Speak Truth to Power winning video by Kailash Satyarthi, a middle school student
Parse it for:
Content Knowledge
Conceptual Knowledge
Skills
Using the last slide 3 as a starting point for what students should know and be able to do in social studies, participants view a student documentary featured in Staging the Question within the 7th Grade annotated inquiry, “Can words lead to war?”. This video is an winning entry for the Speak Truth to Power video competition.
Participants use the handout featured on Slide 5 to parse the video for the student’s content and conceptual knowledge, as well as the skills that are evident within the video. Participants should have three writing utensils (a red pen, a blue pen, and a pencil). As they view the video, they should note within the boxes in blue what is evident from the video (e.g., Under skills, teachers might note that the student utilizes digital technology). Using the pencil, the participant might note what is somewhat evident or present but unclear (e.g., ……..). Using the red pen and the margins, the participant might note what is clearly missing from the video (e.g., _).

5. How do we know what students know?
Content Knowledge
Conceptual Knowledge
Skills (Disciplinary, Inquiry, Literacy, Technology)
This slide is also a downloadable handout in the professional development materials. See slide 4 for a description of the task.

6. Task Debrief/Discussion:
What does this student know? What content, concepts, or skills are evident from the documentary?
What doesn’t she know? What content, concepts, or skills are not present?
Are digital documentaries/videos a valid form of assessment? What are the affordances and constraints of the medium as a form of assessment?
Using the evaluative comments of the participants, the presenter should lead a discussion of the opportunities and challenges in assessment. Participants should consider the limitations of the digital documentary medium and the slippery nature of assessment. That is, that much of what students know and are able to do is mediated by writing, reading, speaking and listening, and in the case of the video, technology.
The presenter may want to raise the issue of using technology specifically and that while very engaging for students, can make assessing what the they know challenging. For example, within a documentary, students are asked to convey content knowledge, use evidence in support of claims, do so in an aesthetically pleasing way utilizing images, narration, music, etc. The cognitive complexity of the task is challenging for anyone, particularly novices. On the other hand, students often engage more enthusiastically in the process, thereby making the assessment worth it. This discussion might provide the presenter with an opportunity to foreshadow the role and purposes of formative assessment and the ways in which formative work can shed light on students’ knowledge and skills thereby mitigating some of what is eclipsed in a multi-modal task like documentary making.

7. Assessment is limited by…..
Ability to communicate (visually, orally, in written form);
Age and experience with task;
Engagement in the task;
Context (hungry, tired, distracted, etc.);
The assessment itself (What does it intend to measure? What can it actually tell us? Is it valid?)
However, teachers still need to assess.
This slide represents a summary of the opportunities and challenges of assessment. Regardless of the medium, assessing students’ knowledge and skill levels is tricky business in that there are many variables that can impede a student’s performance. There are additional issues that could be included above. For example, the challenges in assessing an individual’s performance and effort within a group task presents teachers with additional complexity when evaluating a student’s performance.
Regardless of the complexity surrounding assessment, teachers are still asked to gauge a student’s performance over time and across multiple domains. IDM features performance tasks threaded throughout the inquiry which provide teachers multiple opportunities and modalities to evaluate what students know and are able to do. This evaluation could be informal or formal but each opportunity is constructed to provide students an opportunity to learn by doing and for teachers to have a steady loop of data to inform his/her instructional decision-making.

8. Part II: How is assessment represented in the inquiries?
Part II: How is assessment represented in the inquiries? This section explains the variety of performance tasks that are outlined within the inquiry. This includes summative performance tasks, formative performance tasks, and modular performance tasks (e.g., summative extensions and taking informed action opportunities).

9. Assessment in IDM Summative Performance Tasks
Formative Performance Tasks
Modular Performance Tasks
Summative Extensions/Adaptations
Taking Informed Action
IDM provides many opportunities for students to demonstrate knowledge and skill growth. These tasks are framed as performances since students are asked to demonstrate what they know in a variety of forms and are intentionally constructed to provide students an opportunity to learn by doing and for teachers to have a steady loop of data to inform his/her instructional decision-making. These types of tasks will be defined and operationalized in the following slides but a short description is provided below as a preview:
Summative Performance Tasks is tied to an inquiry’s compelling question and asks students to make an evidence-based argument in response to it;
Formative Performance Tasks reflect an inquiry’s supporting questions and offer students opportunities to build their content knowledge and their social studies skills. Formative tasks also offer teachers snapshots of their students’ progress so that they can modify their instructional plans if necessary.
Modular Performance Tasks are additional opportunities for students to extend their understanding and/or to express that understanding in creative ways. Teachers time is often limited for any one topic. However, teachers who have additional time to linger in one of the inquiries might engage students in the Summative Extensions or Taking Informed Action opportunities.

10. IDM follows C3 Inquiry Arc
Students answer in the form of a SUMMATIVE
ARGUMENT
If students are asked a COMPELLING QUESTION….
Following the backbone of the C3 Inquiry Arc, IDM begins with a compelling question (Dimension 1) that is consistently answered in the form of an argument (Dimension 4). In this way, the structure of the student summative product is convergent—that is, each of the 84 inquiries in the Toolkit results in the construction of a summative argument that answers the compelling question.
This is different than project based learning in which students explore a topic and express their understanding in divergent ways. While the Modular Performance Tasks within the 84 inquiries allow students to express these arguments creatively, the heart of each inquiry rests between two points—the question and the argument. What comes between (e.g., supporting questions, formative performance tasks, sources) is designed to prepare students to move constructively between the question and the summative argument.

11. The blueprint of the IDM inquiry indicates this convergence
The blueprint of the IDM inquiry indicates this convergence. For example, in the 7th Grade Uncle Tom’s Cabin Inquiry, the summative performance task begins with the compelling question followed by the phrase “Construct an argument…”. The verb construct was purposefully chosen to indicate that not all arguments must take the form of an essay. Depending on time or experience with the task, teachers may choose to have students do an outline of the argument and then express the argument more creatively as detailed in the Summative Extension described on slides 19 and 20. It is important to note that all of the 84 inquiries follow this argument structure.

12. What is an argument?
An argument is a collection of claims supported by relevant evidence, which can be considered an answer to the question investigated by the research. As arguments become more sophisticated, students might include counterclaims.
It is important to pause here and make sure that teachers understand the nature of arguments. In this slide, arguments are defined as a “collection of claims supported by relevant evidence, which can be considered an answer to the question investigated by the research.” Further, as students become more sophisticated in making arguments, they should begin to include counter claims that acknowledge the other side of the argument.
It may be good to pull from the Common Core ELA writing standards to make an explicit connection to the shared responsibility for literacy in social studies.

13. Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Can Words Lead to War?
Argument stems: NEED THESE from John
The 84 inquiries included in the toolkit include possible 3-5 argument stems within the annotation. In this slide, the argument stems for the 7th Grade Uncle Tom’s Cabin inquiry are listed.

14. Your task
Consider the elements of a coherent, evidenced based argument as outlined in the 7th Grade Uncle Tom’s Cabin Inquiry.
Can words lead to war? Construct an argument that discusses the impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin using specific claims and relevant evidence from historical sources while acknowledging competing views.
Take a minute and write down the key elements that you would use to evaluate the argument.
This is the second task within the presentation and serves as a bridge between the summative and the formative performance tasks. In this task, participants should take a moment and individually or in small groups consider the evaluation criteria that they would use to determine a students mastery of the summative argument. It may be easier if the presenter narrows the product to an argumentative essay, rather than an outline or poster. This exercise could also be framed in more specific grading terms. For example, the presenter could ask, “How would a student earn an A for their written argument?”.
If the participants are teachers, it is likely they will come to this exercise with a number of criteria that they use to evaluate students’ work (e.g., a clear this statement, supporting evidence, free of grammatical errors, correct factual knowledge). The presenter should encourage the participants to think about the content and conceptual knowledge as well as the skills that would need to be present in order for students to demonstrate competence.
It may also be helpful to share the Key Ideas, Conceptual Understandings, Content Specifications, Social Studies Practices from the NYS K-12 Social Studies Framework that are the foundation for this inquiry as a cue for the exercise:
Key Idea 7.7: Social, political, and economic inequalities sparked various reform movements and resistance efforts. Influenced by the Second Great Awakening, New York played a key role in major reform efforts.
Conceptual Understandings 7.7b: Enslaved African Americans resisted slavery in various ways in the 19th century. The abolitionist movement also worked to raise awareness and generate resistance to the institution of slavery. 
Content specifications, which according to the include the following:
Students will examine ways in which enslaved Africans organized and resisted their conditions
Students will examine the impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the public perception of slavery
Social Studies Practices: Gathering, Using, and Interpreting Evidence; Chronological Reasoning and Causation; Comparison and Contextualization
Common Core Literacy Skills & C3 Framework Inquiry Skills

15. Discussion:
What elements make a coherent argument about Uncle Tom’s Cabin?
How should we support students in making a coherent argument?
The presenter should take a few minutes to discuss the list of evaluation criteria with the participants. After spending some time discussing this criteria, it would be interesting to note if the list converges around a set of criteria or if participants bring different criteria and if they make any reference to the kinds of students they work with. The presenter should move the discussion towards the second question: How should we support students in making a coherent argument? As participants consider this question, it is likely they will raise the necessity of formative work—that is, students need practice writing arguments (outlining their essays, building claims with evidence) and that they would need to learn the content and conceptual knowledge that would allow them to speak with historical precision and persuasion. From here, the presenter can introduce IDM’s formative performative tasks and their rationale which begins on the next slide.

16. IDM follows C3 Inquiry Arc
Students answer in the form of a SUMMATIVE
ARGUMENT
If students are asked a COMPELLING question……
For any summative task, students need preparation. Dimension 2 and 3 of the C3 Framework help to provide some of the structure for the skills and conceptual knowledge that help to move students from question to argument. Using this structure and the NY Framework for Social Studies Standards, teachers can begin to structure the formative learning experiences that will allow students to demonstrate their knowledge of the content, concepts, and skills that are needed to produce a clear, coherent, and evidenced-based summative argument.
In the middle are the
FORMATIVE TASKS
(Content and Skills)

17. Formative Performance Tasks
In order to make a coherent and evidenced-based argument,
students need practice with argumentation skills;
students need a strong content/conceptual foundation;
This is where we get into formative work—there is no “gotcha” summative assessment.
These formative tasks are framed by the supporting questions.
*Note: These formative tasks often follow a skill progression of increasing complexity.
This slide underscores a point made in the previous slide and an important foundation of the IDM. That is, that students not only need experience with the content of an inquiry, but also the skills needed to make a strong argument. In this way, teachers avoid “gotcha” assessments—or assessments that catch students off guard or without proper preparation for success on the summative performance task. All formative tasks within the inquiry are designed not as activities, but exercises to move students towards success on the summative performance task. While these tasks do not include all of what a students might need to know, they do include the major ideas that provide a foundation for their argument.
The formative tasks are framed by the supporting questions within the inquiry—in this way, the formative tasks and the supporting questions have a similar relationship to the summative argument and the compelling question.
Additionally, the tasks themselves allow students to practice the skills of evidenced based claim making and often demonstrate a skill progression of increasing complexity from the first to the last formative performance task.

18. In this slide, teachers can see the formative performance tasks for the 7th Grade Uncle Tom’s Cabin Inquiry highlighted. Participants should note the relationship of the supporting question to the formative performance task by referencing Part 1 f the IDM sequence, Questions. The presenter could also foreshadow Part 3 or the IDM sequence, Sources, by noting that the featured sources were selected to support students in working through the formative performance tasks.

19. Your Task
Using the excerpted blueprint on the last slide, examine the formative performance tasks in the 7th grade Uncle Tom’s Cabin Inquiry in relationship to the summative task. In small groups, make a list of the ways that the the formative performance tasks help students make a coherent, evidenced based argument.
This is a good place to pause and have participants analyze the formative performance tasks and the way they have been intentionally constructed to lead to students to crafting better arguments on the inquiry question. The presenter should note that the formative tasks allow students to practice the skills of evidenced based claim making and often demonstrate a skill progression of increasing complexity from the first to the last formative performance task. For example, in the 7th Grade inquiry,
these formative performance tasks do several things:
Provide content and conceptual foundations needed for students to answer the compelling question, “can words lead to war?”;
Provide opportunities for students to practice claim making (Formative Task 3) and finding evidence to support key ideas or claims (Formative Tasks 2, 3 and 4);
Demonstrate an increasing complexity along the formative tasks—students start with summarizing a text Formative Task 1) , then writing a paragraph (Formative Task 2), then making a claim (Formative Task 3), and lastly participating in a structured discussion where they continue to refine their idea (Formative Task 4).
In these ways, the formative performance tasks are not activities designed to simply engage students (although affective engagement is important). Instead, they are primarily designed as exercises to support student growth and success when approaching the summative tasks.

20. Modular Performance Tasks
Summative Extensions
Taking Informed Action
From a solid understanding of the purpose and structure of the summative and formative performance task, the presenter can introduce the modular performance tasks included within the inquiries. These include additional opportunities for students to extend their understanding and/or to express that understanding in creative ways. Teachers time is often limited for any one topic. However, teachers who have additional time to linger in one of the inquiries might engage students in the Summative Extensions or Taking Informed Action opportunities.

21. Summative Extensions
Additional or alternative ways for students to express their arguments.
In keeping with C3 Framework:
D Present adaptations of arguments and explanations on topics of interest to others to reach audiences and venues outside the classroom using print and oral technologies (e.g., posters, essays, letters, debates, speeches, reports, and maps) and digital technologies (e.g., Internet, social media, and digital documentary).
Included in all annotated inquiries.
Summative Extensions are included in all of the annotated inquiries. These annotated inquiries include additional or alternative ways for students to express their arguments. This is in keeping with the C3 Framework which specifically states the need for students to a) present adaptations of their arguments and b) do so with a range of audiences and c) in a variety of venues outside the classroom.
Unlike the Summative Argument, these Summative Extensions are divergent in that the products vary from inquiry to inquiry. Some examples of Summative Extensions from the Toolkit are on the next slide.

22. Examples of Summative Extensions
In the these three examples, teachers can see three Summative Extensions:
In the 3rd grade inquiry on Children’s Rights, students can express their arguments through a class discussion using a “take a stand” protocol.
In the 8th grade inquiry on Japanese Internment, students can express their arguments by writing a legal brief related to the balance between freedom and security.
In the 10th grade inquiry on the French Revolution, students can express their arguments through a perspective taking exercise using social media.
The 14 annotated inquiries within the Toolkit include a Summative Extension which allows teachers to keep the summative tasks interesting and engaging. In cases where teachers do the extension, they may want to consider modifying the summative argument to an outline, rather than a fully developed essay. However, it is important that the argument stays in place to provide the intellectual foundation for the more creative extension.

23. Taking Informed Action
Ways for students to civically engage with the inquiry.
Sometimes action is embedded in summative performance task.
In keeping with C3 Framework,
Step 1: Understand the problem
Step 2: Assess the problem
Step 3: Take Action on the problem
The other type of Modular Performance Task includes opportunities for students to Take Informed Action. These experiences are intentionally designed so that students students can civically engage with the content of an inquiry. Taking Informed Action is included within all 84 inquiries in the Toolkit but are considered “modular” in that teachers may not have time to augment the inquiry due to time constraints. In some cases, Taking Informed Action is embedded into the formative and summative performance tasks to ease the time burden on teachers and to make civic opportunities more seamless with the inquiry. Some example of embedded action are included in the slides that follow.
Informed action can take numerous forms (e.g., discussions, debates, presentations) and can occur in a variety of contexts both inside and outside the classroom. Key to any action, however, is the idea that it is informed. The Inquiry Design Model, therefore, stages the taking informed action activity such that students build their knowledge and understanding of an issue before engaging in any social action. In the understand stage, students demonstrate that they can now think about the issues behind the inquiry in a new setting or context. The assess stage asks students to consider alternative perspectives, scenarios, or options as they begin to define a possible set of actions. And the act stage is where students decide if and how they will put into effect the results of their planning.

24. Taking Informed Action
This slide underscores the three steps of Taking Informed Action as outlined in the C3 Framework. Presenters might want to highlight the C3 Framework indicators for middle school and the language that helps to frame the action process:
Step 1: D Use disciplinary and interdisciplinary lenses to understand the characteristics and causes of local, regional, and global problems; instances of such problems in multiple contexts; and challenges and opportunities faced by those trying to address these problems over time and place.
Step 2: D Assess options for individual and collective action to address local, regional, and global problems by engaging in self-reflection, strategy identification, and complex causal reasoning.
Step 3: D Apply a range of deliberative and democratic strategies and procedures to make decisions and take action in their classrooms, schools, and out-of-school civic contexts.

25. IDM Taking Informed Action Complexity of the Effort
Community
Organizing a boycott
Organizing a fundraising event for an issue/cause
Circulating a
petition
School
School Newspaper Special Issue
Organizing a school assembly
Locus of Activity
Uploading a PSA to a website
One of the most inspiring but overwhelming parts of the C3 Framework is Taking Informed Action. A teacher’s worst enemies are the clock and the calendar for, together, they conspire to limit time for teaching and learning. Additionally, teachers often don’t know what action looks like and immediately feel like failures if students aren’t marching on City Hall. The good news is that there are many ways to take action and teachers can help students take action right from the classroom.
This graphic is to help teachers understand that there are a myriad of ways to take action within and outside of the classroom. Presenters might want to begin with the following explanations:
The X axis of the graphic depict increasing complexity of Taking Informed Action moving from understanding, to assessing, to acting.
The Y axis represents the locus of activity—does the effort take place in the classroom, school, or community.
In most cases, understanding and assessing the problem takes place in the classroom.
It is only when students move to action does the location or locus of activity change. For example, students who write a letter to the newspaper editor could do so from the classroom while students organizing a school assembly on a social issue would need to necessarily move outside of the classroom walls and would likely have to coordinate with the school administration. In cases where students organize a fundraiser or boycott, they would probably need to move outside of the school grounds into the community.
It is important to note that wherever action takes place, students are learning the foundations of becoming an active and engaged citizen and learning that citizenship can look different.
Classroom
Identifying the problem(s) and possible civic action(s)
Bringing stakeholders together for a classroom forum.
Research Issue relevant to Inquiry
Write a letter to an editor
Understand Problem
Assess Options
Apply Action
Complexity of the Effort

26. Example of Taking Informed Action:
This slide includes an excerpted blueprint for the 7th Grade Uncle Tom’s Cabin Inquiry. The presenter should note the way in which Taking Informed Action is crafted into the three steps and how it is a modular performance task coming at the end of the inquiry.
At the end of the inquiry, students can extend their understanding of the compelling question, “can words lead to war?” by:
Understanding: Identify and describe a modern issue that needs reform (e.g. child labor, trafficking, or poverty).
Assessing: Create a list of possible actions that involve words. This may include letters, editorials, social media, videos, and protests.
Acting: Choose one of the options and implement it as an individual, small group, or class project.
Teachers should understand that these are just suggestions and that they should and could modify these experiences based on student interests.

27. Example of embedded Action:
This slide includes an excerpted blueprint for the 12th Grade Public Policy inquiry on the Affordable Care Act. The presenter should note the way in which Taking Informed Action is crafted into the three steps but how it is embedded into the inquiry. In this inquiry, Understanding the Problem is embedded into Formative Performance Tasks 1, 2, & 3. Assessing the Problem is embedded into into Formative Performance Task 4. And Acting on the Problem serves as the Summative Extension of the argument. In this way, students have an opportunity to practice Taking Informed Action within an inquiry, not at the end of the inquiry.

28. Summary of Session 2: Tasks
Evaluating the content and conceptual knowledge as well as skills that make up the social studies is tricky business.
IDM features a variety of performance tasks that are outlined within the inquiry.
These tasks include a:
consistent summative argument across all inquiries;
series of formative performance tasks that prepare students for the summative tasks;
additional modular performance tasks that allow students to express their arguments creatively and to engage civically.
This slide provide as a summary of the session.

29. IDM Conceptual Framework: Tasks
The purpose of assessment is for learning (#5)
Students are active learners within an inquiry (#4).
Content knowledge and disciplinary skills are integrated within an investigation (#3).
Students need opportunities to practice engaged citizenship (#7)
Social studies shares in the responsibility for literacy (#8).
This final slide is a summary of the five Conceptual Framework assumptions that undergird this section of the IDM: Tasks. The presenter might want to review these assumptions as a way of summarizing this presentation:
The purpose of assessment is for learning (#5): The performance tasks threaded throughout the inquiry provide teachers multiple opportunities to evaluate what students know and are able to do. This evaluation could be informal or formal but each opportunity is constructed to provide students an opportunity to learn by doing and for teachers to have a steady loop of data to inform his/her instructional decision-making.
Students are active learners within an inquiry (#4). IDM posits that students of all abilities can engage in the questions and tasks that comprise the inquiries. As a result, the IDM utilizes a variety of evaluation approaches for the formative tasks—debates, T-charts, structured discussions, documentaries. The summative performance task may also take a number of forms—a five-paragraph essay, a chart, or a debate. And the modular performance tasks provide additional opportunities to creatively express and civically engage within the inquiry.
Content knowledge and disciplinary skills are integrated within an investigation (#3). Long debated in social studies circles, the question of whether to focus on content or skills has been firmly answered in both the C3 and New York Social Studies Frameworks: Good teaching focuses on both. In the IDM, content knowledge, conceptual knowledge and skills are explicitly woven into the formative, summative and modular tasks.
Students need opportunities to practice engaged citizenship (#7): Informed action can take numerous forms (e.g., discussions, debates, presentations) and can occur in a variety of contexts both inside and outside the classroom. Key to any action, however, is the idea that it is informed. The taking informed action activities are offered as additional opportunities not only because teachers and students may want to design their own versions, but because it is unlikely that there will be sufficient time to enact all of these activities for each inquiry.
Social studies shares in the responsibility for literacy (#8). The Common Core-English Language Arts standards offer social studies teachers an opportunity to integrate literacy goals and practices into the social studies curriculum. IDM weaves these skills throughout the inquiry with a focus on writing arguments.

30. Looking ahead: Sources
Looking ahead, presenters might want to preview the next presentation for the IDM model in which participants will explore the role of sources in supporting the performance tasks and how student source work can be scaffolded and supported.