The PTI Seminars 2003
Group A Seminars
(Preference given to teachers of
specific grades or courses)
COMING OVER: THE "OLD" IMMIGRATION
Seminar
led by Joan Gundersen
The seminar will use primary sources to explore the patterns of life and identity of those who immigrated to the United States before 1880. The U.S. had a higher percentage of foreign born and black residents in 1790 than it did in 1900, or than it does today. We will explore questions such as: How did Germans and Irish become the two largest ethnic groups in Pennsylvania? How has the new research on the international slave trade changed our understanding of the African-American experience? Why did the U.S. have a larger population of Chinese background in 1880 than it did in 1950? Why did Americans both encourage immigrants and fear them? How did Americans react to these newcomers? What did immigrants face on their travels and in settlement? How much did these groups Americanize? Along the way we'll explore the development of parochial schools and the public school system, unique utopian settlements, and religious diversity.
Teachers of eighth grade history will have priority.
LOOKING AT EVERYDAY MATHEMATICS
Seminar Leader to be announced
This seminar is designed to respond to the need that teachers of elementary mathematics, the Everyday Mathematics program, have expressed for stronger content knowledge in geometry, data analysis and probability and more experience with problem solving. In addition, the seminar may touch on the history of mathematics and the use and popularity of different computational algorithms since alternate computational algorithms are part of the elementary program. Teachers who enroll in this seminar will analyze the treatment of a particular topic at their grade level or across grade levels rather than creating their own curriculum units.
Teachers of elementary school mathematics will have priority.
LEARNING SCIENCE BY DOING SCIENCE II - ELECTRONICS
Seminar led by Richard Holman, Carnegie Mellon UniversityThe plan of this seminar is to switch between experiments in electronics and lectures on some of the basics of the subject. Each teacher will have an electronics board with which to learn how to build basic circuits and analyze the physics of why the circuit behaves as it does. No prior knowledge of either physics or electronics will be assumed.
Teachers of middle and high school science will have priority.