Earn professional development hours with the instructional design badges. Here’s how:
Brush Up On Your Skills
Every instructional design badge begins with a tutorial focused on designing curriculum to address specific disciplinary literacy skills. Tailored specifically for history educators, the tutorials use concrete examples to help teachers consider how instructional design choices can support student mastery of key historical thinking and literacy concepts.
Design Curriculum
We give educators the opportunity to create and revise their own classroom materials with expert guidance. Whether it’s designing a lesson from scratch, or revising a unit to suit the needs of all students, we’ve placed creating, revising, using, and reflecting on high quality, practical materials at the core of our professional learning process.
Earn a Badge
Online badges afford educators the ability to showcase their professional learning with detailed credentials. Each earned badge contains a description of specific skills mastered, a comprehensive list of the tasks accomplished with supporting evidence, and individualized commentary from our history educators. And don’t worry: PD hours are listed as well.
Lesson Builder badges offer opportunities to sharpen your instructional design skills at the lesson level, focusing on specific historical thinking and literacy skills. Earn badges by immersing yourself in a skill tutorial then create a lesson putting that skill into practice, with feedback from expert mentors.
Thinking Historically
Lesson Builder: Thinking Historically
Help your students learn to ask the kinds of questions historians ask. To earn the Lesson Builder: Thinking Historically badge, pass the Thinking Historically tutorial, then design a lesson using historical resources you select from websites identified by WBA. WBA History Educators will help you revise and strengthen the lesson, and you can earn extra credit for teaching it with your students and reflecting on how it went.
4 Hours
Building Context
Lesson Builder: Building Context
Design lessons that focus on an essential step for understanding history. To earn the Lesson Builder: Building Context badge, pass the Building Context tutorial, then design a lesson using historical resources you select from websites identified by WBA. WBA History Educators will help you revise and strengthen the lesson, and you can earn extra credit for teaching it with your students and reflecting on how it went.
4 Hours
Using Evidence
Lesson Builder: Using Evidence
Support students as they learn to identify and use relevant historical evidence. To earn the Lesson Builder: Using Evidence badge, pass the Using Evidence tutorial, then design a lesson using historical resources you select from websites identified by WBA. WBA History Educators will help you revise and strengthen the lesson, and you can earn extra credit for teaching it with your students and reflecting on how it went.
4 Hours
Reading & Writing for Arguments
Lesson Builder: Reading and Writing for Arguments
Focus on the critical skill of understanding how arguments are structured. To earn the Lesson Builder: Reading and Writing for Arguments badge, pass the Reading and Writing for Arguments tutorial, then design a lesson using historical resources you select from websites identified by WBA. WBA History Educators will help you revise and strengthen the lesson, and you can earn extra credit for teaching it with your students and reflecting on how it went.
4 Hours
Unit Builder badges connect professional learning directly to your classroom practice of designing, teaching, and modifying curriculum. Using models of instructional design that combine engaging historical content, historical thinking practices, and Common Core literacy skills, the badges progress from skill-building tutorials to creating and teaching your own unit, all with support and feedback from expert mentors.
Unit Builder: Apprentice Builder
Take some time to consider key areas of instructional design for history. To earn the Apprentice Builder badge, pass four tutorials designed to help you build the following student skills: Thinking Historically, Building Context, Using Evidence, and Reading and Writing for Arguments.
Earning this badge allows you to proceed to Journeyman Builder.
8 Hours
Unit Builder: Journeyman Builder
Use our model inquiry units to get a feel for how instructional design can support specific disciplinary literacy and Common Core skills. To earn the Journeyman Builder badge, select and study a Who Built America inquiry unit and undertake a process of planning, teaching, reflecting, and revising the unit with your students, all with support and coaching from WBA History Educators. Teaching model lessons, then reflecting on the resulting classroom experience and student work with expert mentors, gives you the guidance and practice necessary to design your own units that foster student knowledge, literacy, and disciplinary literacy skills.
Earning this badge allows you to proceed to Master Builder.
10 Hours
Unit Builder: Master Builder
Put what you’ve learned into practice. To earn the Master Builder badge, design your own inquiry unit, aligned to one of WBA’s four essential questions. Undertake the process of teaching, reflecting, and revising the unit with your students, all with the support and coaching of WBA History Educators. After teaching and learning from model lessons, it’s time to design your own units (with continued support from expert mentors) that foster student knowledge, literacy, and disciplinary literacy.
16 Hours
Community badges reflect and reward the work of teachers who actively engage in their own professional growth. Earn badges by participating in WBA’s discussion forums as you learn from peers, share resources, and talk through instructional problems with colleagues.
Community: WBA Member
Unlock online professional learning opportunities. To earn the Who Built America Member badge, complete the site registration and join the Who Built America History Education Community. By joining this professional learning community, you will have opportunities and expert coaching that are essential for developing new knowledge and skills.
Community: I Love Sharing
Recommend great resources to your colleagues. To earn the I Love Sharing badge, add three “sharing” posts in which you recommend websites, documentaries, books, documents, field trips, and other resources for history teaching. Sharing information about resources and learning opportunities strengthens the profession by helping all teachers enliven their classrooms with fresh content and approaches.
Community: I Love Community
Learn from peers, share knowledge and resources, and tackle instructional problems with colleagues. To earn the I Love Community badge, earn points for active participation in the Community by starting topics, replying to posts, and marking what’s useful. Active and sustained engagement with peers helps teachers build the essential skills of communication and collaboration.
Community: Constructive Critic
Add to the conversation in ways that others find useful. To earn the Constructive Critic badge, contribute 3 posts that are marked “useful” by your peers on topics begun by other Community members.
Giving meaningful feedback to other teachers in a supportive manner is a critical professional skill, and one that only improves with practice.
Become a Master History Teacher
Become a Master History Teacher by demonstrating:
- expertise in key disciplinary literacy skills––thinking historically, using evidence, building context, and reading and writing for arguments
- effective instructional design through content knowledge, reflection, analysis of student work, and revision
- active membership in a professional community where you share knowledge and resources