Sample LDC Module
LDC Social Studies Module
Teachers Sara Ballute (High School for Service & Learning) and Tim Lent (High School for Youth & Community Development) co-created an LDC writing module for a tenth grade global history class for a unit on the British Industrial Revolution. The three-week module tasked students with writing an argumentative essay on whether the benefits of the Industrial Revolution in England outweighed the costs to society.
The LDC framework helps teachers break down the writing process into a series of coordinated steps that culminate in the production of an ambitious written project. Teacher can choose from a bank of essay templates (narrative, explanatory or argumentative) that align with common-core skills in literacy. Teachers then identify the specific skills students need to produce the essay and design a series of mini-tasks that scaffold the instruction.
"The whole purpose is to get the students to be more rigorous, to get the students more college-ready," says Sara Ballute.
The video below offers a rich overview of the lesson and the mini-tasks, such as note-taking, bridging conversation, in-class debate, peer editing, that the students engaged in.
"LDC has been a great process," says Sara. "It's challenging and time-consuming, but the results are really amazing and fulfulling as a teacher."