One of our favorite things to do when we have the opportunity to attend the National Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference is to visit some of the poster sessions that feature the excellent work being done in social studies by teachers, pre-service educators, graduate students, and methods professors, among others. One of the more interesting and useful poster sessions I visited featured Dean Vesperman and his student colleague Deanna Grelecki of Luther College.

This poster presentation addressed one of the more difficult and always in-need areas of social studies education: discussions. Using the Civil War as a case study, the session explored five different approaches to discussion. Examples are provided and considered below.

5-3-1

This approach dives deep into a collaborative and listening-oriented discussion. Note how it asks students to compare interpretations and relate it to the text. The engagement with the text here is important. This moves students towards a level of critical literacy that allows them to really use and reflect on the text in collaboration with their peers.

Philosophical Chairs

What is powerful here is that it requires students to be able to discuss and support BOTH sides of an issue. And it moves beyond that old and sometimes problematic ‘Devil’s Advocate’ approach.

Affinity Map

This approach engages students in the important skills of reflection, note taking, and categorizing, and it engages them with ideas that might not have occurred to them. Notice as well that students are engaging with the ideas through writing. What sort of follow up can be done after the use of the Affinity Map approach?

Asynchronous Voice

This is an interesting approach, and one that would likely engage your students incredibly well. You may wish to stick to Google Docs if you have concerns over social media with your kids, but you can certainly model the approach on a social media style? Ask the students to come up with relevant hashtags connected to the reading for example! Or limit them to Twitter’s 240 characters (which will also help them work on being able to be succinct in their points!) You will want to make sure you do go over with them how to engage with others in an online discussion.

Conver-stations

This approach reflects the popular ‘stations’ model, and is similiar in some ways to an extended gallery walk following their individual or paired reading. I would also encourage students to engage with answers that others have written as a final step, rotating back to their final station in the process.

You can find the original lesson plan and the discussions poster at the links below. We will update this post with a version of the lesson aligned with Florida benchmarks next week.

NCSS 2018 – Civil War lessons

Discussion poster

Today we take another look at an excellent and well-received session at the recent National Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference, held in Chicago last weekend.

Keeping Current With Civic Action 

Chris Spinale, FJCC Action Civics Coordinator, Discusses the Civic Action Project with a Group of Teachers

On Friday afternoon of the conference, FJCC’s Action Civics Coordinator, Chris Spinale and Curriculum Director, Val McVey presented with Gregorio Medina of the Constitutional Rights Foundation on the Civic Action Project for middle and high school students. This well attended session provided teachers with an overview of CRF’s free public policy problem solving curriculum. The Civic Action Project supports research-based practices in civic and government education. Teachers that integrate this project-based curriculum into their instruction enhance student civic knowledge, skills and dispositions by deliberately engaging them in aspects of the democratic process. If you are interested in how CAP can fit into your social studies classroom, contact Chris Spinale: Christopher.Spinale@ucf.edu. 

Chris Spinale of FJCC and Gregorio Medina of Constitutional Rights Foundation

Good afternoon, friends. The 2018 NCSS Conference is now in the books, and it was an excellent opportunity to learn, network, collaborate, plan, and grow for those passionate about social studies. Happily, civics was a significant focus of the conference (perhaps no surprise considering it was in Chicago, Illinois, which has seen a rebirth of advocacy for civic education!) Over the next couple of days, we will share some highlights of the conference that we had the opportunity to attend, or were attended by others to rave reviews.

The Girl Scouts and the C3 Framework: Journey Taking Action Projects

I had the great pleasure to attend a session that featured a wonderful group of folks. It was exciting to meet Sylvia Acevedo, CEO of the Girls Scouts, and to hear from Geraldine Stevens, the troop leader of Troop 41369 out of Des Plaines, Illinois. She spoke about how the journey projects her troop have engaged in reflected key aspects across all four dimensions of the C3 Framework. It was an exciting and interesting session, and hearing both the troop leader and her incredibly accomplished Girl Scout daughter and troop member discuss ways in which they had engaged in action civics and used the approach seen in the C3 Framework to frame and guide their projects was exciting!

We know that we have issues in this country with social studies instruction, and it is especially challenging at the elementary level. Whether we are talking about the impact of assessment on instruction, the weakness of the content-based resources, or simply the loss of time devoted to and disappearance of social studies from the elementary curriculum, it has an impact that is simply not debatable. When social studies is marginalized, it robs students of the opportunity to develop the knowledge, skills, and dispositions they need to be effective and engaged citizens. We simply cannot expect success and engagement when many kids don’t start learning about civic life and engagement, and everything that goes into it, until well into middle school or even high school. Social studies matters. We have an obligation to ensure that it is being taught with fidelity and with passion. As Dr. Tina Heafner argued in her keynote at the Florida Council for the Social Studies’ recent conference, effective and quality social studies instruction is the right of all students. 

The Social Studies Collaborative, a working group made up of members of the Council of Chief State School Officers, has recently released an infographic, featured at the top of this post, that illustrates both the disturbing data on the marginalization of social studies AND  the positive benefits of social studies instruction that can result when we return our beloved field to the prominence it deserves.

You can download the infographic here or here: Elementary SS Brief 45

We here at the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship and the Lou Frey Institute support and believe in this message completely. We need to bring social studies back to the elementary schools. We need it to ensure that our students become the best citizens they can be. And it needs to, and CAN, start in Kindergarten. FJCC even has some short civics-oriented lessons that can be done in about 15 or 20 minutes and introduce social studies and civics concepts to elementary school students at all grade levels!

Friends in Civics, we have some exciting news. The Florida Joint Center for Citizenship at the Lou Frey Institute is now offering a free online Canvas course targeting primarily new and beginning civics teachers in Florida, though it is open to any and all civics educators who are interested.

This program will provide educators new to civics with a supported professional
learning experience while teaching middle school civics. They will learn,
implement and reflect on educational best practices, engage with a cohort of
other educators and network with experienced civic education professionals. You can learn more about the course series here!

For those teachers in Florida seeking points towards certificate renewal, this course series offers that opportunity through the ePDC (electronic Professional Development Connections) system. In the infographic below, you can see the scope and sequence of the course series.

“I just wanted to thank you for offering the online Civics Modules, I learned so much during the first one and can’t wait to implement some of the things I learned.” —A beginning civics teacher “Thank-you also for the course- I learned quite a bit about how to teach Civics in Florida and to especially to 7th graders.” —An experienced teacher new to civics in Florida

Later this month, we will be starting the next cohort for COURSE ONE. We hope to have Course Two ready later this fall or early winter.

A Prepared Classroom will focus on understanding the role of course descriptions and the Civics End-of-Course Test Item Specifications, utilizing curriculum and pacing guide resources, strategically planning and preparing for instruction, as well as providing data informed instruction based on formative and summative data. You can view the syllabus for the first course here: FJCC A Prepared Classroom Syllabus

You can enroll yourself in the course here! https://canvas.instructure.com/enroll/KWYTK4. Or, https://canvas.instructure.com/register and use the following join code: KWYTK4

Are you more interested in the second or third courses because you feel pretty good about the content in the first one? That is fine! You DO NOT have to take every course; Florida teachers may earn renewal points for EACH course in the series. We will be piloting the second course, A Cognitively Complex Classroom, in late 2018 or early 2019 with a small group of teachers, and will let you know when we launch it after what we hope will be a successful pilot!

Each course in the series will be offered through the free version of the Canvas platform. Canvas Free for Teacher accounts are always free, but they do not contain all features available to institutional users of Canvas. For example, no client support beyond access to the Canvas Guides is offered to you as a Free for Teachers user. With a Canvas Free for Teachers account users can access and participate in courses as well as create (and host) their own online courses. Please note that you WILL have to create a new account to use this version of the platform; it is not compatible with the institutional version you may use in your school or district. You can learn more about this version of the platform here.

In order to enroll in the course, you will need to be sure that you register through the ePDC system. Let’s walk through the process together. First, go to the PAEC website at PAEC.org.

Once there, click on ePDC and if this is your first time, click on ePDC and then ‘Create an Account.’ Once you confirm your account registration, sign in and then click again on ePDC and select ‘Course Offerings’. You should see a screen like this:

Click on ‘Course Offerings’, and you will see something like this:

In the ‘Search Text’ bar, you can type ‘FJCC’, and the course should appear! BE SURE TO ENROLL IN THE NOVEMBER COURSE. 

Click on ‘Register’ and you should be in. The ePDC course is setup to automatically direct the person that registers for the course to the Canvas Course page.  You will have to create an account if you do not already have one but the link to the September course is embedded in the ePDC PAEC course.

You can expect a follow up email or two from your course instructor in Novemeber, prior to the start of the course. At this time, registration is limited to the first 25 participants, but it may be possible to make exceptions!

How are in-service points handled?
PAEC extracts in-service records from the ePDC and submits in-service data for member and participating districts to the Florida Department of Education as a service to districts. Teachers from outside of PAEC member or participating districts should print the Certificate of Completion for each course and submit the certificate to the appropriate district professional development office.

We do hope to see you in this online space for learning and the development of a virtual professional learning community. Please share this with anyone you believe might benefit from this course series! 

Questions about this entire course series, or the first course in the series (‘A Prepared Classroom‘), can be directed to Dr. Steve Masyada or Ms. Peggy Renihan.

This weekend there was a mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As we reflect on the news of this horrific tragedy, we also are faced with questions about the roles and responsibilities of educators and educational leaders in addressing the growing tide of hatred and discrimination across our nation. I wanted to share the following resources on how to confront antisemitism. 

The word antisemitism means prejudice against or hatred of Jews.

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” (Elie Wiesel’s Acceptance Speech, on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, December 10, 1986)https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1986/wiesel-acceptance_en.html

Addressing Anti-Semitism through Education (2018 Report)

http://www.erinnern.at/bundeslaender/oesterreich/e_bibliothek/antisemitismus-1/neues-handbuch-von-odihr-und-der-unesco-zu-bildungsarbeit-gegen-antisemitismus

USHMM

Antisemitism https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/antisemitism

Confront Antisemitism https://www.ushmm.org/confront-antisemitism

Antisemitism Today https://www.ushmm.org/confront-antisemitism/antisemitism-the-longest-hatred/film/antisemitism-today

Educators play a powerful role in society, and the USHMM program Oath and Opposition: Education under the Third Reich examines the question- What role did teachers play during the Holocaust? https://www.ushmm.org/educators/teaching-about-the-holocaust/oath/overview/education-under-the-third-reich There are a number of case studies that you could use with a class https://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/20160229-Oath-and-Opposition.pdf

Yad Vashem

Working Definition on Antisemitism http://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/holocaust-antisemitism/terms-working-definition-on-antisemitism

ADL

ADL https://www.adl.org/education-and-resources and https://www.adl.org/anti-semitism?gclid=CI6n6qyjzdUCFUWeGwodzOkEcg

USC Shoah Foundation

USC Shoah Foundation Antisemitism and the Bystander Effect (Secondary Lesson Plan) http://iwitness.usc.edu/SFI/Activity/Detail.aspx?activityID=2613&retainFilter=true

USC Shoah Foundation 100 Days of Respect http://iwitness.usc.edu/SFI/Sites/100days/

 

We at FJCC have worked hard to implement a version of CRF’s Civic Action Project into middle schools, and it has, happily, gone very well!

We are always looking to support the needs of civic teachers not only in Florida but elsewhere, so we are happy to share with you that we will be collaborating with the Constitutional Rights Foundation to host a webinar on October 30th about the Civic Action Project and what it might look in middle school!

You can register for the webinar here , and it will occur at 7 Eastern, 4 Pacific. We look forward to your participation!