The Florida Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference

Posted on April 12, 2016 by stevemasy

The Florida Council for the Social Studies annual conference is looking for quality sessions that will meet the needs of social studies teachers and teacher-educators from across the state and beyond. Do you have an interesting resource to share? A lesson strategy that you have found effective? New research that might be of use for teachers? New ideas for 21st century social studies instruction? Then I hope that you will consider submitting a session proposal to present at the conference.

When and Where?

The conference is October 28, 2016 8:00 AM to October 30, 2016 5:30 PM at Embassy Suites Orlando-Lake Buena Vista South, 4955 Kyngs Heath Road, Kissimmee, FL 34746.

Sessions include content and pedagogy from across the social studies field and may range from a 50 minute Session or 90 minute Workshop to half day or full day pre-conference clinics.

Who Should Go? Who Should Present? Who Should Exhibit?

Everyone in social studies. Everyone should go. There are always sessions for every interest, and we encourage K-12 educators and pre-service teachers to attend, network, and learn. You should register to attend.

Everyone in social studies. Everyone should submit a proposal to present. We need YOU to share your expertise with teachers in Florida and beyond. You have experience. You have skills. You should submit a proposal to present. (Please note that you will have to register to attend the conference in order to present).

Everyone in social studies. Well, everyone that has a quality and useful resource for social studies teachers. They are the ones that should register to exhibit at the conference.

This is an adoption year, so attendees can expect that there will be a great many resources available in the exhibit hall and shared in sessions. As session proposals roll in and planning moves forward, I will be sharing updates about exciting sessions and guests that you will find beneficial.

It is the people that make a conference. Without quality sessions, what does a conference offer? Without passionate attendees, what does a conference offer? Please join us at the Florida Council for the Social Studies conference in October and help make sure that social studies continues to matter in this state.

FJCC Has New Assessment Items for Florida Civics Teachers

Posted on April 6, 2016 by stevemasy

One of our ongoing projects here in Florida is to meet the demand of our stakeholders for assessment items that are aligned to the Florida 7th grade Civics benchmarks. In pursuit of this, we have spent a great deal of time creating new items of varying complexity levels in order to fill holes in the Escambia and FJCC teacher item (free registration required) banks. Well, we finally have finished the first round of item development, and we have just posted 65 new items spread across the 35 assessed benchmarks.

new items

Please note that while we would like the organization to look prettier, we wanted to at least get them up for you quickly. You will find just the item itself to use as an assessment tool:
item 1.1 no ans

As well as the rationales for correct and incorrect answers for further discussion between you and your students:

1.1 rationale

We will continue to develop new items and refine old ones. We hope you find these useful, and thank you to Dr. Terri Fine for the work she and her folks did in getting these items completed. To access the items, please visit our 7th grade resources page. Registration IS required, but all of our materials are always 100% free!

Update:
The 65 new items are spread across the benchmarks and are low, moderate and high complexity items. Not all benchmarks have new items, and some benchmarks may only have one new item, depending on what was needed between the main FJCC site and the Escambia Civics review site. The new item breakdown is below, with item cognitive complexity in parenthesis.

Reporting Category One
1.1 (L,H)
1.2 (H)
1.3 (L,H)
1.4 (L,M,H)
1.5 (L,H)
1.6 (L,M,H)
1.7 (L,H)
1.8 (L,M,H)
1.9 (L)
3.10 (L,H)

Reporting Category Two
2.1 (H)
2.2 (3 L, H)
2.5 (M, H)
3.6 (L,M)
3.7 (L, 2M)

Reporting Category Three
2.8 (L)
2.9 (M)
2.10 (H)
2.11 (L, H)
2.12 (2L, 2M)
2.13 (M)
4.1 (L,H)
4.2 (2M, H)
4.3 (L,H)

Reporting Category Four
3.1 (H)
3.2 (2H)
3.3 (H)
3.4 (H)
3.5 (M,H)
3.8 (H)
3.11 (L,H)
3.13 (L,M,H)
3.14 (L,H)

The Role of Instruction in Encouraging Civic Engagement

Posted on April 4, 2016 by stevemasy

The Florida Joint Center for Citizenship is quite proud to be a member of Florida’s Partnership for Civic Learning. One of the most promising research projects that the Partnership has undertaken is to explore the role of classroom experience in student civic participation. In other words, are students more likely to engage in civic life if they learn about civics in a classroom with a variety of instructional practices? This is a question that we believe deserves an answer, as it can help districts, schools, teachers, and other stakeholders what quality civics instruction should look like. And it is such an important one for Florida and the nation.

In the spring of 2015, the Lou Frey Institute administered the Civic Attitude and Engagement Survey to 7th grade students enrolled in Miami-Dade, Clay, and St. Lucie County schools here in Florida. 7,436 students in 75 middle schools across these three districts were surveyed. It should be pointed out here that a huge amount of the data sample was drawn from Miami-Dade schools, in part because of certain time and district issues. 88% of the schools that took part were in Miami-Dade, 10.7% in Clay County, and 1.3% in St. Lucie County. We are grateful to all those that participated.

The survey itself consisted of 20 items of question blocks that focused on a number of areas connected to civic attitudes, knowledge, dispositions, and engagement. Ultimately, we want to provide districts with a tool that would connect completion of Florida’s 7th grade civics course to student (1) civic proficiency and readiness for future engagement as informed citizens; (2) commitment to democratic values and rights; (3) knowledge of current events; (4) efficacy/self-confidence about one’s ability to contribute to society; and (5) experience with recommended pedagogies for civics. We hope to expand the number of participants in this survey, and to provide this as a yearly examination of what is happening in civic education classrooms.

So, what did this first offering of the survey find? Let’s take a look.

Learning in Classroom

This is, perhaps, no surprise. The more students are engaged in the practices of civic life through classroom instruction, the more they are likely to engage in the practices of civic life outside of the classroom. Of course, there are caveats that must be taken into account when considering this data. For example, it is highly unlikely that 10% of students are taking part in debates every day. I do not find it surprising however that 40% of students said that they NEVER engage in debate in the classroom, and that 58% of students never participate in a mock trial (though students in Florida are SUPPOSED to experience the jury process. See SS.7.C.2.3—Experience the responsibilities of citizens at the local, state, or federal levels) . In my experience, some teachers are uncomfortable with the structure of debates and simultations and the possibility that there could be controversial (and possibly job-threatening, especially in a state with no tenure) topics involved. And of course, there is the time factor!

It is important to note having even one visitor from the community seemed to have a positive impact on broader civic engagement. This suggests to us that perhaps the FJCC should work on making that more possible (hint: we are).

Best Bang for Your Buck

So, what sorts of activities did seem to have the greatest impact on promoting student engagement? Preliminary review and analysis of survey data suggests that, as mentioned above, having a visitor from the community come to a class was huge. These visitors, of course, should be connected in some way to civic life (perhaps a mayor, city manager, council member, school board member, elections supervisor, etc). Naturally, actually participating in some sort of civic project was huge, as students are more likely to continue engaging in civic life once they have been out in the community. Personally, I expected a greater correlation with playing civics-oriented games (in this case, likely to have been iCivics), but I suspect that some of that could depend on how the game is actually used in class, and how often it is used. This is an area for further research on our part.

Best Practices

Best Practices in Civics, at least according to the most recent research from our friends at CIRCLE , Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools, and others, tends to emphasize the Six Proven Practices in civic learning:

1. Classroom Instruction: Schools should provide instruction in civics & government, history, economics, geography, law, and democracy. Formal instruction in these subjects increases civic knowledge and increases young people’s tendency to engage in civic and political activities over the long term. However, schools should avoid teaching only rote facts about dry procedures, which is unlikely to benefit students and may actually alienate them from civic engagement.

2. Discussion of Current Events and Controversial Issues: Schools should incorporate discussion of current local, national, and international issues and events in to the classroom, particularly those that young people view as important to their lives. When students have an opportunity to discuss current issues in a classroom setting, they tend to have a greater interest in civic life and politics as well as improved critical thinking and communication skills.

3. Service-Learning: Schools should design and implement programs that provide students with the opportunity to apply what they learn through performing community service that is linked to the formal curriculum and classroom instruction.

4. Extracurricular Activities: Schools should offer opportunities for young people to get involved in their schools or communities outside of the classroom. Studies show that students who participate in extracurricular activities in school remain more civically engaged then those who did not, even decades later.

5. School Governance: Schools should encourage meaningful student participation in school governance. Giving students more opportunities to participate in the management of their classrooms and schools builds their civic skills and attitudes.

6. Simulations of Democratic Processes: Schools should encourage students to participate in simulations of democratic processes and procedures. Evidence shows that simulations of voting, trials, legislative deliberation and democracy, leads to heightened civic/political knowledge and interest.

As the chart suggests, engaging students in a greater number of school and classroom-oriented civic practice opportunities tends to encourage greater engagement. Is there a point at which we receive diminishing returns however? Do students who might otherwise fall on the low end of civic engagement suddenly jump to moderate or high levels if they take part in all six elements of the proven practices? Just how can we get a control group for this? No one wants to, not should they want to, provide future citizens with a lower quality civic education for the sake of further research. Nonetheless, this remains an area of inquiry that we need to further explore.

Outcomes

So, what does it all mean. Basically, engaging students in civic practice, even to a low degree, encourages further participation within the broader community! Now, we must consider that all of this information we have discussed relies on self-reported student data, and the Lake Woebegon Effect should always be in the back of our minds. Still, there are promising methods which can encourage greater student engagement in civic life; teachers just need to do them, and curriculum should be written in such a way that we give students that opportunity.

This is, certainly, a great deal to take in. The Partnership for Civic Learning is eager to continue this research and to see how these findings compare to data gathered from the next iteration and administration of the survey, especially outside the three districts that took part here. We are in the process of developing a brand new website that will share Partnership for Civic Learning research and projects, and this post will be updated to reflect where you can find this entire infographic, among other things.

Teaching Civics by Living History

Posted on March 1, 2016 by stevemasy

One of the most exciting things for a social studies teacher is when they get to meet the people that they are teaching about. Recently, our friends in Leon County had this very opportunity.

Guest Post by Peggy Renihan, FJCC Regional Programs Coordinator:

The Leon County Schools Civics Teachers were hosted by the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship, African American History Task Force, and the Florida Humanities Council at the FAMU Meek-Eaton Black Archives for a special Civics Learning Community Meeting on the Civil Rights Movement in Tallahassee. The enthusiastic group of professional educators were joined by several special guests, including the Director of the Black Archives, the Dean of the College of Education, several professors from the College of Education at FAMU, area ministers and Dr. Errol Wilson on behalf of the African American History Task Force.

The highlight of the evening was the keynote speaker, Rev. Dr. Henry M. Steele. He is the second son of the late Rev. Dr. and Mrs. C.K. Steele Sr. Dr. Steele is the former pastor of several churches in Alabama, Florida and Georgia. Steele was the first high school teenager in the country to accept jail rather than bail during the lunch counter sit-ins in Tallahassee, following in the footsteps of his father, who was himself a leading Civil Rights activist in Florida. Arrested at 16 at a demonstration, he worked on a chain gang while serving time in the Leon County jail.

In 1955, Rosa Parks set off this country’s first bus boycott of the civil rights movement. A few months later, the second major boycott got underway… in Tallahassee. There is now a Tallahassee-Leon County Civil Rights Heritage Walk. The memorial honors 50+ of Tallahassee’s “foot soldiers” — folks who took part in the 1956 bus boycott and, later, lunch counter sit-ins. Reverend Steele is one of those “foot soldiers”.

We encourage you to check out the documentary. It could be useful to explore this deep Florida connection to the Civil Rights Movement!

Every February the Leon County Schools Civics Teachers participate in an hour and a half experiential learning opportunity. We believe that field experiences in the community enhance and enrich their teaching. It was an honor and a pleasure to learn of Rev. Dr. Henry Steele’s experience in our capital city. His honest and candid memory was refreshing. The teachers were able to take their experience with a “foot soldier” back into the classroom to relate it to their students.

The Work of the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship

Posted on March 1, 2016 by stevemasy

Data is, of course, what we in education are now obsessed with. Everything comes back to data. How are we doing? Let’s look at the data. How have our kids grown? Lets look at the data. How effective are our teachers? Let’s look at the data. Well, this is no less true for the work we do here at the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship. And, happily, we have some data for you to share in the wonderful infographic our own Mike Barnhardt has put together. Now, we are not normally ones to toot our own horn, but, well, one has to these days, doesn’t one?

We are quite proud of the work that we do here, and we hope to be able to continue this work if the legislature continues our funding. We do believe, based on the data that we have gathered, that our work and our resources have had an impact. This is the result of a team effort:
Valerie McVey: Curriculum Director
Peggy Renihan: Regional Program Coordinator
Dr. Elizabeth Washington: Pedagogy Specialist
Dr. Terri Fine: Content Specialist
Mike Barnhardt: Web Developer
Laura Stephenson: Assistant to the Executive Director of the Lou Frey Institute
Shena Parks: Office Manager
Dr. Doug Dobson: Executive Director of the Lou Frey Institute

One of the most important elements of good citizenship is the ability to work together as a team and collaborate for the common good. Here at the FJCC, we believe that we have that ability and we love our work. We look forward to continuing this sort of self-evaluation over the course of the next year.

Florida Middle School Civics EOCA Review Resources

Posted on February 18, 2016 by stevemasy

The Middle School Civics EOCA is just around the corner, and we have been asked about resources that might be useful in reviewing for the exam. So without further ado, here are some possibilities that could serve you well! I have personally reviewed each of these resources, and am comfortable recommending them to you. And if you have any additions to this compilation, please feel free to share! Click on the link in the heading or in the text to access the resource.

FLDOE 2015 Civics Content Focus Reports

The 2015 Civics Content Focus Reports give you at least some idea of what the test might look like. Be sure to note the cautions on page 9. You will also want to review the Civics EOC Test Item Specifications, which you hopefully have been using throughout the year!

Florida Students Civics Tutorials

tutorial

We have written about these tutorials before, and they are the first resource I recommend for both instruction and review. They are excellent for a flipped classroom model as well. If you are planning on using them as a review resource, I recommend assigning students only the parts of the tutorials they need, and it would be more effective to perhaps set these up in learning stations across the classroom. You could require that students screen-capture or write down responses to the assessment elements in order to ensure completion and comprehension.

Escambia County Civics EOC Review Site

The Escambia site is one that we helped develop, so we do have some attachment to it, but we also believe that the Student Friendly Readings for each benchmark clarification, as well as the assessment items (with answers) and Quizlet vocabulary review tool can serve you well in a review effort. Students can use each of the one page readings to refresh key content that they need, and it lends itself well to a learning center or small group model of review.

Florida Virtual School Resources

The recorded review sessions, available for free at the bottom of the FLVS page, do a good job covering elements of each of the four reporting categories that will be assessed on the EOC. Because they are about 2 hours long, you will want to preview each one and determine where you might want students to focus their attention. They may also provide you with a model for your own approach to classroom-based reviews. I especially appreciate how an effort is made to integrate assessment elements. Please be aware that you will need to download Blackboard Collaborate to run the videos.

You will also want to check out the FLVS Civics EOC Practice test, which may be of use to you. Again, however, this shouldn’t be the first time that students are being exposed to these types and styles of items. Answers to the practice test items are available here. Note that answers are actually explained as well, which is an excellent element of review. I would suggest actually having students explain WRONG answers. If they can tell you why an answer is wrong, they should have a much easier time of figuring out why an answer might be right!

Civics EOC Boot Camp Model

We wrote about this review model last year, and it may be one that you find useful as well. It worked well for Randall Middle School, and it is a positive way to mix things up a little for both you and your students. We explored this model in great detail in this post, and I encourage you to take a look and see if it is something you might like to do.

District Review Sheets and Practice Tests

Many districts have done a good job developing practice tests and review sheets for the EOC. Based on what I have had a chance to see, I can recommend a couple at the least.

Marion County, which has fantastic leadership in the social studies department, has provided teachers and students with an EOC study guide, made up of a mix of short answer questions, EOC style questions, and vocabulary, all of which draw on the test item specifications. All or part of this is something that I encourage you to adapt and adopt for your own review. Even having the students collaborate on the completion of the study guide could be a huge help for them in preparing for the EOC. Note that the guide is developed in conjunction with their own particular pacing guide and text; you can adapt the chapter and unit headings where necessary.

Pasco County has provided a quality practice test as well, though I prefer the FLVS version because of the answer explanations. Still, it is another way to measure student understanding and get a sense of areas of need while also ensuring ongoing exposure to EOC type questions.

TEACHER WEBSITES

Civics With Mr. Kula

Mr. Kula, social studies teacher at Westpine Middle School in Broward County, has compiled a number of quality content rich and illustrated study guides for the Civics EOC that could be useful for you. While they don’t cover every benchmark, what IS there is effective, and broken down by topic. These would be appropriate for students to use in conjunction with a written review or in small groups using an ‘expert group’ teaching model.

Mrs. Hirsch’s Civics Page

Mrs. Hirsch, a teacher at Fruit Cove Middle School in St. John’s County, has gathered a number of excellent tools for EOC review. The EOC Content Review sheets that she has provided are well done and engaging, and definitely worth sharing with your own students:
Q1 Civics What You Need to Know

Q2 Civics What You Need to Know

Legislative Branch Content Review

Executive Branch Content Review

Judicial Branch Content Review

Civics Assessment Strategy Guide

Here is an EXCELLENT and short powerpoint covering strategies for the EOC. I cannot recommend it enough!

Ruckel Middle School Civics Flashcards

Ruckel Middle School, in Okaloosa County, has developed a tool using Quizlet that provides students with flashcards for review. These might be useful as a bellringer or exit slip activity as you wrap up content this year and start to transition to in depth review.

Ms. Sirmopoulos’ Civics Review Materials

Jackie Sirmopoulos, an excellent and wonderfully effective teacher at PK Yonge Lab School in Gainesville, has been teaching Civics, with some of the highest scores in the state, for awhile. She has provided a plethora of useful review materials that I encourage you to explore. I have looked at almost all of them in each folder, and are all well aligned to the benchmarks and useful in helping you start to address possible student deficiencies while ensuring understanding among all of your students.

These are just a few of the quality review resources that you might find beneficial. If you have any additional resources to share, please shoot me an email or leave it in the comments!

New Goals for Florida Citizen!

Posted on February 3, 2016 by stevemasy

So, we recently had a Lou Frey Institute/Florida Joint Center for Citizenship staff meeting here at our office. It was two days of planning for the future, led by our inestimable director, Dr. Doug Dobson, and it was refreshing to sit down with the entire Lou Frey Institute/FJCC staff to discuss issues and direction for the work that we do. I just wanted to take a moment and share with you, our friends in civic education here in Florida and nationally, just some what we have going on and where we are going organizationally. This is not an inclusive list; this is just what we are most excited about!

Projects with National Archives

We have have developed, over the past few years, an ongoing relationship with the fine folks at the National Archives. They have been kind enough to share personnel who were more than willing to come to Florida to work with our teachers on using primary sources. Happily, they will be working with us next month to develop bellringer/formative assessment or enrichment type resources that are aligned with high school US History and US Government benchmarks. This is new ground for us, as most of our focus has been on the middle school and (to a lesser degree) elementary school level. We are also hoping, sometime this summer, to work with the National Archives to develop additional elementary school resources centered around primary sources.

Adopting the SAMR Model

One of the biggest issues we face with our curriculum is that while we believe that we have quality resources, they follow a traditional model of classroom pedagogy. To address this, we are exploring ways in which we can adopt the SAMR model in our curricular revision and design.

The SAMR Model of Educational Technology . Check out more at http://edtechvoice.com/lesson-1/the-samr-model/

We are definitely open to suggestions on this end, for sure. Right now, I will be meeting with the Educational Technology experts over at the UCF College of Education to explore possibilities. At the same time, we are striving to find a way to make our curricular materials more ESE and ESOL friendly. We have high hopes that we will bring you new and improved resources!

Website Redesign (Again!)

One of the most pressing needs across the state is for our teachers to be able to disseminate some of the great resources they themselves have created. We are working on a way to facilitate that. We hope to add an expansion to Florida Citizen that allows users to upload materials and share them with others. It will feature a ‘vetting’ system that will allow FJCC to recommend some of these materials as well. We have lots of hopes, and I expect that our great IT leader, Mike Barnhardt, will do some good things.

Civics Teaching Certificate

The Civics Teaching Certificate will provide pre-service teachers with complementary, civics teaching-focused coursework that will build on and enhance the Social Science Education B.S. curriculum. Individuals enrolled in the Civics Teaching certificate program will learn the substantive content, skills and pedagogical tools needed to deliver instruction explicitly linked to the 7th grade Civics End of Course Assessment (EOCA) in Florida. The Civics Teaching Certificate will also support and enhance high school U.S. government instruction. Reflecting the importance of service and experiential learning in civic education, enrollees will also take part in a summer internship that involves them in hands-on practice with local government.

Pre-service teachers enrolled in the Social Science Education B.S. major will complete four courses to develop expertise in civics content, pedagogy and assessment. The Civics Teaching Certificate will be completed as a three semester sequence. Summer coursework will include an internship in a local government office.

On the Drawing Board

We have a number of goals for the coming months. We would like to bring back some semblance of the Civic Mentor Teacher Program. We are working on a prototype, developed in house, of a three to five minute student oriented video on specific civics content, most likely around the election. This will, we believe, provide us an opportunity to see what we can affordably do with our own resources. If the video is received positively, we would love to develop more to supplement the already good teacher-oriented videos on the Florida Citizen site. We are also going to be starting work in Duval County with a couple of schools in need of assistance in Civics, and we are excited for this opportunity! Finally, we will continue to work closely with members of the Partnership for Civic Learning on newly identified civic education priorities in this state (a topic for another post!).

One of the hopes we have for the new year as well is to begin to develop more of a national presence. We will continue to work, as always, with the great teachers in Florida, and they will always be our target demographic, but we believe it is time to start partnering with other small civic-education organizations, perhaps in a version of the Civic Renewal Network that is oriented toward state level organizations, to see how we can improve civic education at the national level as well.

We all have ambitions, I suppose, and we do love what we do here. The Florida Joint Center for Citizenship remains committed to serving the needs of teachers, students, and the civic community in Florida, and we are always working to find new ways to do that. Thank you to our team and to those we have encountered both here and elsewhere for the work that you do in creating that next generation of citizens. And if YOU have ideas on how we can improve in our work, please let us know!

Just Read, Florida’s Civics Pop up Quiz Show

Posted on December 1, 2015 by stevemasy

I had the distinct pleasure today to attend, at the invitation of one of the district social studies specialists (Tara Tillmanshofer, a fine leader!) the new JRF! Civics oriented pop up quiz game, which occurred at Lakeland Highlands Middle School in Polk County.

Here, Hope Colle welcomes students to the show and reminds them of the importance of reading and of civics. Great point; you can’t be a completely engaged citizen without reading OR civics!

The wonderful principal of the school, Ms. Kendrick, instructed the students on what to expect and how to behave during the show.

One of the great civics teachers at the school, Mr. Winters, volunteered to be the emcee and read the questions to the students.

The show consisted of two rounds, with two teams of four students each in each round. Here, we see Team Plead the Fifth and Team Phoenix as they get ready.

The kids really did do a fantastic job with the quiz show. It was refreshing to see some strong level of knowledge relating to what were not necessarily easy questions. And thanks are due to the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship’s own Dr. Terri Fine for crafting the questions for the show! Check out these kids dropping some knowledge bombs, for example:

In the next round, Team Civicians and Team Roboboxers (hey, they are middle school kids!) clashed in an epic battle that came down to the final question!

So how did they select the players for the show? According to Mr. Winter, they actually held their own civics quiz bowl last week, and the top scorers across each class were asked to participate in the show. And the work and effort that these kids and their teachers put in to this is obvious. Kudos to everyone involved. I hope that we here at the FJCC can continue to assist our friends across the state in this sort of thing, and it is wonderful to see that great passion for civics reflected in the work of the schools, teachers, and students! If you have questions or comments, or want to know when the pop up quiz show might be coming near you, contact Hope Colle or Ashley Palelis. You can also just send me a note!

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Category Archives: Florida

FJCC Has New Assessment Items for Florida Civics Teachers

Florida Middle School Civics EOCA Review Resources