Category Archives: Inquiry

Teaching in Turbulent Times is the Saturday Morning Keynote Topic for FCSS!

Posted on by
Reply

Hey, social studies folks! The time is fast approaching for the FCSS annual conference! PLEASE join us in late October (28-30) for what will be a great couple of days of sessions. We have made arrangements with some excellent folks to ensure that Sunday will be devoted at least in part to making sure the needs and desires of Advanced Placement folks are met! And I DO have some more exciting news to share about sessions and speakers and events, but I want to make sure that news about the keynote speaker for Saturday morning is out.

We all know that it can be difficult to teach social studies in a climate that does not often allow for deep discussion and discovery and where inquiry sometimes becomes a dirty word. Our keynote speaker for Saturday is coming to talk to us about that. Dr. Murali Balaji is the  Director of Education and Curriculum Reform for the Hindu American Foundation. In his role, Balaji works on empowering educators in culturally competent pedagogical approaches. He also serves as an advisor to numerous organizations around the country in promoting religious literacy and civic engagement. A Fulbright Specialist and former award-winning journalist, he has taught at Temple University, Penn State University, and Lincoln University, where he served as Chair of the Department of Mass Communications, overseeing assessment and curriculum building efforts. A longtime advocate of minority issues, Dr. Balaji is the author of several books, including The Professor and The Pupil (2007), and the co-editor of the seminal anthologies Desi Rap (2008) and Global Masculinities and Manhood (2011). A native of the Philadelphia area, Balaji earned his B.A. in journalism from the University of Minnesota and his doctorate in Mass Communication from Penn State.

drMuralibalaji

 

Dr. Balaji will be talking about ‘Teaching in Turbulent Times: Navigating through the New Normal in Public Education’. I have had the distinct pleasure of attending Dr. Balaji’s sessions at conferences in North Carolina and nationally, and he is an engaging, witty, and insightful speaker on issues relating to public education, controversial topics, and the getting kids (and teachers!) to think critically and intellectually.

We are excited he is able to join us Saturday morning, and I look forward to his keynote!


A Quick Look at Three Ways to Approach Picture Analysis

Posted on by
Reply

As educators, we are always looking for new ways to approach our content and engage our students. A few weeks ago, the FJCC had the pleasure of providing professional development to teachers in Highlands County, a small rural county here in Florida very similar to where your humble blog host spent much of his early career. While there, I had the chance to speak with Holly Ard. Holly basically functions as the social studies specialist in the district while still teaching her own classes, and does excellent work.

One of the most difficult tasks for students to do, particularly at the lower grades, is to interpret primary sources, especially visual sources. While we stress the importance of primary sources, we often fail to actually provide teachers or students with the tools necessary to use them! This, in a time when disciplinary literacy has re-emerged as an important element of social studies teacher education thanks in part to the C3 Framework. Holly has attempted to address this issue by integrating a Picture Analysis Strategy. The strategy she uses is aimed at students of differing ability levels, and in talking with her, it seems to work well in engaging students with somewhat difficult content!

Working with partners, students individually break down the image, using the guide below. Note that the four ‘boxes’ represent the four quadrants of the image, a popular approach for image analysis. Having students create a title for the image does a nice job getting to the Common Core/Florida Standards expectation that students should be able to summarize text of all kinds. What else is a good a title than a really short and really strong summary of text?

I see

Another way to approach image analysis is seen below. This version of the analysis template can be done with a partner or individually. I appreciate how it seeks to have students connect it directly to what they are learning. Relations between content and context is important.

what do others see

I especially love this version of the picture analysis activity, which may be most useful for paintings or photographs of a perhaps persuasive bent.

picture analysis1

Thanks, Holly, for sharing these approaches. We look forward to more goodness from you!:)

By the way, if you are looking for resources in Civics or History that can help kids with primary sources, I encourage you to check out the Stanford History Education Group!


Teaching Primary Sources Coaches Academy PD Opportunity!

Posted on by
Reply

Friends, despite the unfortunate nature of the previous post, we do have some EXCELLENT news and a great opportunity for professional development for you to consider. This comes to us from Dr. Scott Waring, a Fellow here at the FJCC and one of the leading social studies teacher educators in the state. I would love to take part in this myself!!!! At the very least, please check out the link below to the Teaching With Primary Sources program. This past SOURCES conference, which I had the pleasure of attending, was also very well done and worth your time. Kudos to Dr. Waring for the leading role he has taken in helping teachers use primary sources, and I encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity! The course will be meeting at UCF on Tuesday nights from either 5:00 or 6:00 until 7:30 or 8:30.  The semester begins on August 24th, and the course will last for just the first eight weeks, instead of the typical sixteen weeks.

TPS-UCF-Coaches_Academy_15_Application

“Funded through a grant from the Library of Congress, the Teaching with Primary Sources Program at the University of Central Florida (TPS-UCF) delivers professional development to help K-12 educators, across the state, provide high-quality classroom instruction using the millions of digitized primary sources available from the Library of Congress. Through ongoing, year-round professional development events, the TPS program at the University of Central Florida helps educators unleash the power of primary sources in the classroom.

Currently, there is space available in the TPS-UCF Coaches Academy training this fall. This training will be in the form of a graduate course (Teaching with Primary Sources in the History Classroom) at the University of Central Florida. All participants will have tuition covered, and successful completers will receive three graduate credits of Social Science Education (SSE) coursework.

Would you (or one of your colleagues) like to be trained as one of the TPS-UCF Coaches in this Academy? Among other things, the TPS Coach will provide support to fellow teachers in enabling them to search for primary sources through the Library of Congress’ web site and empowering them to create engaging lessons that are focused around the use of primary sources.

I invite you to nominate yourself or a colleague. It is important that you confirm that your school or district is open to explore the value of having a TPS coach and will be supportive the candidate, if chosen. Thus, administrator support is required. There will be a great investment in time and money to train you as a new TPS Coach, and I ask that you consider carefully how your school will make use of the expanded knowledge about using primary sources. Please return the application to Dr. Scott Waring (swaring@ucf.edu), as soon as possible.”

The application is below and at the top of this post, but if you are unable to print it out or the link does not work for you, please shoot me an email at stephen.masyada@ucf.edu and I will send you a copy, or just contact Dr. Waring at the email address he has provided.

TPS-UCF-Coaches_Academy_15_Application