Category Archives: Teachers

Florida Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference!

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FCSS.1

Have you registered yet for the FCSS Annual Conference in October? If not, why not? They are expecting some excellent sessions this year, including some from the excellent folks at the Fed and from our own old friend from the National Archives, Dr. Charlie Flanagan. You know you all love Charlie! As this is an adoption year, you can also expect that there will be a great many vendors who will have a great deal of swag to share with teachers who take an interest in their booths. And we here at the FJCC will of course be there, and we are planning on having a booth so that we can meet folks we haven’t met before and to share some of the exciting new projects we have on the agenda! So come on, join us at the FCSS Annual Conference in October and find out what your colleagues across the state are doing, what new tools and resources exist, and how you can better help your students become the great citizens we know they can be!

You can register for the conference here!


New FJCC Teacher Advisory Council

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One of our great friends in civic education is iCivics. As part of their work and their effort to provide the best possible quality materials, they have a Teacher’s Council that works closely with them. Here at the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship, we are contemplating the creation of a similar council made up of FJCC resource users. This council will serve to advise us on directions for resource development and research and opportunities for new directions, suggest revisions concerning current resources, and generally serve as a way in which we can expand outreach to and collaboration with our stakeholders across the state of Florida.

If this is something that interests you, please shoot me an email. Note that there WILL be an application process of sorts. I expect that we will have this launching around the time of the October Florida Council for the Social Studies conference. We are very excited for this new effort!


First Annual Florida Civics Teacher Survey

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In our efforts to improve our work and help teachers in their efforts to build the next generation of citizens, the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship is looking for feedback from teachers. To facilitate this, we have created a survey, which should take about 15 minutes.

The survey asks teachers about Classroom Climate, Coverage of Instructional Benchmarks, School Climate, Professional Development, Classroom Instructional Practices & Resources Used, Availability & Use of Classroom technology, Demographics & Background

Ultimately, we are seeking to understand how you, the great civics teacher that you are, approach classroom instruction and work with your future citizens. Completing this survey will be a huge help for us, and we are grateful for your assistance and support. You can complete the survey here. Thank you in advance for your collaboration and cooperation!


Florida Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference

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frb

 

As the planning continues for the FCSS 2016 Annual Conference, we are happy to announce that we will be joined by Lesley Mace from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Ms. Mace is the Senior Economic and Financial Education Specialist for the branch, and will be joining us for sessions on financial and economic literacy! This is, as always, an area of need and we are excited to have her! Register now for the conference and come network with other high quality social studies educators here in Florida!


The FJCC is Looking for Item Writers!

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Update: We have sent out invitations. Thank you for your interest!

 

Do you teach social studies in Florida, particularly civics? Do you have or would like some experience developing EOCA type items? Do you understand the 7th grade civics benchmarks and the role of the benchmark clarifications? Then we would like to bring you in to the Lou Frey Institute on the 13th and 14th of June to work on helping us develop items for EOCA practice and review!

This will be a two day session. While the agenda is still being crafted, it will be led by our Dr. Terri Fine and yours truly. Day One will provide and overview and experience with the process and Day Two will give you the opportunity to write items! You will be compensated for your time, travel, and effort. We are hoping to recruit up to ten folks for this project, and would like at least regional diversity in participants. If you are interested, please shoot me an email, describing your teaching experience, item writing experience if any, and your district and school. Once we have ten folks, we will be ready to go. Thanks for your willingness to help your fellow teachers here in Florida!


Florida African American History Task Force Summer Institute

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AMHTaskForce

The Florida African American History Task Force here in Florida is recruiting participants for its summer institute! The Institute is June 16-18 in Tallahassee, and is definitely worth your time. The application is available here:
2016 Summer Institute Application.

EDIT! Please be advised that the deadline to submit applications for the 2016 AAHTF Summer Institute has been extended to Thursday, May 19th by 5:00 p.m. EST.


Florida: Alternative Civics and US History EOC Assessments

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Today’s post comes to us from the new Florida DOE Social Studies specialist, Mike DiPierro, by way of our own Peggy Renihan. Thank you, Peggy, for sharing this. 

Please consider participating in an opportunity to collaborate with the exceptional student education community. The task pertains to students taking ALTERNATIVE assessments for civics or U.S. history because they are on access points, regardless of their classroom placement. Therefore the standard civics or U.S. history end-of-course assessment does not apply to those students.

In order to build a more valid and reliable assessment tool for these students, the Florida Department of Education is looking for active teachers in these subjects, civics and U.S. history, to volunteer to participate.

The Bureau of K-12 Assessment is looking to add social studies teachers (middle school and high school) to the following meetings: June 14-15th and June 27-30th. For teachers not on contract, a stipend is paid to them as well as reimbursement for travel. Both trainings will take place in Orlando. Interested parties should reply to Angela.Nathaniel@fldoe.org no later than May 13, 2016.

Access Points


Teaching Controversial Topics Webinar

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webinar tci

 

The Teaching for Democracy Alliance, a worthwhile organization if there was one, is sponsoring and hosting a webinar on Tuesday, April 26th at 7pm featuring  iCivics, NCSS, CloseUp and the League of Women Voters, as well as nationally-recognized researcher Paula McAvoy. I have had the pleasure of attending a session with Dr. McAvoy on teaching controversial topics, and it is well worth your time. I encourage everyone to attend this webinar, especially since this election season continues to heat up. It is an interesting commnetary on our times that teaching about elections can be controversial; this webinar can help you understand how to approach this and other controversial topics. You can register for the webinar here. Hope to see you there!


The Florida Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference

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FCSS.1

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

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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)