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!

A Quick Look at Three Ways to Approach Picture Analysis

Posted on February 17, 2016 by stevemasy

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?

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.

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

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!

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!

What do we want in a social studies teacher?

Posted on January 7, 2016 by stevemasy

Recently, the National Council for the Social Studies released its National Standards for the Preparation of Social Studies Teachers guidance document for public review. If you are a parent, pre-service social studies teacher or teacher educator, current or former teacher, or, honestly, simply an engaged citizen with a concern for the future, I encourage you to check it out and provide them with feedback. The document, which runs about 23 pages, provides an overview of five core competencies that are important in social studies teacher education.

Each section of the report dives deeper into each of the core competencies. No doubt, there will be some comments raised about the inclusion of ‘social justice’, knowing that that particular term was once removed from standards of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (now the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation), for good or ill. I do appreciate the emphasis on inquiry, skills, and knowledge as having an equal role in teacher preparation, though the references to C3 could be an issue in states where that program is (unfortunately) not adopted.

As a civic educator, I cannot help but notice that there is a HUGE amount of attention paid to varying elements of civic education and competency. Obviously, if we consider that social studies is at the heart of instruction in good citizenship, this is important, but it’s ultimately necessary that these standards make clear that civics must necessarily connect to other content areas in our field, and I think they do that adequately.

You can review the standards here, and I encourage you to do so and reflect on them before you complete the survey here.

New Civics Certificate Program!

Posted on November 30, 2015 by stevemasy

Well, we here at the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship got some great news recently. Last year, I told you about our effort to create a civics certificate program for pre-service social studies teachers. Well, it gives me great pleasure to announce that the program here at UCF has been approved! While the program is, for budgetary, personnel, and university reasons, currently limited to University of Central Florida students, we hope in the future to create a graduate version of the program that we can offer to practicing teachers. We also hope to establish this certificate in other academic institutions across the state!
So what will this program involve? Well, the idea behind the certificate is that it will
provide the content, skills, and pedagogies needed to deliver instruction for 7th grade Civics in Florida. This would, we hope, improve the teacher’s ability to prepare their kids for the Civics EOCA at the end of the course (NOT the naturalization test, mind you!). It will also, we believe, support US Government instruction in high school, especially as there is some overlap across the benchmarks. It is open to UCF students who meet the following requirements:

3.0 GPA in major
Completion of POS 2041 (American National Government) with at least a C.
One page letter of intent: ‘Why does civics teaching matter?’
Admission (or pending admission) to Social Science Education BS program

The program sequence is focused on best preparing students for the course that they will hopefully teach, and it includes an internship component that focuses on local government. After all, what better practice can you get to teach civics than to actually see civics in action at the local level! The course sequence is provided below:

12 Credit Hours:

POS 4932: Teaching American Politics and Government
POS 3272: Civic Engagement
POS 4941: Internship in Florida Local Government
SSE 4932: Teaching Civics in Florida

We will be hosting an open house here at the Lou Frey Institute on Tuesday, 01 December at 5pm to talk more about this exciting new program! We hope to see you here. :)

Social Studies and the Young Learner Interest Survey

Posted on November 24, 2015 by stevemasy

Our good friend Dr. Scott Waring, Program Coordinator and Associate Professor for the Social Science Education Program at the University of Central Florida, is the new editor for the National Council for the Social Studies’ journal focusing on the teaching of social studies in the Pre-K-6 classroom, Social Studies and the Young Learner. The goal of Social Studies and the Young Learner (http://www.socialstudies.org/publications/ssyl) is to capture and enthuse Pre-K-6 teachers across the country by providing relevant and useful information about the teaching of social studies. The teaching techniques presented are designed to stimulate the reading, writing, and critical thinking skills vital to classroom success. SSYL is published quarterly: September/October; November/December; January/February; and March/April.

Dr. Waring has asked for help as he assumes editorship of the journal. If you have a few minutes, please complete this short survey that will allow him to plan future issues and give practitioners what they desire in SSY L. Any guidance you can give on what you would like to see would be much appreciated!

If you wish to share with others, the link is also below!

http://ucf.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_aXYqeCoqcwY3rOR

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Florida Middle School Civics EOCA Review Resources