Using STEM in the Social Studies: Taking action

Scott Noet and Kim Gilman (my good buddy from Shawnee, Kansas) met as Goethe TOP Fellows several years ago. And now they’re partnering up to share some of their best ideas about how to move students from analysis to action using STEM activities.

Kim says that we spend a ton of time focusing on helping kids to perfect their analysis skills. Nothing wrong with that. But we can’t forget that we also need to be helping kids take action – to actually using their analysis skills to make the world a better place.

I especially love a couple of things they shared:

Creating both great producers and consumers of information

I’m in snowy and snowing Minnesota at its annual Council for the Social Studies conference. We’re sheltered inside the state History Center – what better place for a bunch of social studies teachers?

First session is right up my alley. Strengthening democracy by training kids to be better users of social media and online tools. Jennifer Bloom from the Learning Law and Democracy Foundation is helping us create socially responsible and informed citizens. The Foundation hosts the Teaching Civics website – a cool place with over 800 lesson plans. They also have some handy ed resources.

As we get better at training kids to be engaged and informed citizens, she says

Teaching Toolkit: 9 resources for discussing the government shutdown

As a poly sci junkie, I’m torn.

The 2018 government shutdown is bad for just about everybody. And it seems like it happened over something that most Americans want to see happen – protection for Dreamers. A Fox News poll says 86% of us support DACA. A CBS poll reports 87% supporting the idea.

But the shutdown does create an opportunity to jump into all sorts of conversations involving civics and procedure and policy and elections and checks and balances and three branches and  media bias . . . well, you get the idea. If you haven’t already, this week might be a good time to jump ship on your scheduled curriculum and spend some time making connections to the government side of the social studies.

Need a few quick resources?

Tip of the Week: 32 New SHEG Civic Literacy Teaching Tools

We all love the Stanford History Education Group. What’s not to like? You get incredible lessons aligned to the NCSS C3 standards. And for us Kansas folks, they aligned perfectly to our state standards. They great for training kids to use evidence, think historically, and develop arguments with evidence.

You get powerful assessments that they call HATs – historical assessments of thinking. Short and sweet, easy to use, summative and formative assessments that help you measure a student’s ability to use evidence, think historically, and develop arguments with evidence.

Yup. The two go hand in glove. Tools for teaching and tools for assessing social studies process skills.

And if you’re not using these two free tools . . . might I suggest you head over and take a look? Cause your brain is about to be blown. Seriously. This is a non-negotiable tool that every history teacher should be using. Cause even if you don’t use their lessons, they’re great as models for your own lessons. And be sure to steal all of their modified primary sources.

So we’ve got super awesome lessons, assessments, lesson support all coordinated by Sam Wineburg – historical thinking guru and all around history teaching genius.

But SHEG just got better.

Yup. Better.

Our job? Show them what expansive, embracing, oxygenated democracy can look like

An essay and lecture by Time’s Nancy Gibb’s recently caught my attention. I wasn’t looking for it. But in between several other tasks, I happened to pick up the latest issue. And there she was.

I’ve been thinking about civic engagement a lot lately. And how important it is. About how we’ve not done a very good job of teaching those skills to our students. About how that is now coming back to bite us in the butt.

This isn’t anything new to most of you. We all see divisiveness. We read hate. We hear attacks. So do our kids. Civil discourse. Compromise. The greater good. Melting pot. We’re all in this together. All things that seem to be in short supply.

The cool thing is that our students want that to change. And are willing to help make it happen. Our job? Simple.

Tip of the Week: 11 Awesome Constitution Day Resources You Know You Need

We all know the story. A group of guys from different parts of the country with different ideas of how to govern got together and came up with a pretty amazing document. It’s a great story with a pretty amazing cast. (I’m looking at you #Hamilton.) And we all have our favorite actors in that story. My fave?

Ben Franklin.

He’s kind of like the sleeper pick in your fantasy football league – everyone knows he’s out there but they ignore him because all the focus is on Jefferson or Madison or one of the other first rounders. But you draft him anyway cause you know he’s got the skills.

Ben was smart, irreverent, great with people, well-read, the ladies loved him, he had that whole kite / electricity / scientist thing working, and was by far the best part of 1776 and John Adams. What’s not to love?

And so it’s fun to go back and read some of what Ben had to say about the document he was preparing to sign in 1787: