ESSDACK PLC meets Russel Tarr & ClassTools. Everyone gets smarter.

We had just spent an hour or so using Russel Tarr’s simple but powerful Breaking News Generator. I wanted to talk a bit about online civic literacy and combating fake news. So I had asked our ESSDACK social studies PLC that had gotten together to use Russel’s tool to create two different stories – a factual Breaking News story and one that was biased or fake.

And, of course, the group came through in typical fashion.

The activity led to a great conversation around effective tools and resources that teachers and students can use while accessing and organizing online information. But it also led to another discussion about all of the tools available at Russel’s awesome ClassTools.net site.

Most of the group hadn’t heard of or used ClassTools.net before. So we explored some other tools including Headline Generator:

Tip of the Week: Forget the gym. These 5 New Year’s resolutions are what you really need

You’re right. Most New Year’s resolutions are made closer to the actual New Year. But it’s still January . . . so I’m good, right?

And it’s never too late to make a few 2019 social studies resolutions. Best place to start? Asking questions about our current practice, especially during this middle of the year period: What’s working? What’s not? What do my students need? What resource needs to be phased out? How can I get better?

The middle of the school year is a perfect time to think about these sorts of questions. In that spirit, here are five New Year’s resolutions every social studies teacher should make:

Yup. It’s both / and. Your kids need a balance of process and content

I had the chance this week to spend two days with 13 social studies teachers as we continued our work on revising the state social studies standards.

Way back in 2011, we started the same basic process. State regulations require a standards review every few years. Most times, the whole business is usually an empty exercise – fix a few typos, move some sections around, update the list of review committee members.

But eight years ago, with some excellent leadership from department of ed social studies consultant Don Gifford, we jerked the process off the rails and moved away from a content-based standards document to one focused on process and skills. At the time, it was a major philosophical shift.

We created five standards:

History Nerdfest 2018: Encouraging Historical Thinking Through Picture Books

It ranks right up there with the Holiday season, KC Chiefs football, and the first weekend of the college basketball tournament. It’s National Council for the Social Studies conference week. I’m lucky enough to get front row seats and am trying to live blog my way through it.

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I’ve always been a fan of Dr. Dan Krutka. While in the Kansas area and now at the University of North Texas, Dan has always been a huge supporter of social studies and integrating tech. And the cool thing is he’s here at #ncss18 talking about how to use picture books to support elementary social studies best practices. Even better? My new friend Dr. Michelle Bauml from Texas Christian University is here as co-presenter.

I’m smarter just being in the same room.

They start with the basics. Why should we be using picture books to help teach social studies?

• emphasis on math and reading so very little for social studies specific instruction
• textbooks are old and boring
• need for teaching introducing historical thinking to kids
• lots of children’s lit already being used as teaching tools

We moved on to a brand new site for me called the Historical Thinking Project. Created by the Canadian government, the project highlight six historical thinking concepts and a ton of resources. The concepts are especially useful because we can use them to help develop essential questions around the content in picture books.

• Establish historical significance
• Use primary source evidence
• Identify continuity and change
• Analyze cause and consequence
• Take historical perspectives, and
• Understand the ethical dimension of historical interpretations.

Dan and Michelle simple steps to designing a lesson using the concepts and book content:

History Nerdfest 2018: Using Structured Academic Controversy to teach 21st century skills

It ranks right up there with the Holiday season, KC Chiefs football, and the first weekend of the college basketball tournament. It’s National Council for the Social Studies conference week. I’m lucky enough to get front row seats and am trying to live blog my way through it.

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Like most of you, I first ran across the Structured Academic Controversy idea via Sam Wineburg and his Stanford History Education Group’s Reading Like a Historian curriculum. Specifically SHEG’s Was Lincoln a Racist lesson. But there’s always been that sense that Wineburg and his troop of SHEG geniuses adapted the strategy to fit their needs. And maybe I’ve been doing it wrong. So thanks Georgia Brown from Grayslake, Illinois who led a conversation this afternoon about what it can look like outside the SHEG universe.

So let’s start with the basics. What is a Structured Academic Controversy?

It’s a cooperative learning strategy developed brothers David and Roger Johnson to engage small groups of students in the discussion of controversial issues. Through a series of steps, add to their understanding of an issue or question. After students have fully explored and analyzed the pro and con arguments on an issue or question, they work as a group to reach a consensus on the issue.

So it’s not a debate. There are no winners and losers here. We’re just trying to find the best answer to the question. But looking at pros and cons gives kids the chance to look at multiple perspectives without the pressure of having to “win.”

Feel free to head over to the original Johnson brothers article and get their research and instructions. And you’re done. But we had a great conversation about what it can look like in the classroom so don’t be afraid to head back here for a few more tips and tricks.

Georgia started with the basic steps in the process she uses:

History Nerdfest 2018: Fostering Civil Dialogue

It ranks right up there with the Holiday season, KC Chiefs football, and the first weekend of the college basketball tournament. It’s National Council for the Social Studies conference week. I’m lucky enough to get front row seats and am trying to live blog my way through it.

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If there’s a theme running through my choose of session this week, this would be it. How can we encourage and support conversations around controversial topics? How can we tie current events to broader topics and past events without . . . you know, setting stuff on fire and throwing desks?

First session of the day is a focus on that issue. The Newseum and the Religious Freedom Center are part of the larger Freedom Forum Institute. The Institute concentrates on the first five constitutional Amendments and this morning, Ben and Jessi are walking us through how we can protect the Amendments through civil conversations.

And full transparency . . . I’m a Newseum fanboy. Their @NewseumEd stuff is phenomenal. So start there and then come back here.

Informed and respectful are the buzzwords for this morning – with a specific focus on religious freedom and the First Amendment. A problem that Jessi points out is that most students have no idea of what the First Amendment protects and what rights it ensures.

Ben points out the two parts of the Amendment’s free exercise and free establishment clauses. Public school teachers are required, by the establishment clause, to remain neutral around the topic of religion. Private school teachers are governed by the free exercise clause. But it still all comes down to teaching religion or teaching about religion. There’s a difference. What is allowed?

So . . . how can we facilitate civil discourse around religion (and other topics)?