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- Housekeeping: Election tomorrow!
- Microteaching
- Hannah P.
- Riley B.
- Danielle C.
- Conceptual work: (Finally!) Digging into civics ed
- Civics is special
- It's the one example of a high-stakes content area within social studies, at least for some folks. Proof: USCIS flashcards.
- It's the single most-applied area of social studies? (handwashing example)
- It's the 'Prime Directive' of social studies
- I think it's the key to good work in other disciplines such as history, geography
- All other disciplines appear within it
- I struggle with it, at least the elementary level – there are a LOT of things that could be called 'civics'...but they're very, very different
- So what does this look like??
- Materials from the Center for Civic Education
- K-2 materials (Foundations of Democracy Primary)
- grades 3-4 materials (Foundations of Democracy Elementary)
- "We the People" elementary materials.
- (And apropos of not much: their "60-Second Civics" podcast– I think it helps illustrate a tension at work in what we call civics ed.)
- ...de-brief
- Materials from iCivics
- About page – be sure to check out some of the info under "Our Impact" to get a sense of what grade(s) they think this is for and how they feel they're doing.
- Scope-and-sequence – just get a sense for what topics and methods they have going on. Note that they don't make any statements about what grade levels should work on which topics!
- Games – these are all Flash-based and therefore might not work on some mobile devices. I picked a timely one: "Cast Your Vote"
- ...de-brief
- And now some other materials, that you'll hopefully have more context for by this point
- Yes, that "Schoolhouse Rock" video that everyone remembers. (More of the same here.) My question is: Which vision of civics is this about?
- From the US Dept of Ed: "Helping Your Child Become a Responsible Citizen"– again, I'm after the question of 'what kind of civics do we have here?' If you search for different terms, you'll get a sense (e.g., search for 'vote' vs. 'moral')
- Returning again to the USCIS – they have a "Citizens Almanac" that is, if nothing else, a source of interesting things to hang on your classroom wall....
- So where does this leave us?
- Materials from the Center for Civic Education
- Civics is special
- Closure
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