Welcome Back SS Update
Secondary Social Studies August 2021
Welcome Back Awesome #PascoSocialStudies Teachers!
We hope that you and your families continue to be well and safe, and found time this summer to relax and recharge. As we launch a new year with a new set of challenges, we would like to thank you for your unconditional commitment to our profession and to your students. Thank you for being the teacher leaders you are… continuously learning and growing, reflecting and adjusting. Thank you for caring so much for those in your charge… colleagues, students, and families!
This year we will continue to send the monthly newsletter with updates, resources, and ideas to support Social Studies instruction. The newsletter will come to your inbox at the beginning of each month.This newsletter includes information to continue the momentum of the new school year and learning opportunities coming up. We know the first few weeks are extremely important to building relationships with your students, creating your classroom culture, and putting procedures in place. With that being said, we will leave you to that important work for the first few weeks of school.
Please do not hesitate to reach out to us with any questions in the next few weeks. We are excited that you are on our Pasco Social Studies team, and we look forward to working with you throughout the year!
Curriculum Resources 2021
As we reunite with our students this year back in the classroom, we will return to our learning networks aligned to our approved adopted resources; connections to focus standards; MTSS; and vetted assessments/resources. The Secondary Learning Network is a live resource, which we monitor throughout the year and make adjustments to every summer based on feedback from you, administrators, and coaches on what would make your work smoother. We also realize that teaching Social Studies in our current times, also means having to pivot with new standards, new required instruction, and new historical events. Each core course should have:
- Vocabulary focused on benchmark language
- Recommended
- Tier 2/ Tier 3 resources
- Essential Standards identified
- Identified lessons, tasks, and assessments.
- Aligned instructional resources to units
- Recommended digital apps/tools that align with learning.
- Required instructional mandates for the time frame.
Once again, this year, we understand that there is a likelihood that individual and potentially groups of students may need to be out throughout the year based on the status of COVID cases. Therefore, student facing courses were developed by Pasco teacher teams to continue the momentum with Canvas usage. These courses are aligned to our ELN/SLN and contain curriculum resources and some assessments. As always, we want to ensure the approved resources and curriculum are being used in the classroom, but the pedagogy and teacher craft is always alive and strongly encouraged, please use the aspects of core resources that best meet the needs of your students. When you need to make changes to the course to align for this purpose, we only advise that you unpublish modules/resources that you do not plan to use, versus delete. You never know when you may need a resource that is in the course, and once deleted it is hard for us to repair in individual pushed out courses.
Each Middle School course will also have an NHD- history fair module built within the course that teachers are able to use to assign and teach National History Day with their students, regardless of learning modality. Reminder that all our advanced courses have the expectation of an extensive research project as stated in Cpalms:
Honors and Advanced Level Course Note: Advanced courses require a greater demand on students through increased academic rigor. Academic rigor is obtained through the application, analysis, evaluation, and creation of complex ideas that are often abstract and multi-faceted. Students are challenged to think and collaborate critically on the content they are learning. Honors level rigor will be achieved by increasing text complexity through text selection, focus on high-level qualitative measures, and complexity of task. Instruction will be structured to give students a deeper understanding of conceptual themes and organization within and across disciplines. Academic rigor is more than simply assigning to students a greater quantity of work. Students will develop and demonstrate their skills through participation in a capstone and/or extended research-based paper/project (e.g., history fair, participatory citizenship project, mock congressional hearing, projects for competitive evaluation, or investment portfolio contests.)
Assessments: Quarterly checks will only be required for our two state EOC courses (Civics and High School US History). Quarterly checks for other courses are optional and will be made available for schools who would like to use them to progress monitor throughout the year.
District Finals will remain for all non-state tested courses. Please check your SLN course to see blueprints of assessed standards.
Required Instructional Mandates
A few immediate instructional mandates that will begin our school year:
September is noted as American Founder's Month
September 11th is noted as Patriot's Day
September 15th - October 15th is Hispanic Heritage Month
September 17th - Constitution Day
2021 All Staff Beginning of the Year Course
This image located on your myPascoConnect dashboard will take you to the 2021 All Staff Beginning of the Year Course. District departments have come together to create one place for all employees to access to the most important information necessary in order to ensure a successful start to the 2021-22 school year. Each of the departments have contributed to the creation of this course and have created acknowledgment quizzes for you to take in order to verify you have reviewed the required and optional materials. Please take some time to explore this resource.
Together We Learn ’21 Session Recordings NOW AVAILABLE on the PD Hub
Together We Learn ’21 Session Recordings NOW AVAILABLE on the PD Hub
Together We Learn ‘21 themed "Summer Time and the Learning is Easy" took place July 26, 27, & 28. Just over 2,000 dedicated teachers, school staff, and leaders attended 223 sessions of virtual learning. If you were unable to attend or would like to revisit any session recording please visit the TWL page on the main landing page of the PD hub. Enjoy!
Upcoming Professional Development
All trainings will be via zoom and participants will be registered for PD points through attendance of the virtual professional development and stipends provided.
September 9 - Economics Cross County PLC PD 5:00 - 6:30 PM.
MyPGS course: Course#1945/ Section 29713
David Scott from the USF Stavros Center will be joining us to help launch our year with tips and resources to engage students with Economics. Mr. Scott will be retiring at the end of the month, and has been a long standing educational partner to Pasco Schools - we highly encourage you to join us if you are able to.
Early Release 21-22 Overview
We are excited to share with you our plan for early release 21-2. All general education classroom teachers (including departmentalized teachers), ESE support facilitators, Speech Language Pathologists and academic interventionists will participate in professional learning workshop facilitated by District staff, school-based coach(es), admin and/or teacher leaders focused on Uplifting Literacy in Pasco County Schools.​ ​
Dates for the early release are:
September 8th
October 6th
November 10th
December 8th
January 12th
February 2nd
March 9th
DBQ Online
We are excited to be continuing DBQ online for teachers and students to have on their myPascoConnect platform. DBQs enhance student's ability to think critically and express their thinking through well crafted writing. DBQs are also a great way to expose students to history through primary and secondary sources. This year our content Early Release Day professional development plans will center around using DBQs to support required instruction.
Please, watch this 5-minute video on the first 3 steps for you and your students.
Getting Started Resources
- Getting Started Video
- Student DBQ Online instructions- please post and Send this link to Students. Great Saving tips!
Getting Started Resources
- Teacher Login Instructions through
- Classlink/Launchpad portal
· Classes and Students will be rostered for you in DBQ Online
Click on Classes and assignments, you will see your classes listed. Additionally, your students will automatically be listed in your roster.
When students click on DBQ Online app in ClassLink, they will see their classes and assignments. Students can ignore the need to enter in a classcode.
Begin by creating assignments,
Need some more help?
Click here to schedule or sign-up for an upcoming webinar. or email dbqprojectpd@dbqproject.com
SEL Learning Network
NIE - Newspapers in Education
Teachers can request free copies of the Tampa Bay Times for their classroom through the Tampa Bay Times Newspaper in Education (NIE) program. Click the NIE icon to get more information and to learn about additional free educational resources for your classroom provided by the Times Newspaper in Education program.
NIE has developed a new civics publication last school year that can support your required instruction for September. It is available on our website and will be available in the special sections area of our digital edition when school begins.
Democracy requires sharing power with people you may not know, trust or agree with. Of course, there is a diversity of thought and ideals. The American Experiment is aspirational and assumes that the optimism of the human spirit propels people forward. The ultimate questions are: What does it take for a free people to govern themselves? Are we up to the task? Learn about the origins of the American experiment and what it takes to be an engaged citizen in this publication, produced in partnership with Florida Humanities.
Teachers and students can access the PDF:
- Go to tampabay.com/nie
- Under the Curriculum tab, click on Social Studies
USF Stavros Center
ECONOMICS AND THE AGE OF EXPLORATION: CAUSE, COURSE, AND CONSEQUENCES
- Tuesday, August 17, 2021
- 5:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.
- Webinar via Microsoft TEAMS
LITERATURE’S LESSONS ON ECONOMICS AND OPPORTUNITY: 10 TITLES FROM THE FLORIDA B.E.S.T STANDARDS FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS
- Tuesday, August 24, 2021
- 5:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.
- Webinar via Microsoft TEAMS
FREEDOM, FOUNDING FATHERS, FEARLESS FEMALES, AND FINANCIAL DECISION-MAKING
- Thursday, August 26, 2021
- 5:00 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.
- Webinar via Microsoft TEAMS
On The Horizon -
- The NHD theme for 2021- 2022 competition is "Debate & Diplomacy" - please start having students brainstorm around topics for the annual theme.
- An NHD Lead meeting will be held at the end of September.
Teacher Growth Opportunities
Gateway to American Government Webinar
Announcing Innovative Classroom Projects!
Every teacher has creative and innovative ideas to help their students engage in learning. Last year, this program provided over $50,000 to teachers across Pasco County extra resources they needed to inspire learning amongst their students. Visit our website for the new application and guidelines! Deadline to apply is September 13, 2021!
Save the Date: FCSS 64th Annual Conference
FCSS 64th Annual Conference
This Year's Theme: To Form a More Perfect Union
We hope to see you October 15th and 16th online and in person at The Florida Hotel & Conference Center at the Florida Mall in Orlando.
2022 SOURCES Annual Conference Proposals
Please consider submitting a proposal for the 2022 SOURCES Annual Conference (https://www.sourcesconference.com). It will be held on the campus of the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida on Saturday, January 15, 2022. As always, the conference is free to attend and is open to any and all educators interested in the teaching of primary sources to K-12 student populations. Presenters will provide strategies for using primary sources to help K-12 students engage in learning, develop critical thinking skills, and build content knowledge, specifically in one or more of the following ways:
- Justifying conclusions about whether a source is primary or secondary, depending upon the time or topic under study;
- Describing examples of the benefits of teaching with primary sources;
- Analyzing a primary source using Library of Congress tools;
- Accessing teaching tools and primary sources from www.loc.gov/teachers;
- Identifying key considerations for selecting primary sources for instructional use (for example, student needs and interests, teaching goals, etc.);
- Accessing primary sources and teaching resources from www.loc.gov for instructional use;
- Analyzing primary sources in different formats;
- Analyzing a set of related primary sources in order to identify multiple perspectives;
- Demonstrating how primary sources can support at least one teaching strategy (for example, literacy, inquiry-based learning, historical thinking, etc.); and
- Presenting a primary source-based activity that helps students engage in learning, develop critical thinking skills, and construct knowledge.
For more information about the SOURCES Conference and to submit a proposal, visit the conference web site (https://www.sourcesconference.com), or email Scott Waring (swaring@ucf.edu) with any questions. Proposals need to be submitted by Thursday, September 30, 2021 in order to be properly reviewed for possible inclusion.
Thank you for your consideration and for teaching with primary sources!
Scott M. Waring, Ph.D.
Professor and Program Coordinator of Social Science Education
Director of the Teaching with Primary Sources Program at UCF
SS Virtual Office Hours
Topic: Social Studies Office Hours
Time: Aug 23, 2021 03:00 - 03:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87469864413?pwd=Vlg3Q1RqcTM1eVpGSmNDcHlKajBlUT09
Meeting ID: 874 6986 4413
Passcode: SSRocks
Social Studies Teachers Know How to Kick Off The New Year
Jack Miller Session - Planning Week
GMS MYP Planning
USF Stavros TWL Session
Tina Stavrou-Klem, Sr. Instructional Specialist, K-12 Social Studies
Email: astavrou@pasco.k12.fl.us
Website: https://pasco.instructure.com/courses/225141
Location: 7227 Land O' Lakes Boulevard, Land O Lakes, FL, USA
Phone: (813)794-2247
Twitter: @PascoSocStudies
Erika Simmons, PD Specialist, K-12 Social Studies
Email: earellan@pasco.k12.fl.us
Website: https://pasco.instructure.com/courses/225141
Location: 7227 Land O' Lakes Boulevard, Land O Lakes, FL, USA
Phone: 813-794-2247
Twitter: @SocStudiesPasco