The Social Studies Connection
A Newsletter for Secondary Social Studies Teachers in CCS
Preparing students for success in college, career, and civic life
If you missed last month's edition of the Social Studies Connection, click here.
Matthew I. Doran
Office of Teaching & Learning
Curriculum Division
Southland Center
January 2021
In this edition:
- Curriculum and Instruction: Bringing the Frameworks Together: Preparing for Second Semester
- Curriculum and Instruction: New AP Pacing Guides from the College Board
- Curriculum and Instruction: The Electoral College and Presidential Inauguration C-SPAN Resources
- Ohio's State Tests: Updated Quick Review Guides
- Ohio's State Tests: Mastery Connect Assessment Platform
- Professional Development: February 3 District PD Day
- Professional Development: Virtual PD Calendar with 2021 Updates
- Professional Development: Professional Leave/Spring Virtual Conferences
- Virtual Learning Resources: Google Drawings Graphic Organizers
- Virtual Learning Resources: Social Studies Virtual Learning Padlet of Padlets
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Bringing the Frameworks Together: Preparing for Second Semester
One of the realities that we have encountered in virtual teaching is that we often need to adjust the pacing and overall scope of courses to ensure that students are mastering the concepts. This year we have shared three frameworks that can help with this process as teachers plan for the remainder of the year. Below is a summary of how these frameworks could work together in helping you plan for student success.
The Big Ideas and Overarching Essential Questions
The Big Ideas provide students with a clear vision, purpose, and focus for social studies instruction across all courses. This year, all CCS social studies courses are mapped to the Big Six Ideas: Change, Democracy, Diversity, Evidence, Justice, and Power. As you unpack content in the second semester, select the people, places, events, and ideas that best illustrate these Big Six. Revisit content addressed earlier in the year and connect it to new content via the Overarching Essential Questions. Synchronous and asynchronous class discussions allow students to wrestle with the ideas and questions.
Visible Learning
The Visible Learning framework demonstrates that learning is not an event, but rather a process in which students move from surface-level learning to deep learning, and then onto the transfer of concepts, skills, and strategies. With the Big Six Ideas in mind, establish some transfer goals for the second semester. What are some of the most important take-aways (content and skills) that students can apply beyond the specific unit of study and course? Determine the key conceptual understandings to unpack at the surface and deep level that will help students meet these transfer goals.
Clarifying Content Priorities
The Clarifying Content Priorities framework is a helpful tool in planning standards-based instruction. Under constraints, and with high stakes, it is imperative to focus on Priority 1 and 2 content. Priority 2 content consists of paths to mastery of Priority 1. Priority 3 may helpful to add some additional context or enrichment, but it should not be the main focus of instruction. Priority 1 content will flow from the Big Ideas, transfer goals, and key conceptual understandings.
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New AP Pacing Guides from the College Board
From the College Board:
The guide for your subject can help you assign the AP Daily videos and topic questions necessary for student-led learning each week, using the reports generated by these topic questions to focus your limited, direct class time on the areas where students need more help to develop their knowledge and skills by May. It is designed for classrooms that have only completed approximately 25% of typical course content by January.
The guide shows how students can make up the pace by completing approximately 30 minutes of AP Daily videos and topic questions per night, in lieu of or in addition to teacher-led learning and other class assignments.
Download the 2021 Pacing Guides here.
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The Electoral College and Presidential Inauguration C-SPAN Resources
On Wednesday, January 6, both chambers of Congress will convene to count the electoral votes cast in the states on December 14. Tune in at 1:00 p.m. for gavel-to-gavel coverage of a joint session of Congress to count and certify Electoral College ballots (C-SPAN, C-SPAN Radio, and c-span.org). Use the following resources to help teach about Congress’ role in the electoral college and this final step in the electoral college process.
- Clip: The Counting of Electoral Votes in Congress (1:40)
- Clip: Sen. McConnell on the Trump Admin. and the Electoral College Results (10 Clips)
- Clip: How does the Electoral College Work? (3:06)
- Bell Ringer: Electors in the Electoral College (4:06)
Live, Wednesday, January 20, beginning at 10:00 a.m., Inauguration Day: Join C-SPAN for coverage of the swearing in of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris (C-SPAN, C-SPAN Radio, and c-span.org).
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Ohio's State Tests
Updated Quick Review Guides for Ohio's State Tests
Recognizing the challenges involved with addressing large volumes of content this year, we can turn to some of our review resources in the coming months to help fill gaps. These resources are located on the Social Studies Assessment webpage.
The Quick Review Guides are designed as a 1-page (front/back) bullet-pointed review of the standards. These documents are updated and aligned with the current standards. If we return to some form of in-person learning, we will take orders for hard copies card stock versions. Please discard all previous hard copy card stock versions. In the meantime, you can download the digital version of American History here and American Government here.
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Mastery Connect Assessment Platform
It is important to note that just because an item is identified as aligned to a particular standard, does not make it so. Most publishing companies do an alignment by keyword matching, which is not an effective approach. Consequently, a large percentage of items (including those in the Certica Item Bank) are not actually aligned with Ohio's standards. The responsibility falls to teachers to vet each item before including it on an assessment. The District curriculum documents are especially helpful in helping teachers unpack the learning targets guide assessment alignment.
Mastery Connect is accessible via CCS Clever for teachers and students. A 30-minute video tutorial below provides an overview of Mastery Connect.
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Professional Development
February 3 District PD Day
A detailed schedule will be available later this month. This schedule will be posted on a custom website that allows viewers to see all sessions by department and by start time.
For social studies, we will continue our discussion from October on Visible Learning for Social Studies, with a focus on the Transfer phase of learning. Additional session information will be forthcoming by email and the February newsletter.
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Virtual PD Calendar with 2021 Updates
New opportunities have been added to the 2021 calendar, including virtual sessions from the American Historical Association (January) and the International Society for the Social Studies Virtual Conference (February).
You can access this calendar from the link here. A calendar link is also available on the Social Studies homepage under the Featured Resources column on the right side of the page. Be sure to check the calendar regularly as it updated at least once a week.
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Professional Leave/Spring Virtual Conferences
Social Studies teachers may be interested in using funds to attend either the National Council for History Education Conference (April 8-11, 2021) or the Organization of American Historians Virtual Conference on American History (April 15-18, 2021).
Requests for April conferences are due to HR by February 19, 2021. However, you may want to apply earlier before funds are depleted.
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Virtual Learning Resources
Google Drawings Graphic Organizers
This collection of over 30 graphic organizers was created by CCS Social Studies to align with many of the suggested organizers in the curriculum. Click on the link below to access.