Category Archives: conference

Introducing Lori Rice: Kansas Council for the Social Studies Judy Cromwell Excellence in Teaching Award Elementary Teacher of the Year

November 5, 2018best practice, Civic Engagement, conference, curriculum, Kansas Department of Education, strategiesKori Green

Lori Rice KCSS Excellence in Teaching Award recipient.

You might recognize Lori from her previous posts here on Doing Social Studies.

And now you’ll be able to greet her as the KCSS Excellence in Teaching Award winner.

The award is named in honor of Judy Cromwell, a social studies teacher in the Topeka area for over 38 years. Intended to reward and encourage high quality instruction in the social studies, KCSS selects one winner at the elementary and secondary levels.

Not only is Lori our elementary winner but she also won the Kansas Department of Education Social Studies Teacher of the Year. Needless to say, she’s a fantastic educator and we’re so happy to have her here in Kansas.

Lori Rice currently works at West Elementary in Wamego as a fourth grade teacher. While she is responsible for teaching all content areas, it has been her goal to “teach social studies standards even when these are often neglected due to mathematics and reading instruction taking priority.”

Lori integrates the social studies curriculum into every aspect of her classroom, as described by a colleague: Continue reading Introducing Lori Rice: Kansas Council for the Social Studies Judy Cromwell Excellence in Teaching Award Elementary Teacher of the Year →

Joel Breakstone & his SHEG civic reasoning tools just rocked #kssscon2018

October 29, 2018Civic Engagement, civics, conference, government, primary sources, strategiesCivic Engagement, civics, stanford, stanford history education groupglennw

joel 3 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.

Dr. Joel Breakstone, SHEG director, shared the keynote at the 2018 Kansas Social Studies conference this morning. He’s also presenting a couple of breakout sessions.

But this morning, he shared about how SHEG just got better.

joel 2

Continue reading Joel Breakstone & his SHEG civic reasoning tools just rocked #kssscon2018 →

Saving Kiribati and the Kansas Social Studies conference. Two great things that go great together

October 15, 2018conference, engaging, historical thinking, strategiesconference, design thinking, historical thinkingKori Green

Still on the fence about the 2018 Kansas Social Studies Conference? Not sure about meeting and listening to Joel Breakstone from the Stanford History Education Group share ways to engage kids in online civic literacy? Thinking about whether or not asking Don Gifford from KSDE questions about the new and improved state standards and assessments? Perhaps the free food and drinks at Sunday’s evening reception just hasn’t been enough to jumpstart your registration process.

Maybe all you need is the chance to listen to a couple of the many awesome presenters who’ll be sharing their best stuff at the conference.

Casey Krouse and Dylan Owings from Pleasant Ridge Middle School in Overland Park are asking their students to think about and solve authentic problems – like the problem facing the Pacific island country of Kiribati. Rising ocean levels are erasing areas of land and could soon engulf the entire nation. Their students are attacking the problem by using Design Thinking.

During their conference presentation on Monday, October 29, 2018 at 10:30am, Casey and Dylan will share their lessons and instructional designs. So. Are you looking for a new way to address climate change in the classroom? Curious about the Design process? In their hands-on lessons, students work through Stanford’s Design Thinking Process to develop empathy for Pacific Islanders affected by sea level rise and engage in real world problem solving. Come learn more about how you can adapt their lessons to your classroom.

Learn more about rising sea levels on Kiribati by viewing this CBS News overview. Then head over to the Kansas Social Studies conference site and get that registration started!

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2018 GLI Teacher of the Year & conference presenter Thomas Fulbright asks: Why does what happened in 1890 still matter?

October 2, 2018conferenceKori Green

There are over 45 sessions, breakouts, workshops, and keynotes at the 2018 Kansas Social Studies conference. Most of those will be led by teachers doing awesome stuff in the classroom. And there are at least four former state history teachers of the year doing presentations.

That’s not counting the current 2018 Gilder-Lehrman Kansas History Teacher of the Year Thomas Fulbright. Thomas will be sharing some of his teacher of the year secrets on Monday morning at the Kansas Conference.

During his session titled Why What Happened in 1882 Still Matters, Thomas will be highlighting how his US history students use an analysis of past government policy debates to create advice for current policy makers debating similar contemporary policies.

Get a teaser from an earlier Doing Social Studies post and then make plans to attend his session on Monday, October 29, 9:30-10:20am in MU 250D of the ESU Memorial Union.

Doing Social Studies

This week’s post comes from Thomas Fulbright:

“I have been teaching history at Hope Street Academy, a public charter school, in Topeka since 2008. My wife and I have three daughters, Claire, Nora, and Meredith. I intend to spend my entire life convincing them how exciting and important history is! My bio picture is of Claire and I meeting President Lincoln!”

During the summer of 2016, I was lucky enough to attend the Gilder Lehrman teacher seminar American Foreign Policy since 1898, led by Dr. Jeremi Suri from the University of Texas. The seminar was going very well – until in an offhand comment, Dr. Suri implied that the way I teach history is bad for our democracy.

At that time, I was teaching my class using Structured Academic Controversies, following the model of Stanford History Education Group. His basic argument was I focus too much on having students judge the…

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Buzzworthy Social Hour, KS SS conference, and engaging project smackdown

September 25, 2018conference, Derek Schutte, professional development, TJ Warsnakbuzzworthy, conference, joel breakstone, sheg, stanford history education groupKori Green

If you’re on the fence about making the trip to Emporia for this year’s Kansas SocialStudies Conference, take a quick listen to a podcast from Buzzworthy Productions aka TJ Warsnak and Derek Schutte of Halstead High School. In this edition of The Social Hour podcast, TJ and Derek display their own unique flair while sharing excitement for the direction the discipline is taking, battling it out in a social studies most engaging project smackdown, and highlighting some of the topics they’ll be sharing during their session at the conference.

Catch The Social Hour Podcast by clicking the link below:

The 2018 Kansas Social Studies conference targets the teaching and learning of historical thinking skills and assessments with a special focus on creating civically engaged students.

In addition to TJ and Derek’s Buzzworthy Productions, there are over 45 breakout sessions during this year’s conference including keynotes by Joel Breakstone, executive director of the Stanford History Education Group. Joel will focus on SHEG’s latest online civic literacy tools and share tips and tricks for using their award winning lessons and assessments.

The conference is October 28 and 29 at the Emporia State University student union. Get all the details and registration information at the conference website here.

And be sure to catch all the TJ and Derek Buzzworthy goodness during their breakout session:

Adding BuzzWorthy Engagement to the Social Studies
Monday October 29
9:30 am – 10:20 am
Blue Key Room
ESU Memorial Union 2nd Floor

Can we combine civic engagement, technology and project based learning in a cohesive way? You bet we can, and when we do, our classes become more engaging. Check out our methods of how we combine these three components to expand learning opportunities and make your classes more buzzworthy. Hear about a new projects that can easily be integrated into your classes as well as how to use Google Sites as a basis for future designs. Join us for a a fun session full of ideas, laughs and some new teaching designs.

Both TJ and Derek are active on Twitter and can be reached at:
@thewarsnack
@coachshutte