Category Archives: standards

Guest Post: NCSS Publishes New Help for Social Studies Educators

best practice, common core, Don Gifford, professional development, standards

Don Gifford, KSDE Social Studies Content Specialist, has been kind enough to provide a guest commentary on the C3 Framework published by NCSS this week.  You can find a link to the Framework here.

NCSS Publishes New Help for Social Studies Educators  by Don Gifford, KSDE

College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: State Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History

 The National Council for the Social Studies has just released a framework for enhancing the rigor of Social Studies education.  Over the past several years the Kansas Department of Education (KSDE) and a couple of Kansas teachers have been involved in crafting and reviewing this work.  The September edition of Social Education, a publication of NCSS, has several articles about the process and content of this framework.  The intent of my writing today is to demonstrate the alignment with the Kansas History, Government, and Social Studies Standards and encourage the use of this document writing curriculum and designing units of study.  Continue reading Guest Post: NCSS Publishes New Help for Social Studies Educators →

Guest Post: Don Gifford “Mining or Archeology?”

common core, Don Gifford, professional development, standards

One of the pleasures of working with KCSS is the many people I get to come in contact with.  One of those people is our KSDE Social Studies Specialist, gifford Mr. Don Gifford.  He has agreed to do some guest posts for the Doing Social Studies blog.  Here is his first of hopefully many more to come…  BB

“In my current role as the History, Government, Social Studies Consultant for the Kansas State Department of Education I am constantly looking for ways to communicate the differences between our previous standards and the new standards adopted this spring by the Kansas Board of Education. Continue reading Guest Post: Don Gifford “Mining or Archeology?” →

Primary source lessons aligned to the Common Core

common core, Glenn Wiebe, historical thinking, lesson plans, primary sources, standards, , , ,

There’s an elephant in the room. We all know it. Somebody needs to say something. So . . . here goes.

School starts soon. There. I said it.

For a lot of you, you’re just a few weeks away and excited about getting back in the classroom again. You’ve had a few months to relax, read, research, to re-charge a bit. And now with school start dates just around the corner, you’re looking for handy resources.

How about some sweet primary source lesson plans aligned to the Common Core? Well . . . the National Archives has got you covered.

Seriously. If you haven’t made it over to the National Archives Education page, you are missing out. Lesson plans. Professional development stuff. Handy graphic organizers. It’s one of those sites that is non-negotiable for social studies people. If you’re not taking advantage of all of that goodness, you’re not as good a teacher as you could be. It’s just that simple.

But NARA has lots of other goodies out there.

DocsTeach is one of the those. Continue reading Primary source lessons aligned to the Common Core →

HGSS + KCCRS = Integrated Lessons

common core, historical thinking, Mary Madden, professional development, standards, ,

I spent last Friday at a workshop in Salina with a group of fifty dedicated teachers learning how to implement the new History, Government, and Social Studies standards in their districts. It was “training the trainers” as districts look at writing curriculum and implementing best practices, literacy expectations, standards and benchmarks. Continue reading HGSS + KCCRS = Integrated Lessons →

Fact Pyramid / Because Box graphic organizer

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I had the privilege of working with 40 middle school social studies teachers last week. It’s the last few days of a three year Teaching American History grant and, yes . . . some teared up a bit towards the end. It’s been a great ride. We’ve all learned a ton – both content and pedagogy.

Last week, we enjoyed the sweetness of working with three history studs –  Mark Fiege, Elliott West, and Thomas Andrews – while also learning more about the best ways to incorporate their history content into actual lessons.

Master Teacher Nathan McAlister walked us through a variety of learning activities including panning for gold, cutting up buffalo, and arguing pros/cons of fracking during a city council meeting.

One of the smaller activities we did was a bit simpler and much easier for you to drop directly into your instruction. So I figured I would share it with all of you. Continue reading Fact Pyramid / Because Box graphic organizer →