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James Leslie

Texas board revises history books | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Texa... - 0 views

  • Meeting with several writing teams for social studies in all grade levels, the board asked for several revisions in the first drafts laying out the new standards for history, government and other social studies courses in Texas schools.
  • Meeting with several writing teams for social studies in all grade levels, the board asked for several revisions in the first drafts laying out the new standards for history, government and other social studies courses in Texas schools.
  • Meeting with several writing teams for social studies in all grade levels, the board asked for several revisions in the first drafts laying out the new standards for history, government and other social studies courses in Texas schools.
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  • Meeting with several writing teams for social studies in all grade levels, the board asked for several revisions in the first drafts laying out the new standards for history, government and other social studies courses in Texas schools.
  • Meeting with several writing teams for social studies in all grade levels, the board asked for several revisions in the first drafts laying out the new standards for history, government and other social studies courses in Texas schools.
  • Meeting with several writing teams for social studies in all grade levels, the board asked for several revisions in the first drafts laying out the new standards for history, government and other social studies courses in Texas schools.
  • When some board members questioned why former Secretary of State and four-star Gen. Colin Powell was being dropped from the standards for elementary grades, they were told that former President Ronald Reagan was being substituted for Powell. That ended the questions.
  • When some board members questioned why former Secretary of State and four-star Gen. Colin Powell was being dropped from the standards for elementary grades, they were told that former President Ronald Reagan was being substituted for Powell. That ended the questions.
  • When some board members questioned why former Secretary of State and four-star Gen. Colin Powell was being dropped from the standards for elementary grades, they were told that former President Ronald Reagan was being substituted for Powell. That ended the questions.
  • When some board members questioned why former Secretary of State and four-star Gen. Colin Powell was being dropped from the standards for elementary grades, they were told that former President Ronald Reagan was being substituted for Powell. That ended the questions.
  • Another board member, citing her own experiences in elementary school, called on one writing team to include the Liberty Bell as a historical artifact that should be studied by students.
  • Two of those experts, evangelical minister Peter Marshall of Massachusetts and Wallbuilders president David Barton of Aledo, were asked about their earlier recommendations to drop labor leader César Chávez and former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black member of the court, from the standards.
  • Marci Deal, social studies coordinator in the Hurst-Euless-Bedford school district, quickly cooled off one controversy that erupted when the writing team for sixth grade initially recommended that Christmas be dropped from a list of holidays of the major religions in a world cultures and geography course.
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    This article examines how the State of Texas went about designing new standards for history government and social studies. Also, there are comments that people have made for and against the new standards.
Elliot Borg

Smithsonian Education - Lesson Plans - History and Culture - 0 views

    • Elliot Borg
       
      The SI uses their extensive collections to provide teachers with excellent resources.
    • Elliot Borg
       
      The Smithsonian provides lesson plans about American and other cultures around the world, including Japanese internment, African American life, currency, and much more.
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    Site provides activities on history and culture, straight from the Smithsonian Institute. Primarily geared toward elementary students, the Institute provides lesson plans from art to war to language.
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    What makes the resources "excellent"?
mslanak

Buddhist Studies for Schools: Primary and Secondary. - 0 views

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    A good site for teaching Buddhism for elementary and secondary education students.
Debbie Moore

Center for Civic Education Home - 3 views

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    The Center for Civic Education is website designed to educate students in citizenry, the constitution and democratic constitutionalism. The Center offers a full curriculum at all three learning levels: elementary, middle school and high school. Their materials include full lesson plans and textbooks that support their program. The lesson plans include critical thinking exercises, vocabulary lists, problem solving activities and cooperative learning activities. The program is designed so that teachers can use it to supplement an existing curriculum or as the foundation of their curriculum. My cooperating teacher is going to use parts of the program to supplement her curriculum. The lessons focus on life in American, the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, political traditions and institutions, different levels of government (local, state and federal), constitutionalism and the rights and responsibilities of citizens. The center also offers professional development seminars that are often free of charge to DC teachers. For example, on October 27th, there is a free seminar for DC teachers on "We the People Through Primary Sources and Documents" being held at the National Archives….they even provide a free lunch! Here is the direct link to the professional development page: http://www.civiced.org/index.php?page=state_programs&&p=101&&st=DC.
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    Haha, I love this site! I posted on it the week before last. I reeeeeeaally want to get a job working for them! :-)
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    Laura, that is funny....we seem to like the same sites. It is an awesome sight...and the program is awesome too. Do you have a set of the books? Good luck...I hope that works out for you!!
Sarah Franquemont

Newseum | For Students NOT Visiting the Newseum - 2 views

    • Sarah Franquemont
       
      Some of these lesson plans require students to have internet access either in the classroom or at home.
    • Sarah Franquemont
       
      There is a focus on national news and US history, so this site might not be useful for teaching world history or news.
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    The Newseum site provides lesson plans for elementary, middle, and high school teachers.  The lessons focus on first amendment rights and the role of media in society.  Links to other online resources allow teachers to find supplemental materials for other lesson plans and units. The site also contains a number of primary sources.
Lauren Olson

Napoleon - 0 views

    • Lauren Olson
       
      Check this out! It's one of the best European history sites for kids I've found. Challenging activities for all age groups. I would definitely use this in an elementary classroom as a "free time" activity or suggest it as a resource for students looking to write papers on the subject.
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    Website with infinite information on the First and Second Napoleonic Empires.
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    Even though Napoleon's empires often get skimmed over in world or European history courses, this website makes the subject worth an extra day or two. There are easily comprehended histories, research databases, pictures, and even a "kids' corner" that is accessible to even the most reluctant student.
David Loudon

CEC Lesson Plans - 0 views

    • David Loudon
       
      This source relies upon posts of lesson plans from actually teachers that they have used in their classroom.
    • David Loudon
       
      Site put together by the Columbia Education Center based in Portland Oregon.
    • David Loudon
       
      Primary sources NOT included in the lesson plans, have to find those somewhere else.
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    A list of lesson plans created by teachers covering all subject areas and grade levels. Put together by the Columbia Education Center.
Erin Power

Social Studies Music - 0 views

    • Erin Power
       
      This website uses music from a variety of artists to encourage teaching social studies. The songs on this site are a little cheesy for me, but they are impossible to get out of your head. I think that they could be great to incorporate multiple intelligences into a lesson. This site is valuable for social studies teachers because it provides an alternate way to introduce materials.
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    This site provides songs that can be included in history teaching units.
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    This is unbelievable! I still remember the song we did in elementary school called "Fifty Nifty United States." I am definitely going to use this. They are totally silly but that is why they will remember them.
James Leslie

Ideas about becoming a social studies teacher - 0 views

  • Sadly, much too often, social studies courses are regarded as relatively unimportant subject matter, whether in elementary school, middle school, or high school. This perception leads to diminished attention paid to social studies as a serious subject area, yet in the overall development of the intellect of students, no other subject matter content holds as much promise.
    • James Leslie
       
      Social studies is more importan than many people think.
  • "I think we include social studies in the curriculum for the wrong reasons. It doesn't help us avoid the mistakes of the past, and if voting turnout is an indicator of good citizenship, it doesn't have much to do with that either. Social studies is probably best understood as an organized way of helping students develop understandings and appreciations that have long-term staying power, and that will influence them in positive ways to do the right thing when doing the right thing is hard to do."
    • James Leslie
       
      Can we find ways to enhance the use of what we may teach to students.
  • First, you must understand the content of the social studies at a level appropriate to that which you intend to teach. To understand content means more than mere memorization of facts. To understand content for a teacher means that you can explain it in more than one way to others, whether the content concerns facts, generalizations, principles, themes, and so on.
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  • Second, you must be able to translate the content you so understand to make it learnable, interesting, and challenging for students at the age and grade level you are teaching. It requires rearranging what you know. This applies to social studies more than any other content area simply because social studies as a discipline lacks any widely agreed-upon structure.
    • James Leslie
       
      Interesting to note that teaching the same subject at different levels can look different.
  • Third, you must consider pedagogy. This means that you not only understand the content in more than one way, can translate it into a form understandable, learnable, challenging, and interesting to your students, but that you also have the skills to actually teach the content. Pedagogy without subject matter content isn't worth very much. Simply "knowing about" teaching methods won't do.
  • There is probably no more important skill required in teaching social studies than the ability to explain events, ideas, principles, and social interrelationships. In some ways, good social studies teaching rests on the ability to tell stories well. For social studies, this story telling ability is grounded in the depth and awareness of the connective possibilities of the content. Helping students make new connections, to find challenge and meaning in social studies content is what excellent social studies teachers do every day.
    • James Leslie
       
      There is a great need to make teaching history reletive to students today.
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    This is an interesting site that shares reasons why social studies is important and how a person can effectively teach it. It also has a link to the role of values that should be expressed in social studies.
Lindsay Andreas

U.S. Standards Initiative Seeks to Equalize Benchmarks - washingtonpost.com - 1 views

  • can be accepted nationwide without leaving the impression that states and school boards have ceded control of what is taught.
    • Lindsay Andreas
       
      This sounds really great but I think we all know the reality. Local districts always freak out when they are asked to give up their discretion. Right or wrong, I really don't see things changing on that front.
  • His administration might provide money to help states develop tests aligned with the standards, if they are adopted. But the U.S. Education Department is not drafting the standards, and Congress will have no vote on approval.
    • Lindsay Andreas
       
      This seems like a reasonable compromise to me.
  • work backward through secondary and elementary grades to develop more detailed benchmarks for content knowledge and skills.
    • Lindsay Andreas
       
      Backwards planning, that seems logical, know where you want to end up so you can better understand what it takes to get there, very logical.
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  • on the proposal posted at www.corestandards.org. On Thursday, the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a prominent advocate of more rigorous standards, graded the effort with a B in both subjects.
    • Lindsay Andreas
       
      I'm always curious what these expert firms deem as good and bad, it all just seems so arbitrary. What does that firm even do? I feel like there are way too many hands in the cookie jar at this point, but that's policy making, oh well.
  • The math proposal spans equations, expressions, functions, statistics and several other topics. For instance, it says students should understand four core concepts about equations and be able to exercise six core skills.
    • Lindsay Andreas
       
      I'm obviously not a math person but I would think math standards are pretty straightforward, there really aren't the same kinds of debates over content like Social Studies and English. I'm sure there is more to it, but that seems to be the impression I get.
  • . "They would have gotten into a century-long battle over reading lists, multiculturalism, which authors to read and so on. They decided to duck that."
    • Lindsay Andreas
       
      This is what I see as the main problem with standardizing content in English and Social Studies.....bottom line we will never agree, so get over it. I realize that is cynical but seriously, especially, with the whole multiculturalism, it just seems never ending. I plan on taking on a multicultural approach but I'm sure there would still be some multiculturalists that would criticize that I didn't go far enough.
Maria Mahon

Report Questions Duncan's Policy of Closing Failing Schools - NYTimes.com - 2 views

  • Furthermore, the disruptions of routines in schools scheduled to be closed appeared to hurt student learning in the months after the closing was announced, the researchers found.
    • Maria Mahon
       
      The study has shown that the disruption in schools appeared to hurt student learning in the months after the closing was announced. This makes me wonder, of course, about the recent layoffs in DC. While schools have not been closed, there obviously has been a lot of disruption and many classes are most likely behind schedule.
  • Instead of closing schools permanently, or for a year, and then reopening with a new staff, he shifted to the turnaround approach, in which the staff of failing schools was replaced over the summer but the same students returned in the fall. The new report focused only on the elementary schools closed permanently from 2001 to 2006, and thus offers no conclusions about the effectiveness of the turnaround strategy.
    • Maria Mahon
       
      Because of the disruption caused by the school closing, Duncan switchd to a strategy in which the staff was changed over the summer but the same students returned to the school. There are no conclusive studies about the effectiveness of this strategy. But, it does seem to show the danger of mass firings in the middle of the school year.
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    When Arne Duncan presided over Chicago public schools, he closed failings schools. Recent studies show that this did not actually help the students at those schools.
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