DESE Civics Literacy Conference September 23-24, 2020: Elementary Focus
Click on the title of the workshop to access the materials.
Active Engagement and Critical Thinking: How to Use Mock Trials in the Elementary Classroom
Students have been building their civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions by participating in Discovering Justice's mini mock trial field trips at the Moakley Courthouse for the past two decades. This workshop will introduce elementary teachers to using mini mock trials, debates, and role playing in the classroom to increase students' civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Teachers will see examples of and walk away with resources to help students better access complex historical and current perspectives, as well as build their analyzing, critical thinking, evidence-based argumentation, perspective taking, and communication skills.
Fostering Community and Civic Knowledge Through Integrated SEL Instruction
In this workshop, participants will gain knowledge of the connections between SEL and Civics. Participants will evaluate the connections between the 5 SEL domains and Practice Number 1 outlined in the 2018 MA HSS Framework. They will align the competencies from the SEL domains with grade level content standards. Participants will also walk away with social studies lesson ideas to implement in their classroom.
Changemakers in the Past & Today: Using a Case Study Approach for Upper Elementary Civics
When is change progress? How do people, both individually and in groups, bring about change in their world? These essential questions are at the heart of the case study approach to 4th grade social studies in Cambridge Public Schools, focusing on changemakers in each region of the U.S. In this workshop, participants will learn of the case study approach, with a deep dive into the case study specific to Chinese-Americans in the West that integrates topics such as immigration, transcontinental railroad work, fight for citizenship, and modern-day xenophobia. There will be discussion on how to engage students in these topics in a remote setting. Participants will walk away with the case study outline for the year and a pdf of the slide deck for the Chinese-American case study.
Make Your Voice Heard: Taking a Stand Through Music, Writing, and Literature
This workshop demonstrates engaging strategies that introduce students to youth activism in the past and then empower them to be change agents today. Participants will investigate primary source material and children's literature to understand the essential role music played in the Civil Rights Movement – specifically, how it gave young people the courage to take great risks to work towards equality and justice. In the second part of the session, participants learn how to structure a research and writing project that challenges students to take a stand today. The project guides students to explore challenges that affect their communities so that they can learn more about why the issues exist and who they affect. In a culminating activity, students share their findings and proposed solutions by delivery speeches to the school community and participating in mock demonstrations.