At the end of the week, I always like to take some time to review the top stories from around the country related to civics education. This weekly round-up usually includes two or three stories. This week, we’ve got three stories that caught my attention. First, Wisconsin is hosting something called, “The Civics Games,” and […]
Mapmaker: The Gerrymandering Game is a simple, thoughtful, and strategic board game. It also happens to be educational, too, but that’s just an added benefit. I saw this game on the shelf at the mall a few weeks ago, and it immediately caught my eye. It got me thinking about what other board games are […]
In Flunking Democracy: Schools, Courts, and Civics Education, Michael Rebell presents a novel approach to fix civics education in America – a lawsuit. Michael Rebell is a professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is also an experienced litigator who has brought lawsuits on equity in education. The book is the product of a seminar […]
Note: This review is not yet complete. This post will be updated with more information, once I’ve had a chance to play it through a few times and thoroughly review it. The Contender is a great party game to play with your friends. Topically, it’s a civics game patterned after Presidential debates. Conceptually, it’s a […]
Towards the end of each week, I like to take stock of what’s been going on around the country (and the world) in civics. This weekly recap highlights a few stories of note. This week, the first story is about a new comic book you can use to teach civics. Then, a researcher describes her […]
Today is Constitution Day, so I thought it would be timely to share a book review of a quick read that you might enjoy – On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder. In On Tyranny, Tim Snyder draws on the history of the 20th century to share some lessons for those […]
It’s the end of another week, and that means it’s time to look back over what’s happening in the world of civics and civics education. This week, we have an interesting new study about what young people care about and how they express their concerns. There’s also a new column in the Washington Post about […]
Rock the Vote is nothing new. They’ve been around since the 1990’s trying to get people out to vote and to exercise their voting rights. But in the last few years, they’ve tried something new. They created a program called “Democracy Class,” and they partnered with organizations across the country to teach lessons in schools […]
If you’re reading this blog, you probably agree that as a country we can do a better job of teaching civics education. So I don’t have to waste time explaining that. I’ll bet you’re much more interested in how we can do a better job. And that’s where these six research based methods for teaching […]
One great way to make learning civics more fun is to use game based learning. Here’s a list of eight political board games about civics and government – some of which make great classroom tools – that could help you do that. I’ll run through the list of each of the eight civics board games […]