Local Civics projects for Snow Day make up work

Below are the final projects that the BHS Social Studies Department did for the snow day make up assignments aka "Blizzard Bags." Let me say again how much I dislike that term...

Overall, they were a successful pilot of the program.  Reflecting on the overall concept, I think that there is a fine line that we need to walk between creating the teacher-directed portion and the project portion.  For instance, the 9th graders were able to pretty much parrot back the information that we provided them in the composition of their project.  From my perspective, it wasn't a big deal for them to do that, as voting information is voting information; we weren't interested in them doing synthesis-level thinking for these projects!  In the end, what we really wanted to accomplish was to familiarize our students with some of the basic and important avenues of civic interaction with their state and local governments, and by and large, I think we did that successfully! I don't know the exact completion rate, and I don't have copies of students' final work to share, but anecdotally, teachers shared with me that students had little difficulty in completing the assignments, not one parent complained about the assignments, and my own students said that they actually learned something from doing the project, so I'll take that as positive!

Grade 9 project description, Grade 9 supporting presentation

Grade 10 project description, Grade 10 supporting presentation

Grade 11 project description, Grade 11 supporting presentation

These are public copies of the documents, but they are set to view only in Google Drive.  Please feel free to make use of them, but do credit the BHS Social Studies Department should you reproduce them!  High School teachers in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, I don't know the outcome of DESE's decision making on the future use of these types of assignments, but know that you can use these with minimal changes should your district require that you come up with assignments that your students can complete in the event of another winter full of 100 year storms!

Snow Day Make up--the rough cut

Two things off the top:

First, our charge was to come up with something that could be done in the equivalent of two-three class periods if we were in school, but that could also be scaled up or down in the future depending upon the number of days that were missed.

Second, I made the executive decision that each teacher was not going to do his or her own thing.  It seemed to me to be easier for us to all collaborate on one project for each grade level (so all 9th graders will do the same thing in all classes) rather than each teacher try to come up with an acceptable activity on his or her own.  I also wanted to avoid the inevitable comparisons that parents would do between what one teacher assigned and what another assigned.  Invariably, someone would complain that so and so's assignment was easier/harder than another teacher's. If they all do the same thing, this concern is a non-factor.

What follows is the first draft of the project description:

9th grade: Are to research how a person registers to vote, where voting happens, and how voting is done in the town of Burlington and the state of MA. They can interview, research and read about this. They must then make an infogram and a physical poster explaining this information that would help to guide a person with the process of voting, from registration to casting the ballot. We provide them with copies of the MA Constitution with commentary/annotations/presentations to guide their reading in this process, and perhaps also give a guided reading about voting rights in the US. Posters are placed in the hallways of the school and town buildings. Infograms are shared via Padlet.com. Honors student possible extension: look at how voting rights have evolved in MA from colonial times until now.

10th grade: Are to learn about how town government works--what happens at all levels of local decision making--Selectmen, Town Meeting, School Committee, Ways and Means, etc.--They can interview, research, read about this. They are then to create a digital presentation that shows the way that all aspects of town government are interrelated...like a flow chart in Explain Everything/Showme, or a series of slides, or a diagram of who does what, how it happens and how a person gets involved/elected. Presentations are posted to a YouTube channel and/or given to BCAT as infomercials to run and shared with the town government.  We provide students with copies of the MA Constitution with commentary/annotations/presentations to guide their reading, and perhaps a guided reading about the history behind NE town government as a structure different from the rest of the nation's structures.

11th grade: Are to learn about how state government works.  Who are their state representatives, how long have they served, what do they do.  What are the parts of state government and how do they connect?How does the state government function? They can interview, research, read about this. Students are to produce a video that explains state government (think, I’m Just A Bill-esque, or a Welcome to Your State Government, or a TED talk).  Videos are posted to a YouTube channel and/or given to BCAT for broadcast and shared with Burlington’s State Reps and Senator. We provide students with copies of the MA Constitution with commentary/annotations/presentations to guide their reading, and perhaps a guided reading about the differences between state and federal government.

All we have to do ahead of time is annotate the MA Constitution for the relevant information for each grade level, and find a reading and make some questions, all of which can be done in Google Docs for rapid and easy distribution on a snow day. I can create the common submission points for their digital work, which would make it easier to pass along to others, and to check off compliance/completion. Because they are publishing their work publicly it can be largely done pass/fail, I think, or we can create scoring guides if we want to, and scale the expectations for AP/Honors, CP I and CPII, with a layer of expectations depending on future number of days they have to spend doing the work. In the event of lots of days off, we could also extend it by asking them to submit a written reflection, or a critique, or suggestions for improvement to the political process they are researching.