Through every grade.
Weave the principles of American democracy through all social studies courses.
Civic Learning Threads™ is here to help local education agencies build accountability into their civic learning plan with a vertically articulated, standards-based curriculum and assessment plan. We provide the tools to build and measure proficiency in civic knowledge, civic reasoning, and civic literacy in each social studies course through the secondary grades.
Educating for American Democracy (EAD) is the primary inspiration behind Civic Learning Threads. There are common threads of civic understandings, essential vocabulary and ‘big ideas’ that weave through not only every U.S. history and civics or government course, but also through world history, economics, geography, ethnic studies, and many other social studies courses.
We believe these common threads running through the social studies course curricula present too-often missed opportunities to strengthen prior learning and ‘primer learning’. Our Threads method is designed to harness and maximize prior learning, empowering teachers to progressively enrich civics instruction.
Planning for Civic Learning
Teaching for Civic Learning
Civic Learning Threads™ ties content topics, content standards, and learning objectives to Big Idea threads, EAD-aligned essential questions, and the C3 Framework to help teachers channel their lessons toward civics themes.
Assessing for Civic Learning
Assessing for civic learning requires data on students’ civic knowledge, civic reasoning, and civic literacy. In that order. Civic Learning Threads™ promotes a civic learning assessment protocol that aligns the various social studies courses’ learning activities and assessments to a clearly delineated trio of standards sets that measure knowledge, reasoning, and literacy. When embedded into a testing platform integrated with student data, educators can track civic learning proficiency levels of grade cohorts year over year.