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Civic Learning Made Easy
Episode 220 • 27th October 2025 • Tech Tools for Teachers • Shanna Martin
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In Episode 220, Shanna shares two of her favorite civics education resources: iCivics.org, which offers free lessons, games, and simulations about government, and the Center for Civic Education, which provides state-specific and national resources for teachers and communities.

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Transcripts

Shanna Martin:

Thanks for listening to the Tech Tools for Teachers

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podcast, where each week we talk about

a free piece or two of technology

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that you can use in your classroom.

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I'm your host, Shanna Martin.

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I'm a middle school teacher, technology

instructional coach from my district,

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Fuzz Martin: and I'm our producer

and husband, Fuzz Martin.

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And I'm here to form a

more perfect podcast.

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Shanna Martin: Cute.

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That one did work.

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Fuzz Martin: Uh, finding a pun about

politics or civics is difficult to do.

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Remain, uh, tasteful and neutral.

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Neutral, yes.

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Shanna Martin: But we did find

some really cute jokes, so maybe

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we'll pull those out a little bit.

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Maybe because there's uh,

all kinds of cute things.

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Fuzz Martin: Yes.

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Just doing my civic duty.

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Yeah.

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You to form 'em

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Shanna Martin: more.

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Perfect.

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Fuzz Martin: Yes.

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Run as smoothly as a

well-balanced government.

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Shanna Martin: So we're

here episode two 20.

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And we are talking a little bit about

civics today and a few resources that I

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have, but also it's a unit that I'm in

teaching right now for social studies.

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And while I'm going to go through,

like I use these sites all of the

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time and I support my students and I

go back and I look and I'm like, how

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many times have I actually talked the

sites that I use on a regular basis?

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So I thought I would share a few.

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Today.

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Fuzz Martin: Great.

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Shanna Martin: Yeah.

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It'll be kind of fun.

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Mm-hmm.

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Mm-hmm.

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Here we are to end of

October moving into November.

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We're almost done with first quarter.

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Wow.

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Like our year is cranking through

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Fuzz Martin: as long as October has felt.

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It's really quick that you got

through that first semester.

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Yeah.

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Or God quarter already.

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Shanna Martin: Yeah.

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It's crazy like time feels slow,

like it moves very slowly but

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also very fast at the same time.

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Fuzz Martin: Yeah.

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Shanna Martin: But it's all good.

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So icis is the first site

I am going to talk about.

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What's interesting is I have talked

about it before, a long time ago.

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I went back to kind of check to see,

'cause I've talked about it like

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back in episode 35 and then 52 and.

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The changes that have happened,

this site has come so far.

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Yeah, like so far and is so useful.

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Whether you're a social studies

teacher, history teacher,

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geography teacher, all good.

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But also younger grades, whether you have

a specific social studies class or if you

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are just teaching community-based skills

or understanding local government, like

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how, uh, local government's a part of

your community or if you're looking at.

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Different history pieces, like

there's just all different resources

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in this site that are so helpful.

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So if you go, you can find

it several different ways.

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You can go to like icivics.org.

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It's technically the

site is ed civics.org,

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so it's ed dot iic vs org and

you'll find the things that

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you need for iCivics there.

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What I have found is that

once you get into iCivics.

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You sign in as a teacher, so you

create an account, it's all free.

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And then finding what you need.

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Sometimes they have so many really good

resources, you have to search the topics

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that you want or kinda have an idea

of what you're going through to go in.

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You are welcome to explore the site,

but it helps just to kind of a little

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idea of what you wanna start with.

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And then it's divided up.

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So there's elementary school, so there's.

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If you go to the starting site, you can

go to elementary, K five, start sorting

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through there, middle school, six, eight,

and they go through high school, nine 12.

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You can also choose to search

through educational resources.

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It will give you the

breakdown by grade or by type.

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So if you have specific curriculum

units that you're aligning with

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your standards, it's there.

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If you're looking for DB Qs.

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Do you know what a DB Q is?

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Fuzz Martin: I do not know what a DB Q is.

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Shanna Martin: So document based question.

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Okay.

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Which you'll see a lot on, A CT

and AP like, like setting up DB qs.

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Sure.

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I mean it goes on all the time, but

you're prepping students for some of that.

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They have DB quests.

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So it's not only just the document and

analyzing it, but it also walks you

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through certain sections, has a purpose

for it, sets up lesson plans with it.

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And you can use it.

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I do a lot of times in group work

because then they kind of brainstorm

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how to analyze it together.

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But it's a great way to

analyze founding documents.

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There are games, lesson plans,

specific WebQuests videos, simulations,

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and then like history detectives.

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So there's so many different ways

you can then choose to learn about

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iCivics or civics, I should say.

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And whether this is a lot of US history.

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'cause I know I have listeners

from all over the place.

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There are other government

resources in there too.

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So learning about different

types of government, you'll

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find that in there as well.

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So you can sort by grade, you

can sort by like your curriculum.

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They have professional development for

both teachers and for school districts.

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And what I do as a teacher when I set

this up, so there's specific units, like

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we are just doing founding documents of

the United States right now in my class.

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So there's like investigation

declaration and there's a

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whole game that they can play.

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But we were using the DBQ

Quest to analyze documents.

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What's cool is every source then

as you pull it up, so if I pull up.

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Something that I've starred also

as a teacher, when you have an

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account, you can add things to

favorites, and that's what I do.

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So that's how I can find it again,

because a lot of times there's just so

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many things I'm like, where to start?

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So pulling up the resources, you can

assign a thing directly into your

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Google classroom, which is very cool.

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You can just drop it in.

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It totally connects to everything.

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But if you pull up a unit, you can go

through the overview, gives you all

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the information you need, materials.

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It is broken down by.

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Like teacher resources and student

resources, it will give you some of them.

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Like the games also have a like a

PowerPoint or slides presentation

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to give you the background and

then set up the kids with the game.

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'cause their games are not just

like click and skip through.

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They have to read the information and

actually apply it and then engage in it.

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It's almost like simulations.

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So there's a lot of different pieces

to it, and I tell my kids like,

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this is not just click and go.

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You have to read and

practice and think about it.

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And they work at a slower pace

because it's engaging them in the

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actual process of what they're

learning about the resources.

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Many of them come in both English and

in Spanish, so you're able to support

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your students' needs, whatever they are.

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And you're able to go through,

like click on, I'm clicking on

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student documents right now.

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It'll have some overview

information to read.

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There'll be a sheet if you wanna

do a print off in your classroom,

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or if you wanna just put it on a

smart board or a board to engage in.

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You can write on it while you're there.

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And then students have their access

to everything in front of them.

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And then it links to, some of them have

Kahoot quizzes, some of them connect to

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Nearpod, and it connects to all different.

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Types of educational, um, tools that

you already use in your classroom,

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and it works really, really well.

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Like they're pretty seamless with how

you can just integrate it with the

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things that are already in your classroom

with huge collections of resources.

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So that's really cool.

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Fuzz Martin: Yeah.

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Shanna Martin: Are you digging

through something right now?

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Fuzz Martin: Yeah, I was, I was just

looking through a, a number of the, the

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different things that they have available

and, uh, you were absolutely right Dave.

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Absolutely improve this website compared

to where it was when we first did this.

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In episode, what, what,

20 or something like that.

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Shanna Martin: Yeah, there's like, like

52 and so maybe like 30 something, but we

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Fuzz Martin: oh yeah.

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35.

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52.

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69.

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Shanna Martin: Yeah.

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Like they, there used to be

like six games dollars, like 25.

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Like Yeah.

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And the, it's not just play

a game and learn about it.

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It is, here are all the pieces.

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I do branches of power with my students.

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There's a slideshow we talk about,

there's a great analogy with how

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US government works with sports.

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Mm-hmm.

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So you look at the players, the

coach and the referee, and then how

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does that connect to government?

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Like it's just very

user friendly and it's.

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Easy for students to connect to.

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It's made obviously for education,

and then you have all of these

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resources you can pick and choose

which works best for your classroom.

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Some students may need a

printoff, some students may

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need, just the digital version.

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They also have them at different

levels, which I appreciate, and not

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everything is leveled, but they'll have.

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Certain assignments, they'll have

like a word box that might be

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appropriate for some students and

others have just fill in the blank.

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So again, there's all kinds of

resources for your students, and

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depending on what grade level they're

at, it'll tell you it's like, this

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is great for six, eight and nine 12.

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Mm-hmm.

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Or this is great for K five.

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And so it's laid out really, really well.

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Yeah.

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And there's just so many.

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Yeah.

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It's definitely had upgrades from.

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Way back when.

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Mm-hmm.

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We first started talking about it.

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Fuzz Martin: Yeah.

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Good job.

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ICI X.

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Shanna Martin: Yeah.

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It's just, it's just a great resource

for teaching and for supporting students.

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And again, the kids really, their favorite

game I think is to win the White House.

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They are like, I ran for

president and this is what I did.

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And they have a really good time with it.

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So it's, it's interesting and it's, it's

very engaging for students while being

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educational and giving lots and lots of.

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Great resources for teachers and

align with, all of the standards.

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So it's a cool site.

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If you haven't used it in a while, I

suggest you go back to it 'cause it's

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definitely has a lot of upgrades.

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And you'll find the scope and

sequence right on the site.

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It'll walk you through

everything that you need.

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So that's all laid out for you as well.

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Awesome.

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And yeah, there's just

a lot of cool stuff.

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So it's ed icis.org.

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And it's just a cool resource

and it's worth exploring.

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Even if you're not a social studies

teacher, there's a lot of cool

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information in there that you could.

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Bring into your classroom

a part of discussion.

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And it would be very useful

and very student friendly.

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Fuzz Martin: Sure.

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Certainly.

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Shanna Martin: Yeah.

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Fuzz Martin: And now I know what A DBQ

is and it's not barbecue at Dairy Queen.

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Shanna Martin: Yes, that is very true.

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You learn something new every day.

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Fuzz Martin: Yes.

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Shanna Martin: Too funny.

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Okay.

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And then the other side I

wanted to highlight today is

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the Center for Civic Education.

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So this is another great resource.

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The site itself is civic ed.org,

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so you gotta kinda keep them

straight, but it's C-I-V-I-C-E d.org.

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And the Center for Civic Education has

all types of resources for anybody.

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Like this is not just specific

to schools and classrooms, but

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there are a number of like.

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News updates that they go through.

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It explains all types of, like,

you can pull up your state.

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So this one you can find the center

in your own state you can search

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out and it will do state specific

information, which I think is helpful.

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So that way, you know, like if we

pull up Wisconsin in Wisconsin.

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It tells me the information and it talks

about the people that are specific to

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your state, and then also opportunities

for professional learning for teachers.

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And it has resources for, different

like webinars and coordinators.

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It's all types of resources

for teachers and people.

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Fuzz Martin: Yep.

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Shanna Martin: If you click

on the, we, the People, it

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talks about, different civic.

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Organizations.

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It talks about how it continues,

like we, the people come, it's a

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simulation of congressional hearings

of students and testify through a

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panel of judges and explains like all

the different pieces that go along

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with their civic education program.

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And then there's resources available that

you can go through and check checkout.

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As you click through it, it goes

through like civics, the ci, sorry,

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the citizen and the constitution.

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It breaks it down for grade level.

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And you're able to, find those resources

that you need for your classroom.

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Again, lots of professional learning and

so it's just a great resource to help

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with civic education, not only across the

country, but also like state specific.

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So if you're looking for things specific

in your area, you're able to do that.

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It's not just broad information,

which I think is really helpful.

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And their whole goal is to like.

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Help create responsible citizens within,

um, our country and have lots and lots

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of resources, which I think is cool.

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Fuzz Martin: That is cool.

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Shanna Martin: So it's just a way to

support civic education and there's lots

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of resources and it's state specific,

so I thought that would be helpful.

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So it's not always just the

broad coverage of everything.

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Fuzz Martin: Yeah.

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Very nice.

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So civic ed.org.

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Shanna Martin: Yeah.

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So there you go.

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Fuzz Martin: Wonderful.

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Shanna Martin: All of the things for

civic education because it happens to be.

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The unit I'm teaching right now

and when I start looking at things,

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that's, that's I start sending, like,

I feel bad for my staff sometimes.

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I'm like, Hey, did you

see this new upgrade?

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Or, Hey, did you see this new sheet?

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Or Hey, I think you do a project on this.

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This is a be great resource.

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And so I've been sending out a

lot of emails like that lately.

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Mm-hmm.

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Just because there's been so many upgrades

to these sites and there's just so much

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information out there that you don't know.

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It's hard to keep up with

everything, so it's kind of nice

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when you know when the upgrades are

there and the cool things to do.

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Yeah,

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Fuzz Martin: exactly.

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Shanna Martin: So there you go.

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Fuzz Martin: Very good.

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Shanna Martin: The excitement

of civic education.

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Fuzz Martin: It is very exciting.

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Shanna Martin: There you go.

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Episode 2 22

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Fuzz Martin: 20.

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Shanna Martin: Thanks for tuning in.

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This has been the Tech

Tools for Teachers Podcast.

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If you ever have any questions, you

can find me on Blue Sky Threads,

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Facebook, Instagram at smartinwi.

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And if you wanna get more information on

the links to the technology discussed in

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this episode, you can visit smartinwi.com.

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Maybe you'd like to support the show,

please consider buying me a coffee or too.

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Visit buy me a coffee.com/

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smartinwi or visit smart wi.com

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Thanks for listening.

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Fuzz Martin: The ideas and opinions

expressed on this podcast and the SMART

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Shanna Martin, and not a per employer.

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we've discussed on this podcast, please

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consult with your employer regulations.

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