A Shift in Teaching

I am seriously behind in my blogging and part of the reason for that is a whole new approach to teaching US History that my team has chosen to undertake this year. Since we teach in California, we have been given a year of reprieve from our state testing and are looking ahead to common core and the future. Out went the traditional multiple choice tests and in came essays and unit long focus questions. We have added all kinds of primary sources and are now looking towards projects.

I am quite thrilled that we don't have to teach the minutia anymore and can focus on big questions and big ideas. The first unit was all designed to trace the state's rights vs. federal authority conflict that dates to the founding of our country, and is incredibly relevant today in light of the fight over Obamacare. We suddenly found ourselves teaching content not normally taught in a college prep US history course, and throwing out some things we always had taught because they were probably on the test. How liberating it is to no longer teach to a test!

One other thing I find myself doing is making visual representations for my students of what we are covering. It is on the wall of my classroom and I create it as we go along in the content. This second unit was focused on problems and responses at the turn of the century. Here is the visual I created.

As we approach the 1920s, I am excited to be able to allow the students time to investigate a topic of their interest and to choose a method for showing their learning. I am going to model it after History Day, only on a smaller scale. Sure there is a risk that my students won't know how to respond to this structure and will fall behind and get discouraged. After all most of their education thus far has been so structured and geared towards testing. But as I learned on one of my Twitter chats, FAIL = First Attempt, I'm Learning! So if I fail, well at least I will have learned something.

Teaching Vocabulary - Frayer Model

One of the strategies that I learned about through my Teaching American History grant was the Frayer Model. It is a method for teaching students vocabulary. Students start with the definition and then discuss characteristics of that word. Next we discussed examples and non-examples. It might be best to start off a class with a word that is easy for them, but not necessarily related to history. Examples might be: shopping, war, education, and the Internet.

I have now used it twice. The first time was on Monday for helping students understand the word "emancipation" prior to our study of the Emancipation Proclamation. Here is one of the class's results:

The second time I used it was as part of an intervention for students were struggling to understand the concepts of state's rights and federal authority. I walked them through state's rights on one side of the paper and then federal authority on the other side. It worked so well that I am going to use it again and again when we come across important terms that students need to know like tyranny. I think it also would be very helpful to English Language Learners.

History is SPECtacular!

Anthony Fitzpatrick, Implementation Manager for the NJ Department of Education, was a guest speaker at one of the Teaching American History grant sessions in 2012. His book, Social Studies Can Be SPECtacular motivated me to change the way I approach the teaching of a time period. This is a close reading strategy that you can use tomorrow.

On Thursday, the second day of school, I started out by having my students brainstorm everything they knew about Abraham Lincoln. Students wrote down things like 16th President, lawyer, born in a log cabin, tall, beard, top hat, married to Mary Todd, had 4 kids but only one survived to adulthood. I then shared with them this Prezi that I had made and discussed Social, Political, Economic and Cultural characteristics. Finally students were instructed to group each item into one of those categories. It worked really well...except for how do you categorize tall? We skipped that one, but it did provide a nice side lesson about determining important vs unimportant facts.

I am excited to use it throughout the year as students investigate different time periods, set the context for historical documents and much more. I hope that you will try it out in your own classroom!

Mind Mapping US History?

I participated in a Twitter chat tonight and can't believe how much I have been missing out on by not being on Twitter until now. The #sschat topic tonight was on thematic vs. chronological teaching. Many ideas were tossed around and one of them was mind mapping the curriculum so that even if it is taught chronologically, students can see connections. I think I may try this since my US history team has decided to have a singular focus for 1st semester on the conflict between federal authority and state's rights. We will be discussing issues such as the constitution, nullification crisis, slavery, national bank in the first unit so it would be cool to break them into social, political and economic ways the conflict when throughout history. By the end of the year we could even connect it to today. I have taught mind mapping to adults and think that is a skill I will share with my students this year. And then we can create a giant mind map in my classroom which will help students visualize the connecting themes. Thanks @KaelynBullock for the idea!

Here is an update that shows the mind map I created for the unit discussed above. I think it came out pretty cool!

Big Huge Labs

While attending the Presidential Timeline Institute at the Nixon Library last week, I learned about several websites that can help students create fun and interesting projects to display what they know. One of these was Big Huge Labs. There are tons of games and activities, but the three that I found most useful for a high school class were the Motivator, Magazine and Movie Poster apps.

The Motivator allows students to add pictures and text to create a motivational poster. It is an easy way to assess student learning, as are all of these apps. I also plan to use it as an anticipatory set for a unit or maybe a daily warm up. Here is an example that I created.

The Magazine allows students to create a magazine cover with headlines, date and price. Here is one I created to give you an idea of how to use it.

The Movie Poster is very similar, only one is promoting a movie about a particular topic. It takes some critical thinking to decide the title, leading actors, producers, etc.

I plan on trying these in my classroom this year. I think the students will have fun with it! They can be used in any of the social sciences and even for current events. I love programs that are adaptable to a wide range of topics and subjects.

Great American Hall of Fame

This post is in honor and memory of a friend and teacher named Darren Thomas. Darren taught AP US History. He was quite proud of his Idaho roots and so established a Mr. Potato Head project for AP students to conduct after the exam was over. Each year students chose 2 famous Americans to induct into the Great American Hall of Fame. What they did was choose Americans they thought were worthy of the honor and had debates over their merits. Once the two individuals were chosen for the year, a Mr. Potato Head was created in their likeness. They are then formally inducted into this hall of fame with a special dinner ceremony. Here are examples of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton:

Other individuals who have been inducted include Sacajawea, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dorothea Dix, Clara Barton and FDR. There is even a Hall of Shame group of inductees that includes Aaron Burr.

Mr. Thomas just recently passed away and his students created a Mr. Potato Head of him and inducted him into the Hall of Fame.

Fakebook

This website allows students to assume the persona of a historical figure and create a Facebook profile for them. They can add profile information such as education, job, date of birth. They can also add friends and hold conversations. It looks just like Facebook and can be a fun way to assess student learning. Here is the link to a Fakebook that I created for Jimmy Carter. Here is a screen grab that shows what it looks like. Click here to visit the website.