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I am excited to use it throughout the year as students investigate different time periods, set the context for historical documents and much more.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!
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