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I am excited to use it throughout the year as students investigate different time periods, set the context for historical documents and much more.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

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.