Start with a Question

Note: This post was originally published at Talks With Teachers . History is an adventure.  It is a mystery to be solved. The evidence can be found in the images and words of the past.  As a history teacher I love digging into the evidence and finding new insights, but for a 21 st century teenager they might not be so entrancing.  I’ve found the trick to getting kids to dig into both primary and secondary sources is to allow them to create something from what they’ve learned and publish their creation. Here’s how: Give a Historical Figure a Voice We read two opposing views of the African Colonization Society from the early 19 th century. Students found online images of Richard Allen and James Madison , the authors. Then ChatterPix helped them make those images come to life. They used their own words and voices to explain the views from their primary source. The resulting videos were shared with the class and published on their blogs. Create an eQuil...

Teenagers send videos to each other all the time via iMessage, Snapchat, and YouTube. Why not teach them to make videos that answer deeper historical questions? The document based question (DBQ) is a staple in most middle and high school history classrooms, but your day-to-day document analysis can be humdrum. To add interest and encourage students to create something unique based on what they've learned, I asked them to produce videos that explained their document's importance. The DBQ Project has a great American History Mini-Q that asks "The Battle of Gettysburg: Why was it a Turning Point?"  It contains four excellent documents that range from maps to letters to statistics. Step 1: History Recall In a previous lesson of this unit, students analyzed statistics about the North and South at the outset of the war and created infographics . I asked them what they remembered about the advantages and disadvantages of both sides. In another lesson students c...

Why would 14 year old freshmen care about 17th century American colonial geography and culture? Well... they wouldn't, really. But with an opportunity to created something animated and set to music, they just might perk up. After learning about how my colleague, Annemarie Cory has been using Animoto to teach MacBeth... Watch my video on @animoto called "Sequence and Summary of Act 1" http://t.co/f0PXU85zs7 — Annemarie Cory (@AnnemarieCory) February 9, 2014 ...I was inspired. I could make a dry lesson really engaging if students had an opportunity to make tourism commercials for one of the first 13 American colonies! ( Disclaimer : Yes, I know a television-style commercial for a time and place in 17th century is anachronistic, but my students know that too.  They know the colonists didn't have TV, but they also now know why each of them was founded and how people lived day-to-day if they settled there.) What Does a Good Tourism Commercial Look Like? ...