Start with a Question

History teachers know that lessons on exciting events are easy.  It's teaching the philosophies behind those events, the intangibles, that is tough.  I needed a quick engaging plan to help the kids learn the material without watching them glaze over before my eyes. This time I was teaching the 19th century ideologies that influenced the European Revolutions of 1830 and 1848: conservatism, liberalism, nationalism .  My plan was for the kids to come up with their best 1 minute presentation and go head-to-head with one another to find out who could best explain their ideology while entertaining their audience. Classmates would vote for the winners. Day 1 Define the word ideology and give students resources that describe the three 19th century ideologies. There are 3 ideologies in this instance, so I divided the class up into 6 groups: 2 groups per ideology. Groups read the resources and come up with an accurate, teacher-approved answer to the essenti...

It starts with an idea. This was the idea I had last week: I don't want to be another in a long line of teachers who lets Columbus Day come and go silently.  I don't want to horrify my students, but they deserve to know the truth. So I start researching. First, I looked for something that Columbus said in his own words. An obvious choice was his report to the the King and Queen of Spain upon his triumphant return from his first voyage in 1493. For this and all images throughout the post, click the screenshot to go directly to the resource. Columbus speaks of the natives of Hispaniola in favorable terms.  They were welcoming, friendly, and unarmed.  Columbus seemed pleased.  Well, as I confirmed through further research, he should have been pleased.  He stood to receive a substantial reward if he discovered something that could be profitable for the Spanish Empire during his voyage.  The Library of Congress showed through primary sources that he g...

Sure, you could find some of these primary sources by Googling them.  Sure, you could come up with a few of these lesson activities on your own.  Your bright, experienced, and you know what's good for kids. But this stuff is reeeeeally good.  Like, it's a veteran history teacher's dream.  Go ahead. Give them a try.  Just a peek.  You'll be hooked too. Reading Like a Historian  is published by Stanford University and has primary sources embedded in short analytical and engaging activities.  Instead of just asking students what a source says, they are asked deeper questions about the value of the source, the motivations of the authors, and so much more.  This a better source for U.S. than for world history teachers, but what is there will elevate the conversation in your classroom.  I also can't stress how interesting the sources are.  Not your typical text book appendix stuff.  Worth a visit and the time it takes t...

Maya city of Palenque The Maya were an impressive people. They built massive stone pyramids and temples throughout huge cities without the wheel or beasts of burden. They organized and conducted commerce via a complex system of roads throughout their geographical area of the Yucatan Peninsula and beyond. They used terracing, raised crop beds, and slash and burn to grow plentiful crops to feed a growing population in less than ideal agricultural conditions. Maya number system The created a complex calendar that calculated the 365 day year and used a combination of math, astronomy and science to be more accurate than any civilization on Earth at the same time. They were the first to contemplate and use the concept of "zero" in their system of mathematics. But which achievement is the most remarkable? Using the Document Based Question information from the DBQ Project and my own knowledge of technology, my students presented their arguments tech-styl...

Making medieval life relatable to adolescents in 21st century is a challenge.  But in imperial China people studied long and hard for civil service exams and then waited anxiously for the results hoping they would earn a high enough score to enable them to work in a coveted career.  Similarly many jobs in law enforcement, medicine, law, and education depend on scoring well on licensure and civil service examinations today, I am quite familiar with spending hours and hours studying for my MTEL and for my Massachusetts Bar Exam and waiting on pins and needles praying that my time and effort had paid off.  I was one of the lucky ones in both instances. So a great response to students who ask why they have to learn about medieval world history is that it tells us the roots of our modern system.  Indeed, the modern examination system will likely be a part of many of my students' lives as they journey toward their own career choices.  In fact, as I type this, they...

Problem : Slightly less than half of our 8th grade middle school team students are out of the country on a French trip to Quebec.  What do 3 teachers and 2 paraeducators do for two WHOLE school days with 66 adolescents who resent being in school while their friends are on an adventure in another country? Solution : Time Travel... Yup. One of my missions as I spend one year teaching 8th grade, with the opportunity to work with a team of teachers who specialize in different subject areas, is creating as much interdisciplinary work as possible.  So, since the two subject area teachers remaining at school during the 2 day experiment were the science teacher and me, I saw an opening. I teach medieval world history , including imperial China . She teaches earth science , including the movement of tectonic plates and earthquakes . Hold on to your hats, people, I have an idea! You see, in imperial China people believed the the emperor had the right to rule because of the ...

I have had the opportunity this year to work on a team of teachers of different expertise.  Half of the students on our team take French and the other half take Spanish.  I was looking for a way for our students to do an interdisciplinary project between their world language class and my social studies class, but I needed to coordinate it with several other teachers (French, Spanish, Special Education, Language Learning Disabled, and 2 paraeducators) and almost 120 students.  We decided on ARCHITECTURE. Some of the most important landmarks in France and Spain are incredible works of architecture from the medieval era, which is the time period I teach in social studies. For the French students we decided on Notre Dame Cathedral For the Spanish students we decided on the Real Alcazar. We started by asking students to research the history of the structure itself.  Why was it built?  Who built it?  When and why were changes made the...

One of the challenges of being a middle school history teacher is that adolescents are a little too old for the simple story-telling and artsy projects of elementary school, and they're too young for real in-depth research on complex topics like in high school.  Where is the middle ground for middle schoolers? Role Play! A colleague and I recently put our heads together and created a unit that required students to take on a role from feudal Europe.  They had to learn about the privileges and responsibilities that went with that role,  They had to fulfill those responsibilities and then as the simulation continued we threw some curve balls at them.  They found that the socio-economic system of feudalism developed in medieval Europe because it was the most realistic way for people at the time to solve problems and survive under the harsh circumstances. Recently, we presented about our successful experiment at the Blue Ribbon Blueprint for Excellenc...

I am fortunate enough to be a participant in the final year of the History Connected program.  This year is called American Encounters: U.S. History in a Global Context .  Since our first school day seminar way back in October , there has been a lot of talk and interest in the integrated U.S. and world history curriculum here at Reading Memorial High School . We were even fortunate enough to have colleagues from Wilmington visit us a few weeks ago and sit in on some of our classes to observe the curriculum in action. It was refreshing to have the faces of enthusiastic professionals in our classes while we taught. As I look back to that October workshop and consider some of the documents that were discussed, a new great connection between world and U.S. history comes to mind. Specifically, as we read through the Lincoln documents in an effort to get to know the man behind the myth, there were two that mentioned Louis Kossuth and the Hungarian Nationalist movem...

Although I know we are 4 months beyond the last Memorial Day and will wait 8 more months before it comes around again, I was fascinated to learn how it came to be through my readings from the History Connected program coursework this year.  I knew it became an official American holiday in the late twentieth century, but I did not know the roots of Memorial Day stretch all the way back to the post-Civil War era. To understand this American desire to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice, one must first understand the scale of death that Americans were coping with in the wake of the War Between the States. The number of soldiers who died between 1861 and 1865, an estimated 620,000, is approximately equal to the total American fatalities in the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War combined.  The Civil War's rate of death, its incidence in comparison with the size of the American population, was six times t...

Although I am also a participant, I had to opportunity and honor of presenting a breakout workshop at this year's History Connected summer institute .  Since the focus of the institute this year is on the impact that American wars have had on American society, I reached back into my files from a few years ago when I taught U.S. history in 8th grade to find a webquest I created on the War of 1812 .  Teachers got to "play student" and take part in a shortened version of the 4 day lesson.  Click the screen shot below to see the webquest website. Here is a brief day by day guide of the primary sources and analysis skills that students use as they complete the 4 day webquest. Day 1: Introduction to the Webquest and Madison's Declaration of War Students choose to be either Eliza or Joshua.  Both are 14-year-olds living in the United States before and during the war.   Then the students move on to reading Madison's war message explaining his reasons for asking Co...

How can I turn my history students into detectives? One of the most valuable skills we can teach our history students is to use evidence from the past to develop their own opinions about historical events.  One popular program that many high schools use is the DBQ Project .  Students use textual and visual primary and secondary scholarly sources to answer a question.  For example, my sophomores recently had a class debate based in the evidence from the DBQ entitled " North or South: Who Killed Reconstruction? " Essentially, students use evidence from experts and first-hand witnesses to solve problems, just like a detective would.  The program has a fabulous reputation and student essays that result are well-thought-out and evidence-based.  Unfortunately, one small pitfall of the program is that it requires a lot of paper and not much technology. Why not combine technology with historical evidence analysis? I found a great website that enables student to do t...

I recently read Double Victory: A Multicultural History of American in World War II by Ronald Takaki .  There were many parts of Takaki's book that are striking, but the one part I kept coming back to as I remembered reading through it was the story of Ira Hayes, The Indian "Hero" of Iwo Jima starting on pg 72. I had heard the story before many times, but every time I read or hear a new account, I am touched by how this smart young Native American went into war enthusiastically seeking to prove the value of both his Pima people and his pride in America as a nation.  His reasons for going to war were noble and perhaps naive, but the reward he got for his service is a dark mark on American history, too often glossed over in history classrooms. Before teaching high school, I taught 8th graders for 6 years. Four out of those 6 years I took large groups of adolescents to Washington D.C. to experience some of their own history first hand. One of the sights we visit, of cou...

Did you know that the story about St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland is a metaphor?  "A metaphor for what?" you ask. Why do we associate 3 leaf clovers with this day? There are many traditions associated with today.  Some, like going to church to observe the holy day, are healthy for body and soul.  Some, like downing a pint or two of Guiness, are not.  Where did all of these traditions come from?  Watch the quick video below to find out! OK, so now you know the history.  But why am I wearing green to celebrate the day?   Turns out, I should probably be wearing blue ! Yup, here's another quick video explanation. So, on this lovely Saint Patrick's Day, I leave you with an Irish blessing and wish you well. May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of His...

My sophomore students are wrapping up their unit on the American Civil War.  There is a lot of information for them to take in; massive casualty numbers, battles, generals, politicians, primary source readings like the Peninsula Campaign Letter and the Emancipation Proclamation , the lives of slaves during the war... The final lesson of the Civil War is always the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.  This year I was searching for a new way for my students to study the information.  After a little searching, I found an amazing website: The Abraham Lincoln Papers from the Library of Congress.  One of their special collections is called The Lincoln Assassination .  There I found broadsides, illustrations, and other publications that convey the public sentiment surrounding the shocking events of April 15, 1865. So.... here is my plan for Monday! The Set Up First, I will ask the students to read this short summary of the events surrounding...