When I started teaching last year I assumed that students would know how to read a map, use an atlas, and find locations on a globe. What I soon realized was that most of my students couldn’t even tell the difference between a map of South America and Africa at first glance, because they have almost the same shape. My goal for this year, spending the first several weeks practicing using all three of these resources until the students know that just because they look the same doesn’t mean that they are. Continue reading Just because they look the same doesn’t mean they are . . .
Category Archives: lesson plans
Teaching with Artifacts
I am a museum geek. I grew up going to museums in Chicago, part of our annual trip to see my grandparents. That, plus my love of American history, led me to the museum field and teaching with artifacts. Nothing can bring history to life like the things left behind.
Don’t believe me?
Check out the German U-boat, the U505, at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. Or examine the pike at the Kansas Museum of History, one of the actual pikes John Brown purchased and shipped to Harper’s Ferry to start a slave insurrection. Looking at the pike you can’t help but ask yourself
Who used it? What happened to that person? Why did he buy pikes and not rifles? Why did the revolt fail?
This is why I love artifacts. Continue reading Teaching with Artifacts
Writing your own textbook isn’t as scary as you think . . .
Well, it’s a little scary . . . but the rewards outweigh the scariness, I promise!
Our social studies department has been working for the past year to come up with a new curriculum that replaces textbooks from a publishing company. There has been a lot of discussion at PLC meetings and a lot of attending professional development workshops.
I first heard the term eBooks from Glenn Wiebe when he met with elementary and middle school social studies teachers to discuss the new state standards and strategies we can use in our classroom to go along with them. But it wasn’t until I attended the workshop “Creating Content with Apple’s “iBook Author” with Kendall Warkentine (Derby USD) at the KCSS No Citizen Left Behind conference last fall in Topeka that I really started processing the idea of creating my own content. Continue reading Writing your own textbook isn’t as scary as you think . . .
Your brain is a bucket full of holes. Sam Wineburg can help
I get the chance to work with all sorts of teachers, across the state and around the country. We’re all different. But when the conversation turns to teaching and learning social studies, I often hear the same thing:
“I have to lecture (or have students read their textbooks out loud, create outlines from the chapter, complete fill-in-the-blank worksheet packets, or watch a 30 year old video converted from 16 mm film) because the kids have to know their facts. It’s not fair asking them to think historically without the basic facts.”
I get it. And I don’t disagree. Kids do need the facts. But I think for too long we’ve just assumed that acquiring foundational knowledge and historical thinking are two distinct and different activities. We fill up their heads with facts and then, if we have time in the school year and after the state assessments are over, then . . . we can try some of that historical thinking stuff.
We need to stop doing that.
The brain is not a basket that we can just fill up with stuff. The brain is a Continue reading Your brain is a bucket full of holes. Sam Wineburg can help
Got the whole world in my hands!
When it comes to social networking my generation left me in the dust in 2006 after I signed up for Facebook, so this will be my first experience as a blogger (makes me feel very techy). I say that I was spending all of my time coming up with creative and innovative ways to teach social studies and didn’t have time for the online social world!
I just finished my first year teaching on Friday and to say it was a learning experience is a huge understatement. One of my favorite lessons from the year was a simple, cheap, and easy idea that the students loved so much I did it twice! On the first and last day of school, I grouped the students up and gave them a blue balloon and a green marker and we made globes. Every 30 seconds they had to switch who was drawing so that everyone had a hand in the completion of the globe, and it gave them a chance to get to know each other at the beginning of the year.
The improvement Continue reading Got the whole world in my hands!
