Suggestions for group work?

Hey,
I was wondering if anyone had any good suggestions on how to engage my students a little more in the classroom. I've been wanting to do more group work, but I have a difficult time getting students to be interdependent. I need ideas on how students can have individual accountability while working within a group.

Treasures of The Ohio State University

In The Ohio State University Treasury of Fine Arts online gallery you can find a photograph of the OSU football team in 1890, a advertisement for the 1920 Peerless automobile, or a political cartoon published in Judge Magazine in the 1920s. The gallery features a historic collection of fine art from The Ohio State University Libraries. The collections include representative pieces from a multitude of genres: literature, the arts, the history of science, popular culture, religion, politics, and exploration. The images can be used for educational purposes by contacting the contributing University Library.

Hello Back to History!

It was so nice to tag along on the field trip with all of you last week. As Mary and Kristina told you I am the new project curator from Ohio Historical Society for the Back to History program. I will be leading the primary source activities and attending the field trips and seminars with all of you. Here is my contact information should you have any questions:

Molly Uline-Olmstead, 614.297.2617, muline-olmstead@ohiohistory.org

Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web is a search engine sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. The website allows you to search online exhibitions by libraries, historical societies, and other museums by topic and keyword. These exhibitions include digital scans of primary sources in addition to secondary interpretive discussion of the materials.

Maine's Historical society has a website very similar to Ohio Memory called the Maine Memory Network. There is a wide variety of materials including documents, photographs, objects, and prints. In addition the site has a few interpreted exhibitions.

Finally, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has an extensive collection of documents. The site, which is part of the New York Historical society, is organized really well.

Have great holidays and I will see you on January 16th.

Check Out The Exhibit Virtual First Ohioans

In the Fall 2009 edition of The Pocket Watch newsletter from Kristina, she wrote about an exhibit called The First Ohioans. This virtual exhibit contains lots of great information and primary sources regarding the prehistoric Indians of Ohio. The content is perfect for fourth grade curriculum. My students have really enjoyed looking at the artifacts and watching the short videos. I think this exhibit has made it easy to show my students the artifacts which have helped us learn about how these prehistoric Indians lived. It features information on the Paleo, Archaic, Adena, Hopewell, Fort Ancient cultures and more. I would especially encourage you to check it out if you teach 4th grade.

6 Hat Discussions

6 Hat Discussions

Anyone who was in last years session of Back to History may remember the teacher who talked about using the 6 Hat method to higher level questioning in social studies content. I have recently used this method with my third grade inclusion class, and it worked really well. There are 6 hats. Each hat has different levels of higher level questioning the students can answer on a specific non-fiction text. I have all the masters and explanations for this method if anyone who was not in last years group would like a copy. It is a great resource that can be used at any grade level.

Hands-On History Kits

On the topic of Early American History, I just received a Mac Grant for teaching with hands-on materials in Social Studies. I am using it to purchase two of the Colonial Williamsburg Hands-On History Kits. I also incorporated into the grant enough money to put together a couple of artifact kits of my own. Last year, someone mentioned kits that can be rented and returned which are similar to the artifact kits from Colonial Williamsburg. If anyone has that information, I would be interested in checking those out. A colleague in another district spent a week at the Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute last summer and described it as the pinnacle of his career. Does anyone have contacts with that organization? Lastly, I found an interesting site which promotes teaching with Historic Places. I have looked at some of these lessons and they are cool: http://www.nps.gov/history/nr/twhp/preserve_america.HTM

American Experience on PBS

The programs on American Experience, a PBS series, the last two weeks have been a great additional resource for teaching concepts about the Great Depression and the New Deal. The content of the programs would be most appropriate for junior high and high school students, but they are good primary resources of information because they use actual film footage. Last week's program was about the building of the Hoover Dam in the early 1930s. Last night was about the Dust Bowl. Since both of these events occurred at the same time as the Great Depression, they would be a good source of additional information in the classroom. Think TV has loaned me DVDs of programs in the past. Simply call the Think TV office (937-220-1707) and request a specific title. The staff is very teacher friendly!

More Sources for Early American History

A good place to start for primary sources from the 18th century, including maps, documents, and portraits, is Archiving Early America . Also check out The Avalon Project, which has transcripts of legal documents – cool stuff, though (Colonial charters, treaties, Sedition Act). Colonial Williamsburg is a good source for items or everyday life such as clothing, recipes, and tools. Or, browse the many letters, diary entries and military records of George Washington from the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress that are available through American Memory. While consisting mainly of secondary material, Common-Place, an online scholarly journal, does have primary sources within most articles.

Categorizing Information

Last class we did a hands on primary source activity in which we had to categorize information. I happened upon a good strategy at a conference several years ago, and there is a similar one in the History Fair theme book this year. The one I have used is called PEGS (Political, Economic, Geographic, and Social). It takes a bit of front-loading, but once the students know the categories they are good to go.

Introduce: Define words (Political, Economic, Geographic and Social), and create web examples of things we might "sort" into that category on the white board. Use these student created examples to make posters to put up in the room to help them remember the categories.

Analyze: Give groups of students a number of newspaper headlines with which they must sort into each category. For example, they must read the heading "The Lion King heads to Columbus for a two month run" Then decide where to sort it. If they choose "Social" they must justify their choice. I usually choose a few that are arguable to be sorted into different categories to encourage discussion within the group as they consider and justify their choices.

Practice: I really liked this activity to compare cultures. Create a graphic organizer or foldable for student use. Have them gather and sort the information on your groups (ex-Maya and Inca).

Extend:You can further extend the lesson, by asking students to use the information to create Venn diagrams and/or write a compare and contrast essay etc.

Sidenote--
1. It was really cool to hear my 8th graders discussing the political, economic, geographic and social aspects of various societies.
2. It went over well with the judges at History Fair in some of the projects where it was applicable!

See you for the field trip!
C. Smart

Excellent way to tie Language Arts to Great Depression

I find my students often gain a deeper understanding of historical events by reading historical fiction books related to the topic we are studying.   My students always enjoy the book Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis.  This book is set during the Great Depression.  It has many great examples of historical events during this time period.  The reading level is 5.0, but the book could easily be read by older students.  

Another useful lesson

Today, I had my students use the vocabulary strategy that we learned at our last class meeting. It was super! When they had to compose a sentence that defined the word and tie it in to the primary source the meaning of the work really sunk in. A lot of them came up with sentences and then were really surprised when the sentence did not meet the requirements. I have the best of the best hanging up on the wall until our next vocabulary quiz. That is the great thing about our "Back to History " class, the activities are easy to use and practical. They also give the students an opportunity to be creative.

On another note, I was so intrigued by the WPA art that I went around Marysville and found some examples of WPA murals in our own community. I will bring the pictures to our next class. I tried to add them to the blog page but I am Blog challenged.

Have a great day!
Amanda Goodwin

Primary Source Website

I have really enjoyed the different primary source activities that have been shared thus far. One small problem I was having is that the activities presented have all used multiple, yet diverse primary sources all related to the same event or topic. As a teacher of earlier American history, it sometimes becomes difficult to find several primary sources that are all related to the same topic. During my search, I came across a website that I think could be useful to many Social Studies teachers (or LA teachers) for finding primary sources. I hope that it is as helpful to others as it was to me!

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/

Book suggestion for Trials

The book that mimics the The Crucible is called Salem Witch (My Side of the Story) by Patricia Hermes. It tells the story from both Elizabeth's and George's point of view. The bool level is 4.5 if you use Accelerated Reader. ISBN 0-7534-5991-4. Hope this helps!

History Fair Connection

First, I'd like to say that I really enjoyed our first class! At this point I am a tad behind, but I am excited to kick off this year's History Fair activities. I am always looking for strategies to help students organize their research. As we did our primary source activity on the mining crisis, I was inspired. I am going to use the theories (history from below, great man, economic, political etc.) to help students organize and research their topic. Students need a variety of primary and secondary resources, as well as differing viewpoints to create widespread and balanced research. I realize each school of thought has its own detailed intricacies, but I think I can provide a short explanation for each one that my 7th graders will understand. Bottom line, I think this activity will help them sort their massive (and often overwhelming) amounts of information!

Historiography

I used the Hocking Valley Mine Strike primary source activity that we did in our orientation class for my enrichment class. The kids had some difficulty understanding the definitions for all the different historical perspectives but once they understood their assigned point of view they did a great job. Some of the artwork on the posters was amazing. Being 8th graders they had no background knowledge of the union movement or the violence that usually resulted from strikes. We discussed how the mine owners actually used the company stores and company housing to keep their workers under control. I also brought in a picture of my grandfather who was a coal miner in West Virginia in the 1930s. They were really shocked that companies were able to get away with some of the things they did, especially the attacks on strikers.
Thanks for a great activity.
Amanda

Teaching History with Works of Art

Last week, I attended a lecture and preview for the Columbus Museum of Art's (CMA) exhibit George Tooker: A Retrospective. This renewed my interest in how art can provide social commentary. Tooker's "protest pieces" express his views on urban isolation and racial and sexual discrimination. CMA's "Art and Social Issues in American Culture" features artwork with artist biographies and interdisciplinary lesson plans in categories of economics, war, and race & ethnicity.

The National Archives Digital Partnerships

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is taking strides to make more of its holdings available online. NARA has partnered with organization including Footnote.com, Google (National Archives on Google Video), and the University of Texas (Presidential Timeline of the Twentieth Century). For more resources, visit http://www.archives.gov/digitization/.

For example, digital images of the following records, and thousands more, are available for free at footnote.com:

• Records from the Constitutional Convention of 1787
• Copybooks of George Washington's correspondence with Secretaries of State, 1789-1796
• Records of Project Blue Book-UFO Investigations, 1947-1969
  

Ohio Memory has new look

Check out Ohio Memory's improved website at www.ohiomemory.org. Upgrades to the site have allowed for even more images to be made available from more than 330 institutions. I like the new search results feature, which displays results with the image, title, subject and description. Users can also save images to a “My Favorites” list that can be exported into PowerPoint or posted online to create a virtual exhibit.

Obama Gets Advice From Navajos Students

I can not help sharing this story from NPR.

Fourth, fifth and sixth grade students from Eagle's Nest Intermediate School, located on the Navajo Nation reservation in the desert of northern Arizona, wrote letters to President-elect Barack Obama describing their lives and asking questions. I was struck by the profoundness of many of the letters that described poverty and illness. Others made me chuckle (I wonder if Obama does listen to Hannah Montana's music). Excerpts of the letters can be found here. The audio of the students reading from their letters can not be missed.

TAH Project Directors Conference

Last week, I attended the Teaching American History (TAH) Project Directors Conference in New York, NY. This is an annual meeting intended to "promote an interactive learning and information exchange process between and among the Teaching American History (TAH) grantees and the U.S. Department of Education."

One of the highlights of the conference - besides a session on how to make and use foldables to teach social studies - was a keynote address The Gilded Age: Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution, Big Business, Labor Activism, Mass Immigration, and the ‘New Woman’ by historian Edward O'Donnell. His multimedia presentation focusing on analyzing images renewed my love of the Gilded Age, a period (post-Civil War - 1890s) so coined by Mark Twain because of the glitter on the surface masking the corruption on the inside.

In spite of the chilly weather, I was able to enjoy the city by the best mode of transportation - walking. I would have liked to make it out of Mid Town more, though. I did get to the Lower East Side to visit the Tenement Museum. I took the newest tour, The Moores: An Irish Family in America. Our small group started in front of the building at 97 Orchard Street to discuss the connotation of a tenement. Terms such as crowded, dirty, unsanitary, and the like are currently associated with tenement; however, in the mid to late 19th century tenement simply described a structure housing three or more unrelated families. We use the more cosmopolitan, French-derived word - apartment - to describe the same structure. The museum does a wonderful job of telling the individual stories of families who lived in the building and tackles larger issues such as discrimination, urban development, health legislation, and building codes.

I forgot my camera and have no photographs to share. Ask Mary to see her Central Park photos, though.