Category: education
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History in the Kitchen: The Great Depression & Frozen Fruit Salad
History in the Kitchen: The Great Depression & Frozen Fruit Salad- the causes of the depression & the human toll
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Empowering Students
Wow! What a whirlwind of a week. After the mass-shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Florida on February 14, 2018, several students approached my colleagues and me about how to take on the issue of gun violence in schools and on the streets. They wanted to walk out of school…
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The Constitutional Convention- 8th grade style
Hello faithful readers. I apologize for the long break between entries, however with the holidays upon me I had no time to write. Though it may seem otherwise, I do things other than teach. The last week has brought me to the point in the year that I enjoy most- the month long unit about…
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The Power of Collaboration
I am an incredibly lucky educator in that my department is extraordinarily collegial. I am able to share ideas with not only the other 8th grade history teacher, but with 7th and 6th grade history teachers, as well. We learn quite a lot from one another, and the ability to talk to other experts in…
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ISN Part II
In Part I of my post on Interactive Student Notebooks (ISN), I wrote about why the notebook is useful for personalizing history class for students and for preventing loss because of its unique cover made by the student. As most of you are well aware, a book is much more than its cover! The inside…
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The Interactive Student Notebook- Part I
Interactive Student Notebook- Part IA Brief Introduction Last year, my colleague, Ken, and I started using something called an Interactive Student Notebook (ISN) for all of our classes. We got the idea from a workshop at our school run by History Alive! The most basic definition of an ISN is this: A notebook in which…
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Non-Fiction Reading Techniques
I find that my students do their best reading when given strategies that help them navigate through text book sections. Simply saying to a thirteen year old child (or any teenager for that matter) “Read pages 13-19 this evening for homework” doesn’t provide enough instruction. In order to get a student to think carefully and…
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Happening History- Welcome
Each year when a fresh-faced, bright-eyed group of 8th graders walks into my classroom on the first day, I try to get a single point across that I hope they’ll carry with them throughout the school year and beyond:History is more than dates and dead guys. That being said, the question becomes, what is history?…