It’s Summer!

Ok, not quite. Today was the last day of classes, and while we still have 8th grade Celebration (graduation) and three professional development days, it feels like the beginning of summer. I came home and slept face down for an hour a half, woke happily groggy, and thought yep, this is what the beginning of summer usually feels like.

I went to a coffee shop tonight to try to continue working on some summer grant work that I’m doing on the 7th grade curriculum, but I was utterly unsuccessful. So inspired by Philip’s reading list for the summer, I decided to think a bit about what I hope to accomplish this summer.

I’d like to take a photo a day for June 6 (today) through August 6 (when teachers return to school). I’ve tried 365 photo challenges in the past, but always peter out somewhere around March. Hopefully, a shorter time frame will be helpful. I’ll post the pictures here.

Read 10 books. That’s a little more than 1 per week, which should be manageable.

Average 3 miles per day. I’ll have more time to hike in the summer, but I also do less walking as part of my regular day. (During the school year, I walk 2-2.5 miles per day as a teacher.) My FitBit daily distance data will be here.

I’m planning to sticky this post to the top of my blog for the next couple months. I’ll update it as the summer goes along.

Dream Trips

As our final project for 7th grade World History, students created a dream trip. They could choose any four stops and visit three sites at each stop. They created postcards in either PPT or Prezi to briefly describe the sites and explain their choices. (Let it not be said that my students won’t know how to send a letter, although I don’t really think that’s a critical skill ) They only limitations- At least two of the places had to be ones we studied this year and they had to visit two continents. This was a great project to hold student interest at the time of the year, but also for some wrap-up discussion on places that we’ve studied.

Check out this beautiful example and this one! (Click on the word Postcards to access the cards in the first example.)

After students had written their postcards, I asked them to plot the places that they wanted to visit on a Google map.

Use the  + and – to navigate around on the maps.

1st period

View Larger Map

2nd period

View Larger Map

On our last day of class, we analyzed the maps. We discussed why, especially in first period, the destinations they picked were so American and Euro heavy.

We finished the class by playing GeoGuessr. Students were quite inventive in seeking out clues within the pictures to determine where they were, looking at clothing, text, and land features. Some of their guesses were way off, but some were within a couple hundred miles.

Millard Fillmore for Life!

Perhaps the biggest hit of the Forgotten Presidents mini-unit was making paper hats, inspired by this piece of McKinley campaign paraphernalia. As silly as this may seems (and there’s nothing wrong with some silliness, mind you), the neat thing was that students seemed to really latch on to the presidents they chose to make hats for. A number of students decided to wear their hats for the rest of the day, which sparked some great conversation with other students.

Students decided to make a serious face for this picture

Today was the final day of the mini-unit, and we revisited the list of the reasons we/the American public remembers or forgets presidents that students brainstormed on the first day. Some of the reasons that students listed, they still thought rang true, but others seemed less true. For example, dying in office is actually more common in “forgotten” presidents, rather than remembered ones. Students discussed that maybe the things in the remember list were true, but that you needed a combination of them or to be a relatively recent president to be remembered by most Americans.

Forgotten Presidents

In the last weeks of school, the other 8th grade US history teacher and I survey students to gauge their interest in topics we’ve haven’t covered that year. We then compile their responses and the teach classes on the topics that emerge as the favorites by class. Since we teach overlapping periods for most of our students. I’ll teach some of his students for the week and he’ll teach some of mine, depending on their interests. Some of the topics are four day seminars and some are one day seminars. This always feels like a crazy short time period for the topics, but students get exposure to topics they wouldn’t otherwise and I think the variety is welcomed as the school year winds down. The topics that were chosen this year for four day seminars are the history of comedy, history of/in the movies, and forgotten presidents. The one day seminars are history of music (that we haven’t already covered), history of sports, disability and GLBT rights, and history of computers.

The forgotten presidents topic is a new one for this year. It’s challenging to decide exactly who should be on the list, but the below list represents the presidents with which I think students will be least familiar. My goal isn’t necessarily for them to learn facts about these presidents, so much as to gain some general familiarity with presidents that aren’t often taught in any depth and consider why we remember the presidents we do.

Martin Van Buren (1837-1841)
William H. Harrison (1841)
John Tyler (1841-1845)
James K. Polk (1841-1849)
Zachary Taylor (1849-1850)
Millard Fillmore (1850-1853)
Franklin Pierce (1853-1857)
James Buchanan (1857-1861)
Rutherford B. Hayes (1877-1881)
James A. Garfield (1881)
Chester A. Arthur (1881-1885)
Grover Cleveland (1885-1889, 1893-1897)
Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893)
William McKinley (1897-1901)
William H. Taft (1909-1913)
Warren G. Harding (1921-1923)
Calvin Coolidge (1923-1929)
Gerald R. Ford (1974-1977)

Day 1

Take presidents quiz (circle names of those who have been president from a list of names, some presidents and some not), turn over and write down the names of all the presidents you can remember

Discussion in two large groups- What are the differences between these two lists? Why do we remember some presidents and not others?

Record on large sheet of paper (save for Day 4) and share with whole class

Discuss in smaller groups- What do people look for in a president? How has technology changed campaigning? Does physical appearance matter? (Heights of presidents and presidential candidates) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heights_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States_and_presidential_candidates

Day 2

Watch Animaniacs Presidents What types of facts does it highlight about each president?

Assign each student a forgotten president. Read his biography and develop a 30 second elevator pitch for that president. Cover at least the following…

*What time period in US history/what else important was going on?
*What political party did the candidate represent?
*Significant achievement/issue of presidency
*Fact people most likely to remember about this president

Have students deliver elevator pitches with the class. (Project a picture of each president from my computer as they pitch)

Day 3

Look at examples of campaign memorabilia from forgotten presidents

Van Buren Pull Card 
McKinley Paper Hat
Cleveland-Harrison Scales
Harrison Paper Lantern

Choose a forgotten president and create a campaign poster highlighting and (if time) a piece of campaign swag

Day 4

Quick 5 point quiz

Re-visit 1st day’s discussion- Have your opinions changed? What similarities do forgotten presidents have with well-remembered presidents (assassination, presidency during war time, good looks, popularity or infamy, etc.)

Watch segment of Michael Gerhardt on Morning Joe http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3036789/ns/msnbc-morning_joe/vp/51287398#51287398

Working with a partner- Create the ultimate (fictional) candidate. What would be the best set of characteristics/events to assure a president’s memory is preserved?

If needed for any of the four days…
Chicago Tribune Presidents Quiz 
Presidential Trivia
45 Odd Facts Video
Presidential Facts- History Channel 

Animal Farm and Russian Revolution Update

In a previous post, I described a lesson I’d created for 7th grade World History class on the Russian Revolution. Below is a picture taken of the board  after students wrote the allegorical elements they saw in Animal Farm. I was impressed with some of the connections they saw. I’d like to find a bit more middle school-friendly video about the Russian Revolution, but overall I feel like the lesson went well.

Classroom Updates

I haven’t blogged as much recently as I would like to, but I did just post updates from my seventh and eighth grade classes on the classroom blog.

The Upper School class has wrapped up the student-taught lessons. The final lesson focused on the history of cancer treatment in the US. It was a great introduction to how treatment has changed. The student who was teaching the class choose three volunteers to illustrate this point at the end of the lesson. The three students put on sunglasses that were obscured to various degrees and tried to retrieve a bone from the Operation game. The class then had to guess what period of cancer treatment each set of glasses represented. It was a great way to wrap up one of my favorite parts of the course.

One of the students wrote on her reflection after teaching, “I also learned that once you are able to teach someone material, you truly do have a full understanding of it. I now realize what it is to truly understand something, and I think now I may even have a new study method! (sorry mom… you’re about to learn a lot about photosynthesis…)

Questions About the Holocaust

Today in 8th grade classes, we discussed the typical experience of Jews and other victims of the Holocaust as they traveled to and arrived in concentration camps. After a reading and looking at some photographs, students were getting restless but still had a number of questions, so I had them do the following.

Students split into pairs and wrote two questions they had about the camps or Holocaust, more broadly on two post-it notes. Then they stuck the post-it notes on the board and chose two post-its from other groups with questions they wanted to answer.

I didn’t want to turn students loose on Google to start looking for the answers to their questions, so I directed them to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum website. If they couldn’t find the information there, then I asked them to talk with me and we researched the information together. I was attempting to strike a balance between wanting students to research on their own, but also giving guidance to avoid potentially disturbing or inaccurate information.

After they finished answering the questions, they returned the post-its to the board and the originators of the questions retrieved them. There was a built-in quality control. Students whose questions weren’t sufficiently answered complained to the question answerers which allowed me to say to those groups, “Hey, they don’t think you’ve answered their questions well. Give it another go.” Students then shared some of the questions and answers with the class as a whole.

The activity was really productive in terms of being able to answer large number of student questions and also to give students the sense that I’m not the only source of trustworthy information.

Wedding rings taken from Jews and others who were taken to Buchenwald