Students Engage Each Other

As part of their cumulative project, students in my Upper School (all 11th graders this year) US History class are responsible for researching the development of a particular area of US History and then teaching a class period on the topic. This year I've been impressed by the way students who are teaching have gotten …

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Hope Realized

As a teacher, you have aspirations, values, and ideas. You try to infuse your teaching with these things, but I sometimes wonder, Do they see it? Are they getting it? Not just the content. Truth is I care about other things much more than that. I want them to love learning. I want them to …

Lessons From the Lessons

We're two weeks into the lessons for the shift project in my US History class. So far, students have taught classes on shifts in alcohol, drugs, transportation, race in sports, and social entertainment. I've been impressed with the way the students have really owned the content that they're teaching and cared about whether others are …

Shift Project- Updated

I wrote in an earlier post about the final project for my US History class. Below is the final assignment. Students are posting their project choices on the class blog. Throughout the year, we have been using a thematic approach to study American history. For your cumulative project (which will replace a cumulative exam), you …

Shifts Happen

For my blended learning US History class, students are doing a final project, instead of writing a final exam. You can see the rough outline of the project below. My original idea for #2 was to have students "adopt" a Wikipedia article and make revisions/edits, but I'm not sure there's going to be one that …

Making of a Constitution

The first few weeks of November are even crazier than usual this year. Wrapping up the trimester. Finishing grades and writing 94 narrative comments. Presenting at NCAIS and NCTE. So not a lot of time for blogging, but I did want to post this PPT I made for my US History class to accompany a …

Learning Differently

I'm presenting tomorrow to campus visitors about the Blended Learning Environment (BLE) US History class I'm teaching this year. I've posted a draft of the slides I'll be using in conjunction with the class blog. I'm grateful to my students for providing me with thoughtful reflections on the class so far for the presentation. I wish …