Summative Performance Task & Tool Harwood Union History Department Your Challenging Task: Answer a historical question in a formal academic essay using ample evidence from multiple sources. Your Learning Target: I can uses evidence from multiple sources to make a strong argument on an historical question or debate. What is your Historical…
What is political literacy? Political literacy means having the basic skills, understandings, and attitudes required to take an active and well educated role in a democratic society. Why should schools teach political literacy. In a world with so many problems in need of political solutions we need citizens who are capable of filtering through all of…
This was an excellent article written by the son of Tony Judt in The Nation. The article is no longer available on The Nation’s website, but I was able to resurrect the article by finding a cached version of the page. (Note: the link to the article on The Nation’s website now appears to be working)…
I recently came across a blog post asking the question – Should we be engaging or empowering students? I’ll be sharing this with my students as an example of a false dichotomy or the ‘either-or logical fallacy.’ These goals need not be mutually exclusive and the best answer may be somewhere in the middle. While I…
The following is an excerpt from an article entitled “Three Questions for America“, written by the late Ronald Dworkin. The excerpt helps explain the purpose of this blog, which is to promote the collaborative development of a new school civics course that helps all students develop the necessary knowledge, skills, and dispositions required to take…
Hackschooling is a term used to describe the process by which a student takes control of his or her education and makes it work for them. In this amazing TEDx talk 13 year old Logan LaPlante discusses how he has accomplished this – with a lot of help from many mentors in his community. Wouldn’t…
I just finished my presentation at Vermont Fest and it seemed to go very well. I owe a great deal of gratitude to my students from last year -it was their work that made the presentation effective. Below is the presentation I gave with some student videos embedded…
Video/Audio PBS History Channel Discovery Channel (A&E) HBO Showtime Amazon.com Youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/HistoryFeed?feature=watch Google Videos Google Search (message boards) Annenberg Media Biography of US HIstory Channel – America: The Story of US How Stuff Works History – http://history.howstuffworks.com/american-history http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/hsw-shows/stuff-you-missed-in-history-class-podcast.htm http://www.havefunwithhistory.com/movies/index.html Crash Course Videos Funny or Die (may not be appropriate) Drunk History (may not be appropriate)…
What is a Vox Pop? Vox Pop means ‘Voice of the People’. It is a style of journalistic interview where various people are asked the same question. “The aim is to get a variety of answers and opinions on any given subject. Journalists are usually instructed to approach a wide range of people to get…
Below is a list of some of my favorite sources for helping students learn about U.S. History. Western Expansion, Territorial Conquest, American Imperialism, Indian Wars Indian Removal Lesson – http://zinnedproject.org/posts/1381 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee – HBO Movie and Book Indian Removal Lesson and Readings from Teaching Tolerance – http://www.tolerance.org/lesson/indian-removal-does-history-always-reflect-progress Indian Removal Segment from…
