I moved onto the Historical Content section of the website this week. This section is designed to give you the research and information you need to build your lesson plans. As Van Sledright suggested, we should be experts in field in order to teach history effectively, and this is the part of the website that will help us confirm and expand our knowledge.
You may browse website reviews, weekly history quizzes (for you or the students), national resources, and specifically chosen examples where textbooks fall short. I particularly enjoyed the last one. "Beyond the textbook" is a collection of eleven examples where textbook narratives fall short. I thought this would be a great place for teachers to start incorporating a degree of "textbook questioning" into their classes if they previously were wondering where to specifically fit in information of this nature. I also really enjoyed the Weekly quizzes. They are fairly short and would make excellent warm-up, or bellwork, assignments.
Finally, aside from perusing the History Content section of the site and letting me know what you think, I'd love for you to read the following question "For a Master Teacher": Changes in History. What do you think the biggest transformation in history education has been? How much differently will your classroom be run vs. what you experienced in school?
I looked at both the National Resources and Beyond the Textbook. I can see the great benefit there is to the Beyond the Textbook section and agree that it would help achieving some level of skepticism without going too far. I looked particularly at the National Resources section and was somewhat astonished at the vast amount of information readily available from credible sources (museums, archives etc.)
ReplyDeleteWhile looking at the Changes in history section the initial response to the question covering the Internet and technology and Standards cover the two most prevalent and noticeable shifts. In my experience on the School Committee, just 4 years, I have seen my district work on a completely new curriculum, implementing the newly adopted Common Core standards (although we were not selected for the Race to the Top funds) and a massive upgrade in technology. In a district of 1600+ students we invested more the $500,000 in upgrading and expanding our access and capability for both the students and the teachers. Though this is not solely in the realm of history, all departments and grade levels were changed and influenced by these.
Massachusetts in particular saw a major shift in 1993 and then about a decade later with NCLB and now with Common Core. Education is constantly changing and it is not just history teachers but all teachers that need to keep up. Mediocre is is not good enough for our students. Overall, I would agree with the post's response that standards and technology have been the major influence.
I like the idea of Weekly Quizzes. It would be a fun activity to do with students and a great way to review myself. I think that this is something I will do on my own.
ReplyDeleteThe Beyond the Textbook section is also useful. In Historical Methods, we did a project called "Beyond the Textbook" which is similar to this collection of reviews. This is something a teacher could use for modeling if s/he were to use this as a project. I think a project such as this would be important to put history in perspective and make actual history thinkers out of our copiers and borrowers.
As for the "Changes in Teaching History of the the Past 10 Years" article, I personally find it difficult to evaluate this topic. My high school seems to be light-years ahead of others' and I have only intensely studied history education for the past two years. This, for be, puts into perspective how much easier teaching will be for me as I have access to projectors, computers, primary sources, and other technological developments that other teachers simply never had. I truly appreciate these advancements though I was not there to see them come to fruition and instead enjoy their final products.
I think the major change in the past ten years is the use of sophisticated PowerPoint presentations that bring together source material on the Internet. In high school I went from learning straight from a textbook to more lessons integrated with primary source material. In my senior year we did many Document Based Question assignments where primary source excerpts were brought in as evidence to answer a question. The general rules of the DBQ were that you could only use the documents provided with the question. This approach forced all students to investigate the sources to answer the question.
ReplyDeleteI think developing assignments that integrate primary sources like speeches, maps, resolutions and diary entries to boost student understanding of history will be key in the future. There are so many databases of information available that teachers can use to frame their lessons and boost investigation.