Digging Into the Past

Abstract

An earlier Teaching American History grant in this Michigan district supported teachers in Grades 5, 8 and 10. Fifth grade teachers noticed that students were arriving with insufficient background knowledge and historical inquiry skills. Digging Into the Past activities are designed to help teachers prepare students in earlier grades. Content and instructional specialists will lead half and full-day seminars, afterschool workshops, book study groups, lectures, teacher projects with graduate credit available, and sessions on developing grade-level lesson plans. Six grade-level history teams will be formed to involve all elementary teachers in the district. Using a two-track system—one more intensive than the other—will make appropriate amounts of professional development available to every teacher. Track 1, the more intensive, will consist of teachers in Grades 2 through 5; Track 2 will consist of kindergarten and Grade 1 teachers. The theme of Digging Into the Past is examining patterns of movement and settlement in American history and how the archeological record helps us understand these patterns. An archeology team will oversee excavations and bring specialized content knowledge into the activities, and each grade-level team will have historians assigned as mentors. K-4 teachers will learn to integrate history and literacy by using history-related books to bring history alive. Grade 5 teachers will synthesize and connect earlier history experiences for students when they begin to study history as a separate subject. The principal academies will help principals learn to evaluate history instruction in the classroom. Throughout the project, teachers will collaborate to develop engaging lessons that integrate literacy and align with state standards.

Visions of Liberty and Equality

Abstract

These western Massachusetts districts are a mix of rural and urban geography. They have a total of 20 schools in need of improvement, corrective action, or restructuring, and teachers need and want professional development opportunities. Each year, Visions of Liberty and Equality will offer a 5-day summer institute that features travel to regional sites combined with lectures and discussion related to the sites. Other events will include two full-day seminars—one in the fall and one in the spring—to study grade-appropriate content delivery (e.g., theater, writing, video), two book discussion groups, and a showcase of effective content delivery practices. Years 1-4 will have separate cohorts of 35 teachers; Years 4 and 5 will add 2-year training for a cohort of 10-15 mentors, who will be drawn from previous years' participants. In Year 5, the mentors will work with a cohort of 15 new or preservice teachers. Taking the history of human rights in America as its theme, Liberty and Equality will bring together academic historians, archival research specialists, museum educators, and experienced teachers to introduce content and historical thinking skills such as historical debate and controversy, bias and point of view, research and analysis of primary sources, and others. The goal is to spiral curriculum development from local to regional to national over time, and each teacher will create lesson plans and assemble a personal instructional archive of photos, artifacts, documents, and other teaching materials. Teachers and partners will contribute to the project Web site, which will be stocked with content, lesson plans, and avenues for teachers to connect with one another.

Building Connections

Abstract

The two metro-Atlanta districts participating in this project include several schools identified as in need of improvement, and one district has not made Adequate Yearly Progress for four years: student scores on state and other standardized tests have been below state averages. Building Connections teachers will interact with historians and colleagues from different grade levels as they attend summer institutes and evening lectures and visit national and local historic sites and archival facilities. Small cohorts will meet during the school year to discuss content and instruction and to collaborate on assignments. Stipends and a competitive application process will be used to recruit 250 Tier 1 teachers (50 per cohort, with one cohort in Year 1, two cohorts in Year 2, and two cohorts in Year 3) and 50 Tier 2 teachers (one cohort for three years, starting in Year 1), with preference given to those from low-performing schools. Throughout the project, themes will center on placing significant individuals, events, and issues into the context of our nation's foundation and civic ideals. Around this content, Building Connections will help teachers learn to integrate several instructional approaches into their practice, such as using nonfiction materials and primary source documents, conducting research, using technology, and incorporating history into reading and writing. During the 5-year project, each Tier 1 teacher will compile a portfolio that includes lesson plans, primary sources, visuals, portraits, and objects. Tier 2 teachers will produce learning packages that include lesson plans, artifacts, and primary documents. All lesson plans will be compiled and shared with other teachers.

With Liberty and Justice for All: American History for Elementary Teachers and Classrooms

Abstract

Grant partner Yale University currently manages another TAH grant for middle and high school teachers. Building on this experience, this grant will serve the elementary teachers in the urban and urban fringe districts in south central Connecticut. Here, several schools are in need of improvement, corrective action, or restructuring, and large achievement gaps are not uncommon. Each year, participating teachers will be engaged in developing curriculum units to share with other teachers and post on the project Web site. Other annual activities will include a summer institute/field trip and eight seminars provided by noted historians who will organize lectures around concepts, themes, and primary sources that underlie the development of American liberty. Project leaders estimate that about 65 teachers a year will participate in selected activities. Because participants will determine their own level of engagement, staff expects 35 teachers each year will attend at least 75 percent of activities, and the goal is that these will be the participants recruited from the schools with the greatest needs. With Liberty and Justice for All aims to help students be engaged with the story of our nation and contribute to the ongoing story of American liberty. To support greater student engagement, grant activities will include instruction that helps teachers apply high-quality curriculum, critical thinking, close reading, and collaborative leadership skills. Outside the seminar settings, this will be accomplished through school-based coaching and technology training. The project will increase the quality and quantity of instructional resources available to all teachers and build an online collection of instructional units for all teachers to use.

Understanding American History

Abstract

New Heights Charter School and four other schools in the K-8 Charter Consortium, including two that have not achieved Adequate Yearly Progress for 3 years, serve more than 1,500 students in Los Angeles. Understanding American History will guide history teachers in these schools through activities that increase their pedagogical content knowledge, including after-school seminars and museum visits. Teachers will also pilot lessons and units of study in teacher cohort classrooms and use the Tuning Protocol to reflect on the units and refine them in grade-level teams. Recruitment of participants will focus on teachers with multiple subject credentials who teach American history content; 30 teachers will participate (starting with 24 in Year 1, with three more added in Year 2 and another three in Year 3). Teachers will explore significant turning points in American history and the role of individuals as viewed through the lens of core principles set forth in the nation's founding documents that have shaped America's social, political, and legal institutions. Teachers will employ the instructional strategies outlined by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe in Understanding by Design as they design units of study that address "enduring understandings" in American history. Teachers will design 25 American history units of study that motivate students and support English language learning; share what they learn with members of the California Charter Schools Association; and make exemplary units and support materials available online to the larger teaching community.

Making Sense of Advertisements

Article Body

Advertisements are all around us today and have been for a long time; advertising-free "good old days" just don't exist. This guide offers an overview of advertisements as historical sources and how historians use them; a brief history of advertising; questions to ask when interpreting ads as historical evidence; an annotated bibliography; and a guide to finding advertisements online.

Website
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/ads/

History in Every Classroom

Article Body

Bringing History Home (BHH), a K-5 curriculum and professional development project, started in 2001 and was part of several TAH grants. Focused on moving history from the margins of the traditional elementary curriculum into the mainstream of the school day, the project prepares all regular K-5 classroom teachers in participating school districts to teach sequential history units.

. . . the project prepares all regular K-5 classroom teachers in participating school districts to teach sequential history units

The BHH curriculum consists of two instructional units per grade level, with lessons that center on trade books, historic images, documents and statistics, and activities to engage students in contextualizing, analyzing and synthesizing the information sources. Seven years after its inception, the BHH program is taught in six Iowa school districts, and elements of the curriculum are spreading to schools in various other states.

With approximately 1,000 student learning assessments collected from more than 120 K-3 classrooms, BHH provides additional evidence for the growing body of research into how children learn history. (See Evaluation of the Teaching American History Project: Bringing History Home II).

History in the K-5 Classroom

So how did history learning become a part of the K-5 classrooms in the project?

By exploring the intersection of our grant components with teacher attitudes and expertise, we begin to understand how and why the project impacts classroom instruction. The intersection of project and teachers includes the following elements:

  • School-wide teacher participation.
  • A longitudinal and sequential professional development design.
  • Teachers learning history through the process of adapting and teaching instructional units.
  • Respecting the reality of teachers’ working conditions.
  • When teachers encounter history as an interpretive, constructivist process, they become excited about teaching it.
  • Incorporating literacy and meta-cognitive strategies into history explorations to enhance student learning in history.
  • When history timelines and maps are transformed from static resources into dynamic construction activities, they are powerful learning tools.
  • Student learning enhances and inspires teachers’ interest in history.
  • When exemplary teachers serve as mentors, they jump-start new teachers’ enthusiasm and preparation to teach history.
Pragmatic Considerations

Our TAH grant proposals centered on preparing all K-5 teachers in participating schools to teach history. In order to secure and inspire the universal participation of teachers, our project design team prioritized pragmatic considerations when designing curricular units and workshop activities.

We knew we had to keep expectations for teacher time commitments to a reasonable level. While we always secure teacher participation through recruitment rather than administrative edict, we can’t count on teacher self-selection arising from a love of history. We found that fairly significant monetary and book stipends seemed to be the most powerful sign-up motivations for the initial participants, while the participants in the second grant were swayed to join the project by the enthusiastic testimony of veteran BHH teachers.

. . . monetary and book stipends seemed to be the most powerful sign-up motivations for the initial participants, while the participants in the second grant were swayed to join the project by the enthusiastic testimony of veteran BHH teachers

Regardless of the motives that led to their involvement, 100% of the regular classroom teachers in BHH schools participated in the program. This is an important element of the sequential model we use. The self-contained nature of most lower and middle elementary classes means that almost every regular classroom teacher conducts lessons in social studies. If only a few teachers in a school participated in the BHH workshops, only a fraction of students in a school would learn history each year. This would completely derail our goal for students to develop increasingly more sophisticated skills and understanding in history from year to year throughout the elementary grades.

While the project probably would not be successful if we didn’t privilege pragmatic choices, our emphasis on the practical also stems from a desire to not take advantage of teachers’ generosity of spirit and time. It is humbling to work with groups of people whose professional lives are already quite taxed, but who are willing to rise to the occasion of learning new skills and perspectives.

Bibliography

This essay is drawn from "History in Every Classroom: Setting a K-5 Precedent," found in The Teaching American History Project: Lessons for History Educators and Historians by Rachel G. Ragland and Kelly A. Woestman (Routledge, 2009).

What to Do When You Teach It All

Article Body

Teaching American History (TAH) has been an exciting opportunity for me in several ways. As a participating middle school teacher, I gained access to materials, ideas, and knowledge that enhanced my ability to teach American history. After the TAH experience, students left my classroom with more than the traditional rote memorization of historical facts; they developed a wider outlook on historical events and people. I wanted to share that positive experience, so I now work as the History Content Coach for elementary school teachers in another TAH grant.

Teachers who participate in the Savannah-Chatham County Public School grant are involved in a number of content-rich activities. They read scholarly books, such as The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War by Leonard L. Richards, and answer reading response questions. For each book or topic, they participate in an all-day symposium where they hear from the author or an authority on the topic in the morning and spend the afternoon focused on teaching the new content.

Teachers receive a binder with additional background information on the content area and teaching resources, such as vocabulary activities, poems and songs from the time period, reading comprehension activities, lesson plans complete with primary sources, Internet links, and rubrics. Participating teachers leave the symposium with materials ready for immediate classroom use.

The Boon of Multi-Disciplinary History

Addressing the needs of elementary teachers has been a different kind of learning experience for me. They are eager for content and resources, but also for ways to present the content that appeal to a myriad of learning styles. Elementary school teachers are responsible for many subject areas and have limited time to devote solely to social studies. Integrating historical content into other academic areas allows them to teach history throughout the day. Connections with reading and language arts work for a range of topics, but history also works with other parts of the curriculum. For example, sources on Lewis and Clark fit into a unit in science on biomes, minerals, plants, and the environment. The possibilities are endless.

Integrating historical content into other academic areas allows [elementary school teachers] to teach history throughout the day.

Our local TAH program provides a Resource Library that supplements limited supplies at individual schools and facilitates this integration. Teachers can check out class sets of biographies, autobiographies, and historical fiction, helping them combine language arts standards with history content. Access to resources has allowed more elementary school teachers to incorporate social studies reading into their classes.

The Resource Library also provides primary and secondary sources, as well as advice on using the sources in the classroom. Photographs and pictures work especially well with younger students. One teacher created a "walk through" gallery of pictures showing daily life in the 19th century. She asked students to explain what the pictures told them about the time period, appealing to both visual and kinesthetic learners. Students are very observant and can learn much about a person, event, or time period by analyzing images.

One teacher created a "walk through" gallery of pictures showing daily life in the 19th century. She asked students to explain what the pictures told them about the time period, appealing to both visual and kinesthetic learners.
Keeping Lessons Concise

Time is always a key factor, especially for elementary school teachers. When finding or developing lesson plans, we try to keep a realistic time frame in mind. A lesson can be very exciting, but if it requires one hour a day for seven consecutive days and focuses on a narrow topic, teachers will not use it. In many schools, social studies is taught at most three days a week for 30 to 45 minutes. Taking that same lesson and pulling out a part that pertains to a grade-specific standard is a good solution—it presents an interesting lesson that fits with the existing schedule. Another strategy for saving time in the classroom, especially for lessons that rely on online resources, is to put reading selections and primary sources together ahead of time on a CD for easy access.

Elementary school teachers who participate in grant activities are excited to learn new content. The challenge is taking what they have learned back to their classrooms and students. One answer is to provide lesson plans that are ready to use, address various learning styles, and can be incorporated into other subjects such as reading and language arts. This is one of my most important "lessons learned." To facilitate this, I focus on the standards each grade teaches—for elementary school, this includes social studies and language arts—and then emphasize strategies for teaching history within the existing framework.

. . . provide lesson plans that are ready to use, address various learning styles, and can be incorporated into other subjects such as reading and language arts.

Presidents, Politics, and Social Content

Description

From the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum website:

"How did the Apollo program intersect with the whirling social and political climate of the 1960s and early 1970s? Three presidential administrations oversaw the Apollo space program, and each reacted in a different way. Senior curator Roger Launius will focus on the myth of presidential leadership during this time period and will provide context to the political challenges NASA faced with the failure of Apollo I. Curators Allan Needell and Margaret Weitekamp will discuss the fascinating intersections of Ralph Abernathy, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Moon landing and will analyze several political cartoons from the period."

An American Story: Struggles and Triumphs

Abstract

Of the 223 elementary history teachers in these mid-Hudson Valley districts, only one has an undergraduate degree in American history and none has a graduate degree in the field. And although professional development in reading, math and science is readily available, this is not true for history. An American Story: Struggles and Triumphs will engage teachers in U.S. history through lectures and discussions during week-long summer institutes, monthly workshops and other traditional approaches. It will take a notably 21st-century approach—teachers will learn to use multimedia software to create an interactive virtual museum that will be curated by project staff, partners, teachers and students. In Year 1, 40 teachers and three teacher coaches will participate; in Years 2 through 5, nine teachers and the three teacher coaches from Year 1 will continue, and they will be joined by annual cadres of 31 new teachers. Institute topics will explore the thesis that the American story is one of continual struggle toward an ideal—freedom to pursue and equal opportunity to achieve the "American Dream." Content will focus on local, regional and national events and people, making use of primary sources available through partner organizations and nearby historic sites. For example, the New York Historical Society will offer workshops titled "Nueva York" and "Revolutions! America, France and Haiti." Participants will visit the Erie Canal, the Tenement Museum, and the Vanderbilt Mansion. The project will produce the virtual museum, a variety of classroom materials and a cadre of teacher leaders who can support their colleagues in building American history expertise.

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