So how do we top the popularity of our historical thinking poster? We make a good thing even better! Check out Teachinghistory.org’s interactive version of the historical thinking poster for the 2012–2013 school year!

Just like the original poster, we created a version specifically for elementary classrooms and another for secondary grade use.

With links to lessons, primary sources, teaching ideas and more, the interactive poster helps guide you to great resources found on Teachinghistory.org, such as:

• A quiz to test your knowledge of primary and secondary sources
• A video on “What is Historical Thinking?”
• Lesson plans focused on key elements of historical thinking
• Ideas for teaching with text, photographs, art, maps, objects, and more

Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• Project the poster up on your smartboard and use it to introduce the concept of historical thinking
• Select a different teaching resource from the poster each week to reinforce a particular historical thinking skill
• Use the source information to model how to cite sources from the web

Be sure to check out Teachinghistory.org’s interactive Civil War poster filled with teaching resources related to the primary sources depicted!

One of the issues with which I struggled as a new teacher was the recognition of major themes prevalent in American history. In my first year of teaching I was often more concerned with getting through the next unit, next lesson, even the next class rather than thinking about the bigger picture. And my ignorance of the important themes of history did a disservice to my students. The event-focused history as I taught it failed to reveal connections and humanize the actors of history; it felt irrelevant to most of my students. The content, in fact, was presented as simply a series of inevitable events; each one distinct from the last, never to be considered again as we marched through time. As I became more comfortable in my teaching, I realized the importance of weaving salient themes of history, including race, class, and nationalism, throughout my lessons as a way to make the content more meaningful. Thus, I began the conscious effort of highlighting the manifestations of these themes in history for the benefit of my students. I discovered that the connections we made through class activities based on these themes allowed my students to see relationships within the content and gain a deeper understanding of the material.

The theme of class in America was one with which I felt a particularly deep connection, and as such, it became a thread that bound many of my American history lessons and units. Class issues and class conflict imbue nearly every event in American history. Of course, class was a significant concern as the Founding Fathers developed the framework that became our nation. And class issues are important to those studying the workers of the Industrial Revolution and the soldiers of the Civil War. And from there, class has become arguably even more important to our history. During the Gilded Age and the Progressive period, labor issues were rooted firmly in class. This theme continued through the 1930s, during which time most conflict in American society concerned clear class questions. And since the 1970s inflationary pressures and the struggles of the middle class have often been topics of historians, economists, and pundits. Today, we often hear about issues related to the economic crisis, class disparities, and the effects on the middle and lower class. To adapt an expression from professor and philosopher Cornell West—in all circumstances of history, class matters.

As I have suggested in previous posts, using music to engage, inform, and otherwise foster meaningful learning has worked well for my students and me. Within the theme of class in particular, a rich bounty of songs exists and can provide that fundamental thread through which the theme of class can connect with many periods in history. Songs about class give voice to those we rarely listen to or read about in our textbooks, but can be a component of instruction important to historical understanding.

In early American history students and I listened to Yankee Doodle Dandy and assessed the class differences emerging between the colonists and the British. We reviewed class conflict and the emergence of technology during the Industrial Revolution through contemporary sources including Radiohead’s haunting Palo Alto in an effort to tease out some of the feelings of those fearful of what kind of life new technology would bring and the associated loss of jobs for craftspeople in the 19th century. Antebellum period songwriters including Stephen Collins Foster and Daniel Decatur Emmett provided glimpses into the lives of working-class people of the U.S. as we approached the Civil War.

But for me it was music from the labor movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which allowed me to deeply explore the theme of class in American history. Images depicting working conditions and songs written about the plight of the working class as they voiced their frustration and anger toward employers spoke to my students beyond the textbook. Folk musicians from Woody Guthrie, Phil Ochs, and Pete Seeger to Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and the band Bright Eyes have expressed some of these sentiments and I employed them generously. Bluegrass and country artists including Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, and Earl Scruggs also shared stories of the working class and the rural poor in their songs. And beyond the labor movement specifically, music from urban streets has voiced how not only race but class issues have contributed to the struggle toward equality. Artists including Gil Scott-Heron Public Enemy, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Common have all confronted class issues. Moreover, the genre of punk rock largely emerged from working-class ethos and often provides the voice for class struggles as viewed by youth culture. Teachers can use the medium of music from various genres as a means to address class and class issues in a culturally significant way.

Teaching history as more than a series of inevitable events is elemental to quality instruction. Providing opportunities for students to understand the enduring themes that are often left out of traditional, event-focused history can be a way to challenge those myopic narratives. And music focused on the theme of class seems especially prevalent and potent as a way with which to transcend history lessons that are disconnected and irrelevant to students. It is music that is accessible, relevant, and has the ability to engage and inform your students in ways they are not likely to forget.

In a recent post I argued the importance of both history and technology in primary grades. I also made the case that both are significant challenges for teachers of young children for a variety of reasons. However, I’m a firm believer that we can do anything we think is important.

Moving to first grade from upper elementary grades meant that I had to think carefully about the technology I used. Some technology carried over quite nicely. I have an interactive whiteboard in my classroom. When we explored timelines we used it to look at one year in a variety of ways and to show timelines from a wonderful, but very small, book. While we record most of our thinking on chart paper we can hang up around the room to reread and refer back to, the interactive whiteboard allows children to manipulate items and ideas. We’ve also used ours to sort images into categories or chronological order.

Another use of technology I continue with in first grade is movie making. Sometimes we use still pictures and sometimes we take video. One example with still pictures is a movie about our responsibilities for school. A large part of the social studies curriculum in the early grades is based around helping students understand their community and their role in it. At our school we have a Home-School Compact for Learning. In order to better understand the students’ responsibilities we created a video with still pictures and with video. I have slowly collected a few digital cameras and a few Flip video cameras. I carry one of each around with me at all times so that I can quickly capture anything that catches my attention during the school day. Other cameras are on lanyards for students to wear around their neck when using them.

First graders in Virginia also learn about the difference between past and present. It is great fun to look at pictures of the past (especially schools, transportation, and daily life) and then send small groups of first graders off with a camera to capture images to contrast with the past. We can then put those into Windows Movie Maker or Photo Story to create a video explaining past and present.

As the year is progressing and my students are gaining literacy skills, I’m introducing them to Wallwisher. This free site allows me to create a wall with a question or topic and my students can add Post-It like items with their thoughts. As they are working around the classroom exploring a topic they can head to our interactive whiteboard to add their thinking. I can also place the wall on our class blog for students to come back to or to add more thoughts. The structure is set for brief writing, which is comforting to young children. It is a great way for us to record our learning and return to it later.

These different options for technology use offer opportunities for presenting information, processing learning, and sharing our thinking. In my next post I’ll explore my favorite, free, online tool in detail.

Some students in class today may have clear memories of the events of September 11, 2001. Some may have vague memories. Others may have been born years after the attacks. The 10th anniversary of 9/11 presents an opportunity for educators to explore with students what it means to experience history. Were students alive during the attacks? Do they remember them? How do their parents remember the attacks? How did adults they know make sense of the events as they happened? How do people who were alive during the attacks interpret the past when its events are close and painful? How long does it take for historians to find a framework in which to fit events such as 9/11? People watching the World Trade Center towers collapse knew that 9/11 would appear in history books later—what has happened during students' lifetimes that they think was "history in the making?"

One way to teach 9/11 is to compare and contrast it with other past events that witnesses believed were history in the making. Lesson plans often feature the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the assassination of JFK as comparable to 9/11, but what about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? The assassination of Abraham Lincoln? The assassination of William McKinley? The Boston Massacre? The Springfield Race Riot of 1908?

How many people witnessed those events? How many of them witnessed them in person? How well were the witnesses prepared for the events? Did they know ahead of time what the effects might be? Did they share their eyewitness knowledge freely with others, or keep it secret? What did people write about these events immediately after they happened? Years after they happened? Does where something happens make a difference in how people react to it? Has technology made a difference?

Regardless of how you choose to teach 9/11 and whether or not you contrast it with other historical events, approach the subject thoughtfully and with clear goals. To honor the anniversary and to help you as you learn about, teach, and remember the day and its effects, we've gathered together our 9/11 resources on one page: "In Remembrance: Teaching 9/11."

Our spotlight doesn't include all of the many resources available online. More examples follow. Some were created in the immediate wake of 9/11 and some were created 10 years later, in the present day. You can use the older materials as they are, or use them as primary sources in their own right. They represent snapshots of writers, publications, and educators trying to make sense of a sudden, horrifying event.

If you are contrasting 9/11 with other traumatic events in U.S. history, you may want to compare these early reactions with early reactions to those events. How did schools, educators, and students react to violence in the past?

From 2001:

• A New York Times lesson plan published on September 12, 2001, suggests ways educators can help students think about and process the attacks.
• A Special Report from Rethinking Schools discusses teaching in the wake of the attacks.
• America Responds, a PBS website, documents PBS stations' responses to 9/11, maintained throughout 2001; it includes nine lesson plans.
• Scholastic catalogs its student and teacher resources published during 2001, on a subsite of its page created for the 1st anniversary of 9/11.

From 2011:

• Recordings of presentations from September 11: Teaching Contemporary History, a two-day conference presented by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, National September 11 Memorial and Museum, Pentagon Memorial Fund, and Flight 93 National Memorial, consider how understanding of 9/11 has changed.
• Articles from the Organization of American Historians on teaching 9/11 draw on memories of 9/11 submitted to websites (follow the link and scroll down to the "Editor's Choice" selections).
• A free curriculum guide from the 4 Action Initiative includes more than 130 lesson plans for K-12.
• A call for teachers from the New York Times asks educators to contribute their strategies for teaching 9/11, and a later article pulls together NYT resources
• Two simple timelines look at themes related to the attacks at Pearson's Online Learning Exchange
• A free oral history lesson plan from Brown University's Choices program
• EDSITEment's lesson plans on 9/11 and heroism

Many websites and publications also offer primary sources, yet to be interpreted for educational use or packaged into lesson plans. If you have the time to search for and browse these materials, they can provide a rich base from which to assemble your own comparison of past and present. Here are some examples:

• The New York Times' "Times Topics" page collects all NYT articles and photographs that mention 9/11. It archives original coverage of September 11 and NYT anniversary pages from 2002 to 2006, as well as short biographies memorializing the victims of the attack (see "Portraits of Grief").
• Lectures and panels from Columbia University respond to and attempt to contextualize 9/11.
• Columbia University also created a guide to key documents on presidential, administrative, congressional, and international responses to 9/11.
• Archived television footage from ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, and NBC spans September 11–13.
• Legacy.com's Remember: September 11 preserves biographies of the 9/11 victims, searchable by name, home city and state, and flight.
• Sourcebooks from the National Security Archive gather up primary sources related to U.S. policies on terrorism, Afghanistan, biological warfare, anthrax attacks, the Taliban, and Osama Bin Laden.
• More than 50 eyewitness interviews share memories on topics such as "Hijackers," "FBI," and "1993 WTC Bombing," courtesy of National Geographic.
• The American Red Cross's Exploring Humanitarian Law curriculum, while not focused on 9/11, models strategies for teaching about difficult subjects and thorny emotional and ethical questions.

Soaring food prices, a hunger for locally grown produce, high obesity rates, and the desire by people to reconnect with nature and with each other have sparked a national renaissance in community gardening. As part of this movement, school gardens are sprouting up everywhere. Teachers are using these green spaces to teach a variety of subjects, including horticulture, nutrition, history, science, math, writing, and art.

The idea of incorporating gardens in schools began in the late 19th century when Henry Lincoln Clapp, a teacher at the George Putnam Grammar School in Boston, MA, established the first school garden. Inspired after visiting school gardens in Europe, Clapp created a wildflower and vegetable garden at Putnam in 1891 with support from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. The establishment of school gardens soon spread throughout the state and eventually became a nationwide movement, with an estimated 75,000 school gardens by 1906.

For garden advocates, integrating school gardens in the public schools served many purposes. It was a way to get city children outside, engage them in physical activity, and instill in them a sense of pride and teamwork as they cultivated and maintained their gardens. Gardening classes provided students with vocational and agricultural training. Teachers taught a variety of subjects through garden activities. Students practiced writing by keeping planting journals and writing compositions about the garden. Math skills were acquired by counting seeds, measuring garden plots, and determining the appropriate soil depth for planting. Students learned botany and entomology by observing plants and insects and their interrelationships. Geography and history came into play when students studied the origins of fruits and vegetables and planting customs among different cultures. The gardens provided inspiration for drawing, painting, and performing music. In 1914, the federal government established the Bureau of Education’s Office of School and Home Gardening, which promoted school gardens and provided “how-to” pamphlets and course guides.

Children’s involvement in gardening took on a new urgency when the United States entered World War I in 1917. In order to provide food to European allies facing a food crisis and to U.S. troops fighting overseas, citizens were encouraged to grow food for domestic consumption as part of the war garden campaign. Children were enlisted to join the School Garden Army, which adopted the motto, “A garden for every child, every child in a garden.” Students became important contributors to the garden campaign, growing thousands of dollars worth of produce in their school and home gardens.

When the United States entered World War II, children once again played an active role in growing fruits and vegetables to assist in the war effort. During the war, citizens were encouraged to establish victory gardens in their backyards, vacant lots, and schools to provide food for civilians and troops. Gardening was also promoted to boost morale, encourage physical activity and healthy eating and to help Americans deal with the stresses of war. The U.S. Office of Education encouraged victory gardening at schools and promoted school lunch programs that served locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables. The Boy Scouts of America, 4-H clubs, parks and recreation departments, churches, and many civic organizations were involved in victory gardening programs for children. In 1944, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that victory gardens produced 40 percent of the vegetables that were consumed nationally.

The post-war suburban housing boom of the 1950s and 1960s generated more interest in backyard gardening than in community gardening. This changed in the 1970s when rising food prices, an increase in environmental awareness, and a desire by citizens to revitalize neighborhoods plagued by crime and neglect sparked a new community garden movement. Citizens and non-profit groups, such as Boston Urban Gardeners and New York’s Green Guerillas, turned vacant lots into colorful, productive green spaces. The U.S. Department of Agriculture initiated the Urban Garden Program in 1976 to help residents in major cities grow their own food. Educators and activists who were concerned that children were disconnected from nature and unaware of where their food came from reached out to young people and encouraged them to participate in neighborhood, youth, and school gardens. In a 1974 article in the Washington Post, writer Henry Mitchell noted that in Washington, DC, “there are 1,000 small gardens about town in which children grow such plants as the radish, the onion, and (as the weather stops being barbarous) the tomato.”

Since the 1970s, the popularity of school and youth gardens has grown steadily. California took the lead in 1995 by launching the “Garden in Every School” program. As in the school garden movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, teachers are utilizing these outdoor classrooms to teach a wide range of academic subjects through hands-on experiential activities. In addition, educators are using school gardens to encourage a healthier lifestyle, promote environmental stewardship and provide students with the opportunity to develop leadership and team-building skills.

These free resources provide ideas on how to incorporate school gardens into the academic curriculum, including social studies:

• Gardens for Learning—Creating and Sustaining Your School Garden by the California School Garden Network.
• Kidsgardening.org has a “Digging Deeper” section with ideas for many classroom activities.
• Getting Started: A Guide for Creating School Gardens as Outdoor Classrooms.
• GARDENABCS.