Historical Investigation

My VHS class on American Foreign Policy has really taken off. Students have debated the start of the Cold War and are engaged in a simulation around advising President Truman in connection with the War in Korea. This simulation comes from the Choices program. I struggle with online learning as I feel it is more formulaic and not as passionate as the face to face learning. However, this group of students seems very enthusiastic and interested in the material.

Students in Sacrifice for Freedom, continue to research with primary sources. In some cases they are even translating the sources into English to use for a presentation about their country during World War Two.

(soldiers prepare to parachute into France as part of Operation Jedburgh)

In history v. Hollywood, students finished watching the film Glory. They then started working on historical research to analyze accuracy for film reviews. The next film we will be watching is about the fight for Women's Suffrage called Iron Jawed Angels.

Values and the research of Rushworth Kidder was discussed in Ethics class this week. We looked at a few hypothetical scenarios and talked about the theory that all humans share the same values. These students have a vocabulary quiz coming up soon as well.

The Revolution and propaganda were the topic of the day in both AP and Honors U.S. history. On Friday, I attended a training to help me prepare for a webinar in December. Another teacher and I are using the book Reading, Writing, and Thinking about History, in order to pilot a unit around argumentative writing. The book uses the Historical Investigation model to research andvwrite about 6 controversial questions in U.S. History before the Civil War. We are each piloting one of these units and then will share the student work and any advice we have in a webinar. The State of Maine has once again received a grant to sponsor the Cross Discipline Literacy Network that is providing the webinars in many different content areas K-12. In order to prepare for this, my students have read about the French and Indian War, and how Britain used taxation to pay for the War and the colonial responses. This will help them for the Historical Investigation we will start next week, "Who fired the first shot at Lexington Green?"

Next week I will blog specifically about this investigation and our first advisee day out! I have 10th grade advisees and next Wednesday we will be traveling to 3 different types of colleges so that students can see what college is like. This is paid for with a MELMAC grant.