Author: Mollie Carter

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Reflection: DBQ lesson

USS_Arizona_Memorial

I have rather enjoyed creating this lesson. The idea was something I became interested in while in college and have not had the space to develop since then. When this project was introduced to me I knew immediately what I would do.

It became more interesting, unfortunately, in the middle of November as Paris was attacked and hateful rhetoric began to come from the Republican presidential candidates. It reminded me of some of the rhetoric after the attacks on the twin towers, which as a 12 year old then I clearly remember. As I started my venture into teaching, I realized that many of my students would be born near or after this day that so scarred my memory. I was reminded of my own age as well as my place in the greater timeline of history. It is this realization that directed me to think of another generations “day of infamy” and the ways we teach it to students who have little context for it.

I also find myself wanting to emphasize on historical empathy, or perspective taking. Often times when looking at history, we may look at it with our modern day perspectives and judge the people of the past without seeing things through their eyes. The purpose of this is not to justify their actions but realize that it could still happen to us; that if we forget the past or believe we are above it, we are bound to repeat it.

Creating this document based lesson allowed me to combine both of these ideas of mine into one, ideally powerful, lesson. I am not a Mac person so learning to use the iBook software was a bit of a learning curve but in the end I found it worth it to create this easy to access lesson. I hope that whoever may find this will have some deep discussions both about our history and the nature of humans themselves.
Photo credit: Wikipedia
User: Victor-ny
Uploaded: 18 July 2010

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The One Thing You Should Know

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Prompt: Students were asked to design a flipped lesson and then write a blog post that showcases their flipped lesson and reaction to designing it.

For my unit that I will teach in student teaching, I am covering World War One. As I was designing this unit I wanted to think of interesting ways to present the information to students. My cooperating teaching uses a loose flipped classroom model anyway; the students do the reading for homework (they have two days since we are on a block schedule) and then we have discussions, or activities, in class.

For this unit I have probably over done it on the readings; I wanted to give them a broad understanding of things that were happening during the war and a chance to read the primary sources to figure out their own opinion of what happened. This is how I started the unit, in the middle we are taking a look at various historians perspectives on the war to give the students a broad scope and help to shape their ideas.

I’m hoping that by giving them the primary sources first and allowing for deep analysis in class, they will better be able to judge the historical accounts and take what they need out of them for their final paper of the unit.

At the tail end of the unit, we will be discussing the consequences of the war and the lasting effects. That’s where a flipped lesson comes in The One Thing You Should Know About WWI.

one thing about wwi

I picked yet another historians perspective on the entirety of the war, but in video form with the use of other visual media to make their points. It’s from the History Channel and it’s entitled “The one thing you should know about WWI”, similar to this post. Following the video there is a short (and easy) quiz and a discussion. As far as their homework goes this is easy.

The next day in class we will be working on an in-class group presentation about preventing this history from repeating itself. I will preface the class with some modern examples of similar actions or conflicts; the students are supposed to be keeping up on current events. And then they will divide into groups to create a sticky-poster about what lessons from WWI modern politicians should keep in mind as they govern their nations.

As an aside, designing the lesson on TEDEd was incredibly easy and, as a peer pointed out, very supportive. There are lots of options as to what to include with the video lesson whether that is a quiz or a discussion or an area to include further links. You can add a lot of depth to the lesson, if one so chose.

Source: Library of Congress
Title: Will you have a part in victory?
Creator:James Montgomery Flagg
Year: 1918
(Picture is link to source)

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iPads for everyone: the 1 to 1 classroom

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Anti-communist propaganda warning of “the dangers of a Communist takeover”.

Prompt:  Assume you have your first full time teaching job and the principal tells you that you’ve been selected to pilot the  “1 to 1 Project.”  What are your thoughts about the opportunities and challenges that presents?

Yay! I’ve been given a 1 to 1 classroom as a pilot program for my school. At first my heart is pounding and my head racing with ideas of what to do with such unrestrained freedom in my classroom. With access to all the information and knowledge the internet contains at their fingertips, there is nothing my students cannot do.

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