End of Year Bulletin Board

Posted on May 15, 2017 by Stephanie's History Store

I recently had my students make their last bulletin board of the year. I envisioned it turning out one way, but it morphed into something much more and I was blown away by their conversations about it.

end of year reflection bulletin board–middle school

I had it say, “One Word Reflections,” and in one word my girls were to answer either, “How will you remember this year,” or “How will you be remembered this year.” I did this with my 7th graders first and so many of their answers were unexpectedly negative. I was so surprised and so disappointed for them. They wrote things like: unlikable, drama, sad, gossip, and negative. I knew there had been stressful academic times, and I knew almost all of their social circles had changed (some more than once, and some very dramatically by adult standards, let alone by 7th grade girl standards), but I didn’t realize for some of them how overwhelming and all-consuming it had been for them.

Some were positive, mostly those who had answered the “how will you be remembered question,” but there weren’t that many from 7th grade. My 6th and 8th grade’s answers were (thankfully) much more balanced.

bulletin board reflections

Anyway, after seeing all their responses, we had a really deep and lengthy conversation about why their negative feelings were taking over their positive ones, what I as a teacher could do to help (especially looking towards next year since I’ll have all the same girls again), and what they could do themselves and for/with each other to help turn things around. We talked about how some of this will continue to matter, and some of it will fade as summer comes. We talked about how it’s natural for friends to come and go and for social circles to change, but there are better ways of doing it/handling it (and sometimes worse ways) so this year was a growing year for many of them, and a lot of them learned important lessons in communication (especially via social media) that they won’t be repeating next year. After about an hour long conversation, an hour where I was immensely proud of how respectfully they communicated with each other and how much they opened up, I had them journal for the last part of class so that they could get anything else out that they hadn’t wanted to verbalize.

I think one of my early bulletin boards in the fall will be something about goals they have for the year, and what type of year they want it to be, also only in one word. I’ll definitely be interested to see the mindset of my kids as they come back for a new school year, to see how they might have grown/matured over the summer, and then we can save their words and compare them at the end of the year to how they think the year turned out. That’s the plan, but clearly it will go in a direction the girls unintentionally drive it in 🙂

True, False, Fix: A Social Studies Review Game

Posted on March 27, 2017 by Stephanie's History Store

Well it took almost a full school year, but thanks to a professional development I went to, I found a review technique ALL of my 7th graders were on board with.

I call it “True, False, Fix.”

true false fix: a social studies review game

The PD person led us through a variety of strategies, and one was a review where there were 20 statements about the content from the lesson divided into pairs in 10 spots around the room. We each started at a pair of statements, read them, and put the one we thought was correct right side up and the incorrect one upside down. The person leading the PD, checked them, we moved to the next pair of statements, then the next, and we kept going and getting checked until we had done all 10 pairs. I thought it was a neat idea, but it had been designed for 4th graders so I put my own spin on it for my 7th graders.

As the schedule worked out, my girls had a test our 2nd day back from spring break, so I spent our first class getting them back in gear and reviewing. I figured I might as well try this new strategy because it’s getting close to the end of our year and I wanted to shake things up for the girls and do something different.

I typed up 16 statements related to the test material, some true and some false. I divided the girls into pairs and each pair got all 16 pieces of paper in a pile. They divided them into true and false and then I checked them. Once each pair’s true/false separations were correct, the girls took turns explaining why each was false and restated it so it was true (for example: Mexico won the Mexican-American War was corrected to America won the Mexican-American War). Afterwards, in their pairs, they wrote two true and two false statements related to the material that had not already been covered, swapped them with another pair, and they sorted and fixed them one more time.

We also played THIS review game afterwards with some of the larger topics from the semester just to make sure they hadn’t brain dumped *everything* over break, because their final exam is closer than they realize..

Do you have any new strategies or tips that other teachers would benefit from, especially as it gets close to the end of the year? I’d love to read about them in the comments 🙂

How My Students are Celebrating Women’s History Month

Posted on March 4, 2017 by Stephanie's History Store

Well it’s March, so that means it’s Women’s History Month. I felt extra pressure to acknowledge it the most effective and impactful way this year since I have middle school girls. I wanted this to mean something to them, not be something they roll their eyes about. There are two main components to what I’m doing this year. One is in the picture below, and the other is related to a new strategy I’ve been testing out this semester: having my kids making the warm-ups/bell ringers for each other.

First, I had my girls make a bulletin board for Women’s History Month (this was after they had the overview during homeroom about what WHM was and why we celebrate it). They were each randomly given a woman’s picture with her name on the back, and using my classroom resources, had to figure out what she is most remembered, or celebrated, for. That piece of information is what they put in the quote bubbles, so Brenda Berkman’s quote bubble says, “I was the first female member of the FDNY” and Katherine Switzer’s says, “I am remembered for being the first woman to run the Boston Marathon.”

Women’s History Month bulletin board (middle school)

The second component to my plan for getting the girls working with Women’s History Month is to have each one in charge of a day’s warm-up (bell ringer). They are each researching a woman who is less well known in mainstream society, or certainly less well known in their pre-teen social circles (think Gertrude Ederle versus Katie Ledecky), and at the start of each class they will take turns presenting their woman to the rest of the class.

They will present her name, an image of her, her birth and death dates where applicable, what she is most known for, and a summary of the road she took to reach her goal or succeed in her endeavor. At the end of the month, my girls will write a reflection paper on the women who came before them, the struggles they faced, how they were able to overcome them, and how they can be an inspiration for my students as they get closer to entering the real world.

Many of my girls have really big goals for themselves, but all too often I hear, “I can’t do x,” or “I’m not good enough,” or “they won’t let me do x.” After this month I hope they say that much less frequently because they’ll see that they CAN do x and they CAN overcome and just because someone says “women’t can’t be xyz” doesn’t mean any of my students can’t persevere and prove that statement wrong.

On the more academic side of this, I put quite a few Women’s History Month resources in my “early finishers” binder, so whenever a student completes their work early, they’ll have an extra opportunity to analyze a primary source on an influential woman, learn how women got the right to vote, design a pamphlet celebrating WHM, and more!

How are you integrating Women’s History Month into your classroom? I’d love to read about it in the comments below! If you need somewhere to start, some of my teacher friends have resources ready to go for you!

Gail Hennessey
Education with Doc Running
History Gal
Social Studies Success
Brainy Apples
The ESL Nexus
The Social Studies Whisperer

***The women included in the bulletin board, in no particular order, are: Mavis Batey, Sandra Day O’Connor, Frances Perkins, Dian Fossey, Golda Meir, Frances Clayton, Sally Ride, Mae Jemison, Misty Copeland, Surya Bonaly, Brenda Berkman, Dolores Huerta, Harriet Quimby, Stephanie Kwolek, Sally Priesand, Julia Morgan, Wilma Mankiller, Nancy Wake, Wilma Rudolph, Antonia Novello, Grace Murray Hopper, Pat Summit, Nellie Bly, Katherine Switzer, and Emma Hart Willard.***

I Have, Who Has: Hits and Misses

Posted on January 15, 2017 by Stephanie's History Store

My goal this semester is to try a new strategy or technique once a unit in all of my classes. It’s a lofty goal but thanks to my teacher friends (some of whom have shared their ideas at the bottom of this post) and Pinterest I think I’ll be able to do it. The first one up was the review game, “I have, who has.” I always thought it was a little on the elementary side, but I also wanted to ease into this and start with something relatively easy to make (since my free time is pretty limited), so I figured I’d try it with my 6th graders first. If it went well I’d test it out on 7th grade, and if that went well I’d use it with my 8th graders too. What I found interesting was that regardless of the girls in each class, each grade level responded to this in mostly the same way.

new ideas to try in your social studies classroom

tips from social studies teachers on trying new strategies and keeping teaching fresh

One thing I did do for each set of review cards, was to add extension tasks so the girls have to apply what they learned, and not just match items up. Depending on the topic, the extension tasks include map work, timelines, historical dialogue, ranking systems, and more to really work with the material and make sure it’s fully grasped before moving on. So first I handed out all the cards, then the girls stood in a big circle in the middle of my room, and because most of them hadn’t played this before either I explained how it would work and how they’d know when it was their turn. Once we started they understood the concept pretty quickly.

the hits and misses of the review game I have who has in social studies

The good, the bad, and the in between of using I have, who has, as a review strategy in middle school social studies

The verdict:

—6th grade LOVED it! Since they’re a small group they each got 2 cards per so they had to stay focused a bit extra. I had them use it to review landforms our first day back after Christmas Break and it was such a hit that I started making sets for them to review the other topics we’ve studied and to have on hand for future topics.

—7th grade seemed to enjoy it, but their overall interest wasn’t held as long, so I think next time I’ll try one of three things: I’ll either give them 2 cards each like I did with 6th grade, or there will be some sort of motivation to pay attention (like 3 consecutive cards will be used as fill in the blanks on the test), or maybe they were just too stumped because I had also used it to review material from before Christmas Break so maybe if they’re not so frustrated in trying to remember the material they can have more fun with it next time.

—8th grade was totally not impressed. I got the feeling they thought it was too childish so I told them everything is a learning experience (especially when we do something for the first time), I would make a few changes, and they would give it one more shot. We’ll use it one more time to review the War of 1812 in a few weeks. If they still don’t like it then that’s fair, there are plenty of other review techniques out there I can use with them.

Click around in the links below to read other strategies and ideas from other history teachers!

Are you trying something new this year in your classroom? Was it an unexpected hit or miss? I’d love to hear about how it went in the comments 🙂

An InLinkz Link-up

https://static.inlinkz.com/cs2.js

A Review Competition Your Students Will LOVE

Posted on December 7, 2016 by Stephanie's History Store

This review competition is NO PREP and can take as few as 5 minutes or as many as 15, it depends on if you ask follow-up questions and how in depth the students’ responses get.

a no prep social studies review competition

I start by writing the main topics we studied on the board. Each is in a different color and corresponds to one “team” (to make it easier I just make each row of seats a team, but I also move students as necessary to keep the teams as even as possible). Each team gets the white board marker color corresponding to their topic. I typically tell them whichever team wins gets 3 extra credit points on that day’s activity. Of course that is totally optional.

a cumulative review game your students will love

I tell my students they will have 2 minutes (or 2.5, it depends on the topics and students) to fill in their topic with as many words or phrases that they remember from when we studied it. The first time we do it I tell them spelling doesn’t count (especially because they get so excited and are racing each other AND the clock). (Going forward spelling counts).

I set a timer and when I’m ready to start I say, “ready, set, GO” and the first student in each row runs up to the board and writes a word or short phrase related to their topic. Then they go back to their row, give the marker to the next student, then that student goes up to the board, writes a word or phrase (a DIFFERENT one), and so on and so forth. The kids fill in their column as much as they can within the time allotted.

When the time is up we go through each column one at a time. The students say if each term/phrase is in the correct column, and if not, where it should in fact be (you can see below, Stephen Austin and de Zavala written in the Exploration column, but I crossed it out and my kids said they were from the Colonization unit).

As we go through each column I ask questions about some of the items, like describe 3 challenges faced by the Old 300, or who was the person who issued the grito, or in the third picture which was from US History, what was the purpose of the Proclamation Line of 1763, which colonies were considered Middle Colonies, how was the Albany Plan of Union a success and a failure, etc. After we go through each column, I write the total number correct terms/phrases on top of each topic and whichever column has the most is the winner.

No matter what grade level I’ve taught or in which state, students LOVE LOVE LOVE competing against each other. This is SUCH an easy, yet engaging, review game. Having your kids determine which column has the most correct answers themselves, rather than the teacher tallying them up, makes it an even more valuable review. If you get the chance to try this out I hope your students will love it as much as mine do.

If you like this review strategy, I have 15 other introduction and review strategies detailed in my Back to School Social Studies Teacher Bundle, and a few are highlighted in THIS earlier post and THIS one. To read about my review game, “True, False, Fix,” click HERE.

Do you have a review technique your students love? I’d love to read about it in the comments 🙂

How to Review History with Word Clouds

Posted on November 28, 2016 by Stephanie's History Store

I learned about word clouds a few years ago, but for some reason didn’t use them until this year. It is such a quick and easy informal assessment (especially if it’s one of those days where you need to shake things up, or you finished sooner than you expected to) that I can’t believe I haven’t used them before!

word clouds are a great, quick, and easy (for the teacher!) informal assessment for any social studies topic!

Let’s say the topic at hand is the Civil War. My students get a piece of construction paper and write Civil War in the middle in large letters. Then, they write words or phrases around it showing what they remember about the people and events leading to the war, battles, strategies, politics during the war, items related to Lincoln, spies, women during the war, prisoners of war, the effects of the Civil War, etc.

Ideally, they will write the most significant/important words or phrases pretty large and gradually make the other words/phrases smaller as they get to the less significant material (in their opinion). You can expand on this by having students write a paragraph on the back explaining why they illustrated the significance of each phrase/term the way they did, or they could pick 3-5 terms and write a full academic identification for each.

The picture in this post is a sample from my Texas History class. This was the first time I used word clouds with this particular group of students so it’s not ideal (most of her words are the same size), but it shows that everything is a work in progress in a classroom. The review was from the exploration of Texas through our introduction to colonization. This was the day we got back from Thanksgiving break so I was making sure my kids hadn’t completely brain-dumped 4 months worth of school. It also helped me see at a quick glance which topics were less-well-represented on their papers so I would know what to review and in what level of detail.

When they were done (they took about 10 minutes to think and write), they cut their word clouds out in whatever shape they wanted. I posted them around the room and my kids looked at them all, took mental notes, and discussed why different terms were the focus for some students, and why other students gave more weight to other phrases. They also discussed whether anything important was left out that they should be refreshed on before we continued the material. Overall it took about 20 minutes (my girls got pretty heated in their discussion of which terms were more important than others) and I’m looking forward to doing this with them again, especially now that they’re comfortable with this type of activity.

You can find this, and 14 other introduction and review strategies, in my Back to School Bundle. I also wrote about some in THIS post, and a new favorite is True, False, Fix.

Do you have a go to review activity or strategy? I’d love to read about it in the comments 🙂

***Updated to show you a few word clouds that my US History students made as an impromptu semester review. I love how creative they got with theirs. The topics were early Native Americans, Exploration, the Foundation of the 13 Colonies, the French and Indian War, and the Revolutionary War (well, as much as we have covered thus far).

word-clouds-001

What Happens When Students Make Your Bulletin Board

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Stephanie's History Store

Since I teach 3 different social studies classes (World Geography, TX history, and US history), I rotate which class is represented on my bulletin board every few weeks. Well, when it was almost time for my Texas history class to have their rotation, I had a grand plan to create a growing Texas exploration timeline style one. Well, I was short on time and supplies, so I decided that my girls would make the bulletin board themselves.

Turns out, that was a REALLY good idea because they were much more invested in how it came out than when I put the bulletin board together myself. They even brought the teacher in from across the hall to show her what they had done. This particular one was from our exploration in Texas unit, and yes, right now it’s hanging up on the white board right next to my actual bulletin board (my 13 Colonies unit ran longer than I expected so I hadn’t switched the bulletin board out yet).

Texas exploration bulletin board made by students

explorers of Texas student project turned bulletin board

A high school student had given me TX shaped card stock cut outs a few weeks prior and I hadn’t yet decided what to use them for. Well this particular day a lightbulb went off in my head and I gave one to each of my girls. They were each assigned an explorer already, and they filled out the small TX cutouts with certain pieces of information (the whole project and more can be found HERE).

When they each had their TX cutouts ready to go–including coloring and decorating it to their liking–they were taped to the big Texas. One girl drew the big state outline on butcher paper, another volunteered to cut it out (because they all know my attention to detail in cutting is lacking), and as a class they decided to color it according to region. When it was totally done, they taped their small TX shaped explorer cards to it.

Knowing that this would be the bulletin board (I had told them the end goal of this project would be them creating the bulletin board display as I was handing out the small TX cutouts) they were really into this project. They made sure their information was correct, they focused on the design and color choices of their cutouts, and when they taped them to the big TX they made sure the little ones were visually balanced.

Each class the girls came in, looked at the bulletin board, and smiled. They were SO proud of what they had done, and when I told them I was leaving it up for open house because I was also really proud of them they could barely contain their excitement. When I finally had to take it down to give World Geography its chance they asked if they could make the bulletin board again next time. I told them we’ll see, but really, I know I’ll let them. Let’s be real, it’s easier for me, they were extra attentive to their work, and especially invested in the final result since they know the whole middle school would see it every day.

This is the first year I’ve had real bulletin boards, let alone rotating ones based on the material we’re covering, so I was a bit preemptively intimidated by that idea over the summer. Having my kids be responsible for most of them has turned out pretty well so far and has definitely alleviated some of my internal pressure and stress.

Do you have any tips or tricks for bulletin board creation or getting students invested in classroom decorations? I’d love to read about it in the comments.

Updated to add, here’s an example of a bulletin board my 6th grade Geography students made for our Europe unit (each postcard has a different landmark or tourist attraction and key information about each to highlight why it’s worth visiting) and one my 8th graders made as a review for pre-Revolutionary War events (a cause of the war, the year it happened, and its historical significance).

in progress student made bulletin board advertising different European landmarks in a post card style

causes of the Revolutionary War bulletin board

student made bulletin board to show the events leading to the Revolutionary War

3 Ways to Fill Time at the End of Class

Posted on September 24, 2016 by Stephanie's History Store

I imagine most of us have been in this situation before: you plan a great lesson, it is engaging, challenging, and every student completes the work. Then you look at the clock and there’s 15 minutes left to class. Well that happened to me not too long ago; the lesson and activity that took one group of 7th graders the whole period to complete was finished by the other group with about 15 minutes left to class.

So I had an unexpected amount of time to fill at the end of class and especially since this is the last class of the day, I thought an interactive and fun review game was in order rather than moving on to the next lesson ahead of my other 7th graders.

3 ways to fill 15 minutes at the end of class

Part of their upcoming test was going to include map skills, so I took out a bunch of different types of maps (including some random ones I have of Belgium shaped like a lion and some exploration era maps with sea monsters in the water), and I put them out on my front table and the girls divided into two teams of 8 for a family feud-ish style competition.

One girl from each team came to the table and I said things like “find the political map, find the map that has a peninsula on it, pick up the map showing the eastern hemisphere, which map is the distribution map and what does it show,” etc and whichever team picked the correct map got a point. They got another point for correctly explaining why they chose that map. Whichever team had the most points by the time I ran out of questions (which would hopefully be just before afternoon announcements) would get to chew gum or have a lollipop in class the next day. Well let me tell you, that got them REALLY excited and focused on the game, and once we started they were engaged and reviewing until the end of class.

That method admittedly takes some prep and thinking on your feet (certainly for the questions since I didn’t have those planned ahead of time, but afterwards I wrote a whole list of them in case I needed to do a similar review with a different group another day), but I happened to have the maps on hand already (over the summer I had printed them as 5x7s for an activity with my geography kids)

If you don’t have maps like that on hand, these are some other activities my students have enjoyed over the years when I’ve needed a time filler (but they don’t need to know it wasn’t in my lesson plans, haha):

1. Have pairs compete to incorporate the most vocab words from the unit thus far into historically correct sentences (spoken or written).

2. Class can be divided into two teams, make flash card (or task card) review questions and answers and swap cards with the other team (I hold on to the answer cards to keep the kids honest). Then they compete to answer the all cards correctly and whichever team does it the fastest can get an extra credit point or two on the test (to each teacher their own of course).

3. In pairs, students make anticipation guides for the next day’s lesson based on prior knowledge, swap them with another pair, and see how they do.

4. As a bonus idea, if you have an inflatable globe or globe type ball, you can toss it to a student and when they catch it, they have to name the country their left index finger is touching. Then they name another country that starts with the letter the country they already identified ends with (i.e. Denmark–Kenya). Then they toss it to another student and repeat the above.

5. Another bonus idea is to have the students each act out a vocab term or person from the unit charades style for their classmates to guess what it is and provide an identification for it.

What is one of your go-to ways to fill unplanned “free” time at the end of class?

Why I (Now) Email Parents GOOD News at the Start of the Year

Posted on September 8, 2016 by Stephanie's History Store

You always hear about why it’s good to include something positive about a student whenever you have to contact their parent with something negative, and that’s easy enough to do throughout the year when you have to reach out to parents. You also frequently hear how it’s a good idea to start off with a positive note to all parents in the first couple of weeks of the school year, but that’s always seemed easier said than done, and certainly for an elementary teacher with 30 students compared to a secondary teacher with up to 180 students. However, after a first for me in this back to school season, I’ll be trying to do exactly that from now on.

why emailing parents with something positive at the start of each school year is now part of my back to school routine

During the first week of school, I had a great opportunity to email a parent something positive about their kid with no strings attached. For the sake of the kid’s privacy, let’s just say a 7th grader took it upon herself to go above and beyond and help me out with some classroom manual labor. The extra amazing part of this is that it was after last period and she was walking down the hallway to head home, saw that I was trying to do this by myself, and without saying a word, she walked in the room and helped me out. I was so surprised (in a good way), and so impressed and grateful, I sent her parents an email before I went home that day.

The next day they replied and even through email I could see how grateful they were that I had told them something positive about their daughter. Now, she’s a great student and the type who has never gotten anything negative sent home, but none of her previous teachers had taken the moment to send her parents a positive email just for the sake of it. In fact, the next week at meet the teacher night, they thanked me again and emphasized how much it meant to them that one of their daughter’s teachers had taken the time to tell them something so positive and noteworthy, and reiterated that they had never gotten such an email before.

Seeing how much it meant to her parents made me realize that I really should sit down and take the time to email a parent or two each afternoon. I assume that most of my other students had likewise not gotten that sort of email or note sent home. This was no longer a good idea to consider, or something just for elementary teachers. This was something that would take only 3-5 minutes of my time but would make a parents’ night, and hopefully make the student feel like they were doing something right.

Sending parents a positive email at the start of the year would also contribute to setting the tone for the rest of the year for all of us, and should I need to reach out to any parents as the year went on for something less than stellar, those conversations would hopefully be received a bit better. This has all always seemed like common sense, but it took me a few years to actually start doing it. Now that I have seen first hand the effect of positive communication with no ulterior motive, or to buffer something negative , each year from now on, I will make a concerted effort to reach out to all my students’ parents in the first couple of weeks of school.

How do you connect with your students parents? I’d love to have more tips and ideas going into the next school year 🙂

My Favorite Way to Start a Conversation on Perspective

Posted on August 13, 2016 by Stephanie's History Store

One of my favorite first week of school discussions is about perspective. Because of this particular map (which I found at a map store in Seattle a few years ago), it always ends up being a student generated conversation (which I love!!!). After about 3-4 days in class, I inevitably start hearing whispers along the lines of, “you ask…no you ask” and I inwardly smile. I know exactly what’s coming.

The kids don’t want to think I made a mistake when it’s still prime first impression time, but it’s also killing them to not know. Eventually one kid raises their hand and asks why the map is upside down. I respond with “is it” or “why do you think it’s upside down” or something along those lines. What follows EVERY year is a great opening conversation about perspective/point of view, how my class will challenge their perspective of history, and hopefully will give them a good foundation to better understand current events as they grow up.

I try to make sure my kids understand that throughout the year we will study historical events from a variety of perspectives; not just the different perspectives directly involved in the event (like patriots vs loyalists in the Revolutionary War), but those that might not necessarily be initially included in the discussion (like the Japanese reaction to D-Day or American thoughts on Italy’s unification).

Throughout the year my kids talk about why two people living in Philadelphia in 1775 could have placed a different value, or lack therereof, on America’s potential independence. They discuss why one textbook thoroughly covers the Cambodian Genocide and another only gives it one small paragraph. They reflect on how and why citizens in different parts of the world at different points in time viewed society/politics/the world around them and if and why there are similarities and differences. They concretely discuss the variations in how they each look at their own lives, and hopefully begin to understand (and respect) that what is most important or valuable to one student may not be to his or her peer.

Since I am teaching Geography this year, my 6th graders will complete THIS activity to continue working with various perspectives through time and place (and in a deeper, more hands on way), and I will have my other two classes work on it as an end of the semester activity.

With any luck, they will keep their eyes and minds open as they grow up and start interacting with the wider world community, and will remember that for each person or group involved there is a unique perspective to an event.

How do you get your students talking about perspective? I’d love to read about it in the comments!