A Favorite Way for Students to Analyze Historical Images

Posted on June 13, 2017 by Stephanie's History Store

As a history teacher, images from the past are vital to my classes every single day. Kids need to see the past and make connections to it to fully understand, and hopefully appreciate, it. I almost always use images (whether real or political cartoons) to introduce and review topics, and always in between. I never like doing the same thing for very long though (especially since I have the same students their entire time in middle school), and since I had made a goal of trying something new as frequently as reasonably possible this past semester I took this opportunity to do just that.

students match historical images to captions

When we reached the Great Depression in Texas History, I introduced the basic who/what/where/when/why of the era during which we had some lively discussions (much more so than any other time I’ve taught the Depression). The girls got REALLY into how hands-off Hoover was, that he did not authorize much federal relief, they shook their heads at how the abuse of buying on credit spiraled, and they became angry when they saw pictures of “Hoovervilles” and endless breadlines.

When they were able to academically refocus, we finished our overview of the Depression and it was time for them to work in pairs. They read and analyzed a brief primary source on a woman’s experience during the Depression and how New Deal programs tried helping people in her town. After we discussed their findings and their reactions to an average Texan’s experience, it was onto task #3: matching historical images to an appropriate caption.

I had already printed, labeled (A, B, C, D, etc), and laminated 20 images of life in Texas during the Great Depression. I gave the girls a short bathroom and water break (it’s already gotten REALLY hot here lately and our blocks are 90 minutes) and in those few minutes I taped the pictures in small groups around the room–on desks, on the white board, on the side of the bookcase, etc.

Each girl was given a piece of paper with 20 numbered historical captions that I wrote up ahead of time. They went around the room, looked at the pictures, and tried matching each image to the caption they thought was most appropriate for it. Some images and their captions were easy, some were harder, and some images were very similar so they really had to analyze people’s facial expressions and minute details to make their final decision.

students matched historical images to a caption they thought was most appropriate for it

One thing I found very interesting was that my lower level readers excelled at this activity. While most of the girls enjoyed this activity overall, a couple of my stronger readers got frustrated when they couldn’t correctly match the similar images to their captions, but my girls who struggle with reading comprehension LOVED this activity and were so proud of themselves for, in their words, “finally being the smart ones.”

When the girls finished, we went over the answers, discussed the images in more detail and in more historical context, then they went around the room and wrote their own caption/dialogue for each image. I only ended up having time to try this out with my 7th graders this year, but I will definitely test it out with my 6th and 8th graders during our first “real” units when we go back to school.

If you are interested, you can find this activity in my Texas During the Great Depression resource. If it works well with your students, you might be interested in some of my other strategies and activities, some of which are detailed in previous blog posts HERE, HERE, and in my Back to School Teacher Bundle HERE.

How do you use primary source images in your classroom? I’d love to read about it in the comments 🙂

SaveSave

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

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?

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!

One of My Favorite Ways to Stay Organized in the Classroom

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

Starting the year off organized is key to many teachers’ sanity. For me, that includes planning ahead. With those two things in mind, this right here is one of my FAVORITE teacher organization tips/tricks/tools/methods (NOT an affiliate link). It has worked for me no matter how many students/preps/periods I have because it comes in so many different combinations and colors (one year I had it in 5×5–one slot per period for each school day–and it was amazing!).

back to school tips for secondary teachers

When I make my copies for next week or two, I file them in this multi-row and column organizer. It’s not an ideal location this particular year, it’s behind my desk and on a sideways filing cabinet, but it will do.

The left column is Monday-Friday for Geography, the middle one is for Texas History, and the column on the right is for US History. I make the Geography copies for Monday, use a binder clip to keep them together, and put them in the top left slot. Tuesday’s copies go right below, Wednesday’s in the third slot, etc.

Repeat for each class for each day of the week. They slots are tall enough, and my classes are small enough this year, that I can fit 2 weeks worth of papers in each slot, each batch in its own binder clip.

my favorite way of keeping my classroom handouts organized

A few reasons why I love this:
–it helps me stay organized (the exact amount of handouts I need per class is pre-counted out and in binder clips)
–I can plan ahead without letting paper pile up on my desk

–if a student knows they’ll be absent I can easily give them their work ahead of time
–it gives me a physical visual of where I’m going in the chapter

–it’s very flexible (for every variation of the number of subjects and periods I’ve taught I’ve had one of these)
–it’s VERY durable, knock on wood, they always last the school year and then some

Right now my papers are waiting to be copied. I don’t have my class lists yet but as soon as I do my paper organizer will be full of student information forms, get-to-know-you activities, why study history, task card answer sheets, map pre-tests, etc.

back to school teacher desk

Do you have any back to school tips? I’d love to read about them in the comments.

While you’re here, hop around the other blogs linked up here for more secondary back to school tips!

An InLinkz Link-up

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

My Top 4 Picks for the Best Resource Ever for Back to School ’16

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Stephanie's History Store

Every year it seems like I find a new set of favorite activities/resources for the coming school year. Well, this year I have 4 amazing resources to share with you guys for #BestResourceEver for the Back to School 2016 season. I wanted a “top 3” list but couldn’t narrow it down to just 3 so I picked 2 activities for students and 2 resources for teachers.

The activities are a better fit for history teachers but the teacher resources can be used by any middle or high school teacher. By the way, there’s no way I could do these justice so definitely click on the links to check them out in more detail!

4 resources secondary (history) teachers need to get this year!

1. This template for a pamphlet activity can be used in over 30 different ways to review ANY history topic! Each option incorporates academics, opinion, creativity, and visuals.

It’s an activity that every teacher should have in their go-to stash, especially since no two review pamphlets in a unit would be the same and students would have different options to choose from for the next unit. You won’t believe the mileage you get out of this!

2. Students will LOVE learning and reviewing topics such as Jamestown, the Oregon Trail, and all the presidents with these doodle notes.

They come in a variety of set-ups (color, black and white, notes included, blank for students to take notes in) for your convenience. They are easy for students to personalize and they will keep students fully engaged in the topic at hand. My favorite part of them (though it was hard to pick just one thing) is the comic figure who tells students things like “it’s always a bad idea to go to the bathroom right next to where you get your drinking water!”

3. This planner is a must have for secondary teachers. I splurged on getting it professionally printed and bound and I ADORE it! Some of my favorites parts of it include the pages/spaces to plan out activities for the month, notes for what not to forget, reflection areas, monthly calendars to plan ahead, and more!

You can get it in a few different patterns/themes, you can easily reprint it to use year after year, and an added perk is how fantastic it is for lefties like myself since it works with a top binding 🙂

4. Last, but certainly not least, are these “make grading easier” type forms, but really, there’s a plethora of checklists/sheets/forms for you to stay organized and keep records of many different kinds regardless of the subject you teach.

My favorites are the feedback forms, class bragging sheet, class results analysis form, and post assignment reflection form. There were sheets included in this that I didn’t realize I wanted/needed until I got this resource.

I’ve been loving putting my lesson plans together in my new planner, I can’t wait to use the pamphlet and doodle note activities, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how the feedback and organization forms positively impact my classroom.

Which resources or activities would make your top 3 or top 4 list? I’d love to read it in the comments below 🙂

4 resources secondary (history) teachers need to get this year!

How to Respond to, “Why do We Study History?”

Posted on July 3, 2016 by Stephanie's History Store

In just about a month, students around the world (or at least the northern hemisphere) will be asking their social studies teachers, “why do we have to study history?” Of course there are great answers to that question, it’s just a matter of whether teachers spoon feed students the answers or have them work with the question themselves (I like putting my students in pairs before having the whole class discussion). Though it might be tempting, it’s not really responsible of us to say, “why not/because I said so/because it’s important/etc” and move on. Each year, depending on my students, I have handled that question a little differently.

My very first year teaching I answered it myself, then the next day I had the students come up with their own answers because I thought I had done them such a disservice by only telling them my opinion. Since then I have started incorporating various activities to get the kids thinking about why we should study history (some are linked below), and this year they will make a “why we should study history” bulletin board for our hallway.

I was curious about how other teachers and students responded to the “why study history” question, so I reached out to some of my social studies teacher friends and this is a sample of what we (or our students) have said:

Should we study history?

History helps us see why things are the way they are. There’s still a lot of hate and racism in the world, but if you look back, we’ve come along way. It makes you feel hopeful.
We should know where we have come from to forge a path to where we want to be. That includes understanding what has worked and not worked so we can continue to improve without backtracking.
We as a people love stories and history is nothing but stories.
History is the best reality show ever.
History can be kind of repetitive. After the Civil War, the north were angry so they punished the south. After WWI the Allies were so angry they punished Germany, who was resentful which definitely contributed to WW2. So, history teaches us about a lot of mistakes that have been made that we should try not to repeat.
“All we hear about is STEM, What if I don’t want to be an engineer?”
History isn’t just dates, battles, and documents. It is people who woke up, ate breakfast, worked, had families, and helped us get to where we are today. We will be those people one day and we should be studied and understood too.
The skills you learn and develop while studying history will be useful in many other parts of your life.
History answers the question, “why?” Why did Japan invade China, why do we call it a telephone, why do we shoot fireworks on the 4th of July, why did France send the Statue of Liberty to America, why does county A side with country B in a conflict against country C, etc.
History can teach us about who we are, and maybe even help guide us to who we want to be. April Cullom shares a personal story HERE about taking ownership of one’s history and not letting it get lost as previous generations pass on, click to read about how it moved and challenged her students to do the same.

If you are interested in “why study” history type activities, I’d recommend starting with one of these:
From Education with DocRunning: Why Study History
From History in the Middle: Occupations of the Past
From Gail Hennessey: The Past Shapes Our Present
From History with Mr. E: Why Study History
From Social Studies Success: Why Study History

How do you handle the “why should we study history” question? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

***Special thanks to Sarah Pecorino Illustrations for the image in this post***

Teaching an Under the Radar Topic

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

It’s always interesting to hear what is and is not taught in various high school history classrooms around the country. One teacher might spend 3 weeks on Civil Rights, another only 1 week. One might discuss the Cambodian Genocide and another might not. I know it is a challenge to fit in all the required topics each year and to go into each topic in depth enough to do it justice, so finding time to discuss under the radar topics might be impossible, but with it being standardized testing season, keeping kids busy with these types of topics after they finish their tests might be a good way to start incorporating this type of material.

World War 2, the Holocaust, and related people and events from the 1930-1945 time period have always been my passion. Since 3rd or 4th grade I have read about children in hiding, Auschwitz, a Jewish soldier in Hitler’s ranks, the bombing of Dresden, medical experiments on twins at Auschwitz, the Monuments Men, and so much more (probably close to a thousand books just on people/places/events/topics from 1930-1945). The Nazi program of Lebensborn is a topic that I always spend a day teaching my students about though I have yet to see any of my colleagues mention it in their classes.

This was a program designed to increase the “pure Aryan” population by having genetically ideal Aryan men and women who were pro-Nazi/Pro-Hitler procreate (regardless of their marital status) and have what would hopefully be genetically ideal Aryan babies. Children who had the ideal physical characteristics Hitler wanted were even taken from their families as Nazis spread across Europe, they were brought back to Germany to “good” Nazi families, and attempts to “Germanize” them began. If the kids couldn’t be “Germanized” they were taken to extermination camps and suffered the same fate as Jews.

A couple of years ago, I printed out an article on Lebensborn for my students to read, analyze, and reflect on when they finished their state standardized test of the day. I knew virtually all of my students would be learning about this for the first time, but it didn’t occur to me that it was new information to many of my colleagues as well. I was incredibly flattered when I was asked to speak about it at our department meeting and to provide each of the other classes of juniors with the same assignment.

Flash forward a few years and here I am on TpT and I decided to make a more universally teacher friendly version of the assignment. So just yesterday I made a Lebensborn Webquest and posted it to my store. Out of curiosity, I did a search for other TpT resources on Lebensborn and the only results I got were my webquest and the 2 bundles it’s part of. So that was very interesting to me. It implies that no other teachers have made resources for it because either they don’t teach it themselves, or if they do teach it, they don’t think anyone else would teach it so why take the time and effort to make something that no one will ever use. So let’s see what happens. This will either sit untouched in my store forever, or someone will happen to come across it and think the same thing I did a few years ago: that this would be a good under the radar topic for their students to learn about after sitting through a standardized test.

Are there topics you teach that are under the radar? I’d love to read about it in the comments!

Links for more information on Lebensborn:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/world/europe/07nazi.html?_r=1& https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Lebensborn.html
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15548608/ns/world_news-europe/t/secret-nazi-lebensborn-children-go-public/#.Vw6c26vvb-0

In a Perfect World I Would Teach…

Posted on March 25, 2016 by Stephanie's History Store

In a perfect world I’d love to teach at a high school where I could (within reason) create my own classes. At my high school, seniors took 6-week seminar style social studies electives and I LOOOOOOVED it. I chose to take one on the 1920s, another on the Vietnam War, another on current events in Africa, and I actually don’t remember the other one (oops, sorry amazing seminar teachers). Ever since then I thought that would be a great way to teach. I would have students in the class who genuinely wanted to be there and I would be able to teach things I was truly passionate and exceptionally knowledgeable about. I would be able to take a small-ish topic and go more in depth with it than a traditional class schedule would allow.

what and how I would love to teach one day in a perfect world

Yes I enjoy teaching (and am knowledgeable about) a lot of topics in the history/social studies world, but I certainly have my preferences. I have always wanted to teach a full class on Europe from 1919-1945 and another class JUST on the Holocaust, but again, even short seminars (like half a semester each) on topics such as art theft throughout history would be great.

One reason why this has been on my mind lately is because I do have a lot of flexibility in what I teach in my Thursday class. If you’re new here, it originally started out per the director as a “Music Theory” class, but then due to parent opinion turned into a “Western Culture and Civilization” class with a preferable focus on including art or music of some kind within each topic. I had incorrectly predicted the pace at which we would move during the French Revolution Unit and we finished it 3 weeks before spring break. I didn’t want to start another “big” topic/unit because our spring break is 2 weeks long and I didn’t want the kids brain dumping everything so with permission from the director, I decided to teach a mini-unit on art theft throughout history.

I was honestly REALLY excited about this. It was going to be completely out of the box for the kids and I hoped that my enthusiasm would help keep them focused even though spring break was in sight. The first week I told them we were starting something totally new and they’d learn what we were going to study by completing a cloze passage. I made one passage for the 5th/6th graders, another for 7/8, and a third for the 9/10 kids. Since NONE of the kids had done a cloze passage before I suggested that they skim the page first, see if they could get any clues, and then start filling in the blanks. I also told them to not get hung up on the “right” word (as in the word I had in my answer key), but rather a word that would still provide a reader with the general gist, so if I wrote authorities and they wrote police that was fine, if I wrote escaped and they wrote got away I told them that was fine too. The kids all figured out that it was about art/painting theft and after we discussed the general gist of the passage we dove into the material.

The cloze passage had given them an overview of the topic and contained detailed a few different examples of art theft, including one where the thief was caught but the art was not recovered (they had a lot of fun guessing where the paintings could be and how we might find them), one where the thief and the paintings were recovered, one where neither the thieves nor art was recovered, and then they had a paragraph about this topic during WW2 (we followed that up the second week of this topic by spending the whole class period talking about art theft during WW2).

We then looked at pictures of dozens of paintings that had been stolen over time and the kids had a lot of really great discussions about why people steal, what their motivation is, is the risk worth the potential reward, what makes paintings in particular a target, etc, and then they diverged into the half-serious-half 7th grade-mentality of “I bet this is how they got away with it,” and their thought process was definitely sci-fi movie worthy than class worthy.

On the last day of this unit, I divided the kids up in to pairs/groups of 3 and they were each presented with a real life case of art theft, and then acting as reporters, presented the facts to the rest of the class press conference style, and answered the questions posed by their classmates. Having something physical like that the day before spring break, and interactive, I think was huge in keeping them engaged. I recommended Woman in Gold and Monuments Men to them to watch over spring break since overall they were pretty enthusiastic about the topic, and one parent already emailed me thanking me for the recommendations, as a family they had already watched Woman in Gold and were going to watch Monuments Men next week.

When class let out I did feel bad that we couldn’t keep discussing this topic after spring break since we do have the rest of the curriculum to get through, but it definitely reignited my burning desire to not just teach history from the Revolutionary War through the Cold War for the rest of my career. I love it, I do, but I also really really really want to teach classes on smaller/more focused topics. Maybe I should start considering higher ed? We’ll see what opportunities present themselves in the next few years.

If you could teach anything you wanted what would it be?

Stephanie's History Store

History Teacher, Wife, Mom, Traveler, Foodie, Reader

Tag Archives: high school history

In a Perfect World I Would Teach…