Mrs. Slaviero's Blog

The following twenty seven 8th Grade Historians from Larson, Smith, and Boulan Park Middle Schools will be attending the Michigan History Day State Competition on Saturday, April 28th at Bay City Central High School: Individual Video Documentary: Seonghyo, Marcus  Group Video Documentary: Isabelle, Neha, and Kamren                 Malachi and Breah Marie Individual Exhibit: Varun, Julia Group Exhibit: Felicia, Allison, and Angela          Aileen and Katie Historical Paper: Mlahat, Esha Group Dramatic Performance: Ashley, Ashley, and Cole         Rachel and Caroline  Individual Website: Yutong, Erin Group Website: Shrisha and Tanusree           James and Avani These students have been able to revise their projects after receiving feedback from the MHD Oakland County District Judges and after earning the opportunity to compete at the St...

Oh what a night! The first OneTROY National History Day Celebration took place this past Thursday with Student Historians from Larson, Smith, and Boulan Park and it was a huge success! When teachers from our Middle Schools decided to take on National History Day projects this year I promised I would do everything possible to help make NHD run smoothly for them and promised myself that I would plan a sharing event for all.  The Celebration was an opportunity for our students to share with the community their thinking and learning about the 2018 theme of "Conflict and Compromise". Siblings, parents, grandparents, principals, teachers, a School Board member, members of the Teaching and Learning Department,  Deputy Superintendent and Superintendent were in attendance. They were able to interact with our students while seeing the amazing work our students created this year. But, what exactly did students do?  Student Historians · researched and selected a topic of...

This week featured a deep dive into this year's theme utilizing a graphic organizer (entitled "The 4Cs") from the National History Day organization. We were fortunate to have Ms. Amy Bradfield, Education Services Manager with the Historical Society of Michigan, observe part of 5th and all of 6th hour Tuesday. Ms. Bradfield helped us all (myself included) enhance our understanding of the theme and I'm truly grateful for her knowledge and expertise!  The Cs refer to Conflict , Compromise , Context , and Change . The first two, Conflict and Compromise , represents the lens all students must view their topic in History through. Students do not have to represent the conflict and the compromise of a topic equally, it's perfectly acceptable to have an uneven representation of the two, as long as both are reflected in the thesis, document selection, and persuasive justification. Students need to clearly state the problem of the situation and the give-and-take in...

Tomorrow students will go to the Media Center for National History Day work. This year's theme is our focus. Here's our agenda: Noodle Tools app (approximately 5 minutes) Databases (from last week's Sway) Read the 2017-2018 NHD Theme Narrative and answer 6 short questions on Socrative (these questions are simple if you have read the information). Link: https://b.socrative.com/teacher/#import-quiz/30553462  Complete tasks left from last week's to-do list on Noodle Tools The day is once again very technology-centered. Students will use many sites and apps (is that app-smashing??) and will explore the theme "Conflict and Compromise" in depth. The theme is two-fold this year and both parts must be analyzed and represented in projects.  The National History Day organization has developed a Theme Narrative that gives students examples and breaks down the concepts of historical compromise and conflict. I've written a very short quiz on Socrative--al...

I've been trying to come up with a way to update our National History Day journey when the name jumped out at me--I suddenly remembered "This Week in Baseball", a sports show I used to watch with my Grandpa when I was a kid. (Google it for some great baseball memories!) "This Week in NHD" it is! I met with all 8th Grade US History students again yesterday and we completed a few business tasks--we logged onto NoodleTools, the website that will help us organize our sources and ideas this year, joined the Schoology 8th Grade NHD Group I made for all 8th Graders so that I can easily send every student, not just my students, information and resources, gave a brief overview of the project this year, and shared the Symbaloo Webmix I created for them.  This Webmix is going to become an essential resource. The necessary resources are all in a user-friendly format, color-coded and organized for ease of use. I will add tiles to the mix as the need arises and I look...

Our first foray into preparing for National History Day went really well last week. I saw every 8th Grader throughout the day for a mini-lesson and front loading the topic with the students was definitely the way to proceed! The Explain Everything worked really well and afforded students the opportunity to brainstorm without worrying about the specifics of the contest--they could just spend some time thinking about US History. The image above is proof that our students do have a working knowledge of US History, my job now is to help them find topics that fit the theme and that have primary sources to support their eventual theses. Another critical role for me is to make sure the student finds a topic they are passionate about. I always need to remember this learning journey is based on Genius Hour. They will spend many hours researching and learning about their topic, it must be something they care about. My task this week is to introduce the main components of the project, th...