Civil War Investigation iMovie

Student Historians started their Civil War investigation this week. Teams were each given one year of the war from 1860-1865 (1860 was included because of the significant events that directly impacted the war) and will rank and justify 3 events they believe impacted the end of the war. 

Project-based learning never gets old for me as an instructor. I find such joy in seeing the students interact, think deeply, and work together. I move from group to group questioning and guiding while team members sort through primary sources, storyboards, and apps and discuss and debate with one another. The sense of purpose is palpable and our class minutes tick away productively. 

Today team members each chose one of five project roles: Producer, Director, Screenwriter, Special Effects Director, and, of course, Historian. Tomorrow each role will have specific tasks to complete, including deciding on the overall tone for the year being studied and developing justification for this tone, locating 3 primary source documents to reflect each of the 3 event choices, creating a Works Cited page, writing the storyboard, and finding Mathew Brady photographs taken during their team year and/or historic Civil War music (I am SO hoping some of my musically-inclined students will find sheet music and perform it as their movie soundtrack--fingers crossed, stay tuned)!

I'm looking forward to our work together tomorrow and we'll have completed projects to share next week. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Name That Executive Role!

Image
Students today learned about the many roles of the head of the Executive Branch, the President of the United States. I found several images of former Presidents in these roles--can you guess which is which? Post your answers below or email them to me. Choices: Commander-In-Chief Chief Executive Political Party Head Chief Diplomat 1.  President Eisenhower 2. President George HW Bush (on the right side of the picture) 3. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt  4. President Reagan meeting with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (this one's a bit of a giveaway!)
Read more

Historical Perspective and Peel the Fruit Thinking Routine

Image
Practicing historical perspective is an essential social studies skill. Historical perspective is being able to step into a historic situation and examine the motivations, biases, and beliefs of a person or group of people. Students have to revert to the beliefs of a group of people even if those beliefs completely contradict the views we have today. They must weigh decisions based on the situation of the time, not necessarily how situations are viewed today. The C3 Framework for Social Studies states that "Historical understanding requires recognizing this multiplicity of points of view in the past, which makes it important to seek out a range of sources on any historical question rather than simply use those that are easiest to find. It also requires recognizing that perspectives change over time, so that historical understanding requires developing a sense of empathy with people in the past whose perspectives might be very different from those of today." http://www.so...
Read more

Industrial Revolution Haiku

Students have been learning about the Industrial Revolution in the mid1800s and how it changed life in New England. Today students processed their learning by creating haiku poems on the subject. They were challenged to think about and evaluate this topic within the structure of a haiku, a 3 line poem with 17 total syllables--5 in the 1st and 3rd lines and 7 in the second line. The poems have been impressive and some will be posted here soon.
Read more