Mrs. Slaviero's Blog

This week's National History Day work centered around staff /guest collaboration and giving students the opportunity to explore their interests. The reason I first dove into National History Day projects three years ago was because of the success my students found when I introduced Genius Hour into an elective class I used to teach. Genius Hour centers around students researching subjects that interest them and sharing their knowledge with the world. I spent the summer of 2016 planning how to replicate that in my US History classes when, unbeknownst to me, it already existed. I stumbled upon the National History Day website and the rest is history (pun intended). While I am tremendously proud of my NHD work with my students I feel that we've moved away from making these historical passion projects. This year I'm emphasizing the concept that my students should determine their interests first , then relate the history to their passion.  Tuesday's Speed T...

Our National History Day journey began in all US History classes this week.  I am always striving to improve and streamline my lesson plans and I've realized how essential this blog is for that purpose. Last year's posts (and their labels) were extremely helpful as I continue to hone our NHD work. All History classes were combined for two mini-lessons to begin to delve into this year's theme of "Triumph and Tragedy in History". Student Historians defined both terms and began to think of examples of triumphs, tragedies, and of topics that relate to both. I am once again very excited after seeing initial student topic ideas--they are interested in a wide range of local and national topics from Early Explorers to 21st Century issues. Starting slow helps to set the stage for choosing a topic that is relevant and interesting to the student, it also lessens the chance of explaining this project all at once and potentially overwhelming them. This experience ...

Teaching in the 21st Century never ceases to amaze me.  As stated in a post last year, I utilize Twitter in my classroom  through a classroom Twitter account several times a week. I find it to be an incredible way to allow parents and our community to witness the work that goes in my History and Study Skills classes and to showcase school events and the amazing young people I teach.  While posting a reminder about our school football teams' games on Wednesday a top hashtag caught my eye: #AskAnArchivist was trending.  I follow the United States National Archives   on Twitter and their latest post advertised an hour-long session in which a team of Archivists would answer questions tagged with this hashtag. I had less than 45 minutes before this window of opportunity closed. My third hour class took advantage of this teachable moment and it turned out so well! Student Historian groups came up with questions they hoped to receive answers for, ...