December Highlights

Student Historians have been very busy these past few weeks. We are spending our time on the three branches of government and on our National History Day projects. It's always rewarding to have students learn about how our government works and I've used two resources to help this year: the Constitution graphic novel we used last year and, thanks to my newest US History colleague's suggestion--an amazing website called iCivics .

iCivics is an engaging and interesting way to help students learn about the US Government and I would like to utilize it more next year. I'm also happy to see that the website covers more areas that we learn about this year. 

NHD is going quite well. The payoff for students and me is manifesting itself on a daily basis--I'm getting to know 8th Graders that aren't in my classes and building connections with the grade level as a whole, helping students through the "just tell me the answer" phase of learning, encouraging them to take academic risks, and celebrating their successes, whether it's interviewing a teacher, a student emailing the Stanford University Asian History department on her own (!) to request information, or getting to witness their "aha" moments during class. I'm also encouraging them when they hit the proverbial Wall.

This week is a full week of school and all five days will be spent on NHD. While it is a student-driven project and excellent time management practice for students, I am changing things up a bit so as to not enable students to develop less-than-productive habits: it's called "Theme Week" and looks like this:

Peer Advisement Monday
Thesis Tuesday
Project Requirement Wednesday
Annotated Bibliography/Process Paper Thursday
Reflection Friday

Students will be changing rooms and working in our other History teachers' classrooms some of these days, based on the project time period and project type, to mix things up and to also provide help based on project category or time period. I'm looking forward to purposeful work and using time wisely this week!


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