Mrs. Slaviero's Blog

What a week of learning! Language Support Student Historians continually surprise me with their "all in" attitude regarding learning! They never miss an opportunity to take advantage of learning something new. It is exciting and heartwarming. I am challenging all of us in Language Support-History by creating modified National History Day projects this quarter. It's going to be a fantastic learning experience for every one of us. I have absolutely no idea how things will progress but we are taking it one step at a time, together. Students learned about this year's theme, "Breaking Barriers in History" by constructing barriers with lego-style bricks. (None of the students had ever heard the word in English before.) We then created a word study of the word barrier, including examples of synonyms and antonyms. Word study completed, we began to search US History topics that might interest us, then took Cloze notes of the six examples of breaking ...

We have had a busy week! Students in US History participated in a Gallery Walk, examining primary and secondary sources related to some of the battles of the American Revolution. We also reviewed the concept of propaganda and applied that concept to some of the sources. This important understanding will assist students during their National History Day work.  Student Historians also used the National Archives DocsTeach app to analyze multiple primary sources about Valley Forge. They needed to figuratively weigh the evidence on a scale as to whether or not the documents would make them quit the Continental Army or encourage them to stay.  This exercise is beneficial for many reasons. One is that the students are working and thinking on a continuum.  Being able to weigh evidence is a critical life skill (and citizenship skill). Preparing students to problem solve in this way will benefit them, regardless of their career path. I was impressed to see th...

Student Historians began a thematic assessment yesterday. I have implemented this assessment for a few years now, adding more specifics each year. This assessment requires students to examine examples of growth and change in early American History, from the Presidency of George Washington to the Missouri Compromise.  Students ranked each of the events using a scale of -4 to +4 and explained their rankings. This is a sophisticated skill--they need to explain why, for example, a positive event that rated a 3 in their view wasn't a 4 but also wasn't an example of a negative change for the country. (They will also need to describe their positive events in terms of nationalism and the negative events will more than likely be examples of sectionalism, a concept that ultimately leads to the Civil War in the 1860s.)  When rankings were complete students received a graph and plotted their points. The next steps of this project completely take me out of my comfort zone--stude...

Student Historians have been busy reflecting on their project and thinking about their work so far as they completed "The State of My Project" reflections. (The title is a take on the Presidential  "State of the Union" Address.)  Students were asked to let their classmates know what topic they've settled on, what the approximate start and end date of their project topic is, how they feel their research is going so far, showing us their 4 Ts graphic organizer work at this point (especially the "triumph" and "tragedy"), and to let us know about any Aha moments or tips they may have for their classmates. These quick presentations are really going well (we're doing a few each day). It's providing us the opportunity to celebrate the learning that's taken place, giving students the chance to publicly reflect on their work, and to learn from one another as they provide tips or share moments when things started to "click...

This week in NHD featured presearching and researching topics in order to finalize choices next week. Student Historians continued to wonder and find questions about the topics they learned about last week in the Media Center. The Speed Topic-ing lesson was a hit and left many students wanting to know more about at least some of the topics they examined that day. This week started with a mini-lesson from Mrs. Chatel as she asked this group if their topic questions could simply be answered with a "yes" or "no" or if their questions were "Big Mac" questions--ones that would take many weeks to complete. A Big Mac question is the perfect National History Day project endeavor. Presearching and researching went well. These students are going to decide their project topics, partners they will work with, and what type of project they will create this week. Language Arts teachers will support this work with helping students begin to formulate a thes...

Link to my NHD Symbaloo Webmix  Symbaloo is one of the best technology resources I've found to assist my Student Historians and me on our National History Day journey this year.  I learned about Symbaloo at the MACUL (Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning) Conference this past March. I was intrigued by its ease of use and by the company's commitment to education. My first thought was to utilize this resource for National History Day. Over the summer I created a Symbaloo Webmix to simplify the NHD process. Developing the Webmix was a matter of breaking down the project components (thinking about possible topics of interest, understanding the theme, pre-searching, researching, writing the thesis question, learning about project types, seeing project examples, creating digital note cards, housing resources, developing an Annotated Bibliography, and learning about the contest) and creating tiles for each these web links.  The left side of th...

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...