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 ...

My full circle moment. Almost one year later. Monica Burns from  Class Tech Tips wrote an intriguing article about using GarageBand in the reading classroom  in 2016 and posted it on Twitter. I  blogged last July about how I'd like to use this with my Student Historians . That opportunity finally came and the result was profound, especially for one group of students. My History classes have studied the Civil War the past two years by completing an iMovie. I created a twist, though, each group studied one year of the war and ranked three events of that year they feel most strongly impacted the end of the war . Students needed to use investigative and discovery skills to learn about the entire war, then the impact of their focus year. Groups were required to find three primary sources related to those events, one Mathew Brady photograph from that year, and a piece of Civil War-era music (not necessarily from their focus year). The GarageBand article gave t...

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...

Two quotes are the basis for this reflection. The first is from someone I had the honor of hearing speak this past spring. Sir Ken Robinson is an author and education and creativity expert. The second is from William Plomer, a 20th Century writer and poet. Both quotes relate to the heart of my educational philosophy and the never-ending journey to make my classroom a place where creativity is an integral part of the process of thinking like a Historian. I came across a post yesterday that linked these ideas beautifully. "How to Use GarageBand in the Reading Classroom" by Monica Burns has some terrific ideas on how to use this music app in Language Arts classes. I believe that they can successfully be used in Social Studies classes, as well. The second tip was special and I can't wait to add it to the project-based learning my Student Historians will undertake this year! Ms. Burns suggests students compose a music piece that evokes a particular em...

Having a 1:1 iPad classroom has been really exciting this year. I look forward to every opportunity to use technology in the classroom and have been trying to utilize it on a daily basis (in a way that makes sense and honors our curriculum).  It's a real risk to use technology in the classroom because of the many issues that invariably pop up. One example is that the app or site might not work well and patience is definitely called for. I've noticed another issue that's come up several times a week, though--the fact that I'm not well-versed in some of the technology we use. (One Note in particular is really keeping me humble!!) This is where Student Tech Leaders (a term I've coined for them) are a necessity. I am truly grateful to these knowledgeable students and eagerly give them the opportunity to shine and show us all how something is done. It gives these leaders the chance to practice speaking in front of an audience on the fly and to be viewed as a tec...