Worth a Second Look

I've been writing Teaching Montana History for a long time now (over ten years!) so I guess it shouldn't be surprising that I don't remember every idea I post about. But I always am surprised--and delighted--when I stumble on a good idea from past years that had completely slipped my mind. That happened recently when I was scrolling through the Teaching Montana History blog, looking for something else. Here are two strategies I think deserve to be remembered--and implemented!--both of which align to Common Core ELA standards while engaging students deeply in content.

 

Transforming Textbook Text into a Found Poem

Master teacher Jim Schulz turned me onto the brilliant idea of asking students to create found poems from short sections of their textbook or other complex text.  Why brilliant? Because it requires students to read and reread the complex informational text to discern and then summarize the main ideas. Jim says students will need a guiding question. Inspired by Jim, I created a a sample assignment for the section "The Dawes Act: Allotments Subdivide the Reservations," from Chapter 11 of Montana: Stories of the Land:

• Using the text (including sidebar quotations, posters, image captions, etc.), on pages 219-222 of Montana: Stories of the Land, create a found poem that answers the following question: What conclusions can you draw about the policy of allotment?

Looking for more ideas about how to integrate poetry into Montana history (or Montana history into a poetry unit)? Check out the original post.

Time Travel: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I'd also forgotten about the time travel assignment I found on history teacher Russell Tarr's fabulous site, Tarr's Toolbox. This is a classic RAFT* writing assignment, with a twist: "have students consider multiple viewpoints, first by selling the positives of a certain time or place in the brochure, and then, in a complaint letter about the vacation from hell, by highlighting all the problems." I thought, and still think, this would be a great assignment when studying the cattle frontier, to encourage students to analyze both the realities and romance of the Old West.

Do you have a favorite strategy--a slightly out-of-the-box way of engaging your students? Let me know and I'll share it out.

*RAFT stands for Role, Audience, Format, and Topic. Here a more detailed explanation and a model RAFT writing assignment about Montana and WWI. 

P.S. Don't forget our upcoming online Professional Development (for which you will be able to earn one renewal unit). We'll gather via Zoom on Tuesday, January 19, 2021, to share our best ideas and resources for integrating Montana history into U.S. history. Sign up for the session here. And best wishes to all for a joyous and healthy 2021.

 

Santa Claus Didn't Come to the Gallatin Valley in 1864

It's easy to get caught up in the daily grind and forget how cool history is. That's why, as we approach winter break, I want to share with you a few excerpts from a letter that eight-year-old Homer Thomas wrote on December 17, 1864, from the Gallatin Valley to his grandmother Isabella Thomas in Belleville, Illinois. Just for the sheer fun of it. 

Here's Homer describing Virginia City: 

It’s a very poor city—it is more than half as big as Belleville, and crowded with old ox wagons—You don’t see any nice horse teams & buggies like you see at home & most of the men are dressed in old dirty & ragged clothes; they do not look nice, like at home. I wish I was back to get some of your good things to eat, & so I could have some apples & cider—there is not any out here in this mountain country. Still I have had some nice antelope, deer and elk meet. I think elk is the best of all, and there is some big bears out here too, but we have not killed any, but some of the hunters kill them.

 And here he writes about their new home and his new friend:

We did not stay very long at Virginia City. Father took a notion to go down into the Gallatin Valley and take up a ranch. That is what we used to call a farm at home. So we come down and father bought a nice place, and we built a good log cabbin, & father put a floor in it, too. I tell you we got a good cabbin. There are not any of them got floors but ours and Mr. Thorp’s, and he just put his in today. He lives right close to us, about a quarter of a mile below. and has got a little boy about my size, and we have fun now with our sleds, pulling them through the snow—

And then there's Christmas: 

Well Grandmother it is pretty near Christmas time and I don’t expect to get many things this year, for it is not like home, because old Santa Claus do not come out here to give children things, because he thinks all the children too smart to come to this old place.

Well, I can do without any nice toys this year, but I want you to save me some nice things so I can have them when I come back home, I tell you Georgie has grown might fast, & is getting pretty big now. He can almost say everything. He says “I want to go GanMa’s & get some cake.” He don’t know anything about apples, or I bet he would want some of them, too. …

  And more about their cabin--and his desire to move back to Illinois:

We built our house out of cottonwood logs. Well, Granma they build houses funny out here, they put poles or kind of rails on the top, then mix mud & put over them, then they put about three or four inches of dry dirt upon that & it makes a mighty warm roof, that is the way they build houses out in this country. I tell you a person learns a good many things by coming out in this country. I expect this will be a great country some day, but I don’t care for that, just as soon as I can get enough gold, I bet you I am coming back, for I think I have learned enough of this country to last me, for a while anyhow…  

The letter is in the Montana Historical Society Archives SC837. If you want a PDF of it in its entirety, email me and I'll send the typescript. Happy solstice and Merry Christmas to all who celebrate. 

P.S. And for something completely different, check out these puppets singing Christmas carols in Pikuni (Blackfeet), courtesy of Browning Public Schools. 

 

Integrating History into Novel Studies

At our November professional development, we focused on integrating Montana history and English Language Arts. Attendees shared such great resources for novel studies, that I thought it was worth compiling and sharing them more widely.

First stop for cross-disciplinary ELA/history material has got to be OPI's Indian Education Division's website, particularly their ELA model lesson plans, which include units for such commonly taught middle school books as Code Talker - A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two, Counting Coup: Becoming a Crow Chief on the Reservation and Beyond and Birchbark House and high school titles like Killing Custer: The Battle of the Little Bighorn and the Fate of the Plains Indians and Wind from an Enemy Sky.

Middle School Teachers

Do you teach Hattie Big Sky?  Find relevant sources here.

High School Teachers

Click on the links for resources related to these novels: 

• Fools Crow, by James Welch: “Blood on the Marias: Understanding Different Points of View Related to the Baker Massacre of 1870
• Grapes of Wrath, by Jon Steinbeck: Letters from some of drought-stricken farmers to Montana governor John Erickson; Library of Congress: Farm Security Administration Depression-era photographs [loc.gov] (find photos from Montana, or your town, by using the search function); Hope in Hard Times: New Deal Photographs of Montana, 1936-1942, by Mary Murphy (This is the best thing written about Montana during the Great Depression. A PDF of Chapter 1 is available for free download); PowerPoint created with text and images from the Hope in Hard Times exhibit.
• Autobiography of Malcolm X: for a Montana connection, check out the Montana in the Green Book story map.
• There There: Montana Mosaic Chapter 6, Federal Indian Policy, is a nineteen-minute video that uses the history of the Juneau family to explore the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ relocation policy and the effects the relocation program had on American Indian identity. Here’s a link to the video and here’s a link to the user guide.

Other Useful Links

• Mary Johnson has published a blog [tpsteachersnetwork.org] on TPS Teachers Network on using primary sources in English class to complement fiction. It has examples and links! (You need to register to view it, but registration is free.) 
• The National Council for the Social Studies publishes a list each year of Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People. You have to be a member to view the most recent list, but the backlists are available for free. Here’s the 2019 list [socialstudies.org].
• For more great ELA ideas and collaboration, join OPI's Secondary (5-12) ELA Teachers Online Sharing Community [docs.google.com], which meets the second and fourth Tuesday of every month from 3:45 p.m.-4:45 p.m. 
• Stay tuned for MHS's next professional development (for which you will be able to earn one renewal unit). We'll gather via Zoom on Tuesday, January 19, 2021, to share our best ideas and resources for integrating Montana history into U.S. history. Sign up for the session here.

 

 

Testers needed!

Longtime readers will know that we have slowly (too slowly!) been working to create a Montana history curriculum for upper elementary students.

The first unit, Montana Today: A Geographic Study, and the second unit, Montana's First Peoples, are available to download from our website. The third unit, Coming to Montana, is being tested by classroom teachers now and, when we publish it in January, will be much improved through their input! 

The fourth unit is called Montana in the Twentieth Century and will be ready to test in January. Like the other units, it is a mix of previously published lesson plans and entirely new material. Here's a quick look at the contents, with estimates of how long each part will take:

Part 1: Homesteading: The Lure of Free Land (3 class periods)

Description: Through reading and a series of activities, students will learn about the people who came to Montana to homestead and the importance of homesteading to Montana’s history. In Lesson 1, students will analyze and contextualize railroad advertisements promoting homesteading. In Lesson 2, students will illustrate a reminiscence written by an early Danish homesteader.

Part 2: Boarding Schools and Allotment (2 class periods)

Description: Through activities and interactive PowerPoints, students will learn about boarding schools (Lesson 1) and the policy of allotment (Lesson 2), while working on reading fluency.

Part 3: Immigration after 1920 (3-4 class periods)

Description: In Lesson 1, students will watch a PowerPoint and read informational text about Mexican, Hutterite, and Hmong Montanans before cementing their learning with a short notetaking assignment. In Lesson 2, students will conduct an interview with a family member or other important adult about immigration to Montana and then write a report based on their interview.

Part 4: The 1972 Constitution (1 class period)

Description: Students will learn about the 1972 Montana State Constitution by paraphrasing the preamble and through a PowerPoint presentation. They will then write a preamble for a class constitution.

Part 5: Biographical Poems Celebrating Amazing Montanans (2 class periods)

Description: Students will read short biographies about specific Montanans and use them to create biographical poems.

Are you interested in trying this unit out with your class and providing feedback?

I estimate that the entire unit should take 12-14 days (that's one thing we're testing to find out) but I'd be happy to test individual pieces as well.

Email me if you are interested, and I'll send you more information.

National History Day

 Every year I tell you to take the leap and try National History Day. And every year only a few of you listen. But this is the year! Why? Because National History Day projects, for which students conduct independent research on topics that they choose (and thus are inherently more interesting to them than topics you assign) and create projects in a format that plays to their strength is a perfect activity for distance and/or hybrid learning. (Of course, I think it's great for in-class learning as well). And doesn't hurt that there's a competition element involved for those who like that sort of thing.  

What Is National History Day?

NHD is an up-to "year-long academic program focused on historical research, interpretation and creative expression for 6th- to 12th-grade students. By participating in NHD, students become writers, filmmakers, web designers, playwrights and artists as they create unique contemporary expressions of history. The experience culminates in a series of contests at the local and affiliate levels and an annual national competition in the nation's capital in June." 

Each year, students create projects around a theme (this year's theme is Communication in History: Key to Understanding.) As a teacher you can limit student choices to the topic of your class (teach Montana history? Have them choose a Montana topic. Teach World History? Have them choose a world history topic...  

Students can choose one of five ways to present their research: through a website, paper, exhibit, performance, or documentary film. Projects can be either group projects or individual projects. (As a teacher you can limit this too, having all students creating individual websites for example).  

You Don't Need to Invent the Wheel

One of the great things about NHD is that it is a national program with national resources and a lot of teachers (over 30,000) have been doing it for a long time. NHD gathered resources to help you implement the program in your classroom, including a series of "Help! I'm a New NHD Teacher!" videos. There are also tons of resources for students, including samples of previous winning projects, so they know how high to aim (the answer is very. The quality of some of these projects is amazing.)  

NHD in Montana

This year two regional contests will be held virtually on March 6, 2021 (one for eastern Montana and one for western Montana), and the State contest will be held virtually March 27, 2021. (One of my favorite things about National History Day is that it encourages revision by giving students an opportunity to get feedback from a regional contest so they can improve their projects before competing at state (and if they win state, they can improve their projects based on feedback again before competing nationally.) Learn more at the Montana National History Day website. or by contacting state coordinator (and Conrad teacher) Michael Herdina at mtnhdcoordinator@gmail.com. 

Prizes

 The Montana Historical Society offers two prizes for NHD projects, the $500 Martha Plassmann Prize for an outstanding project using digitized newspapers and a $1,000 travel scholarship to the best Montana history project eligible to advance to the national contest (assuming a travel scholarship is necessary this year.) Learn more here. 

What Else Can I Say to Persuade You?

I'll end with three thoughts: 

First, National History Day is NOT just for gifted students. The program lends itself to differentiation and some of the greatest success stories are those of "average" or typically low-performing students.  

Second, your students can participate in the program WITHOUT competing. So you can assign this a classroom project, and then encourage the ones who really get into it to join the competition.

Finally, I'm here to help (as is Michael). If you have questions or want assistance, don't hesitate to contact us.  

 

Teaching Montana History is written by Martha Kohl, Outreach and Interpretation Historian at the Montana Historical Society.

Hexagonal Thinking

It was only going to take me a few minutes--but then I went down the rabbit hole, and what an adventure it was!

 It all started with a a post in the Teaching with Primary Sources Network, "Hexagonal Thinking Corroboration Tool." (You'll have to log in to read it, but if you aren't part of the network, consider joining--it is a great site for sharing strategies for teaching with primary sources and primary source sets--and it is free!)

That post led me to this article on Hexagonal Thinking on the Cult of Pedagogy, by Betsy Potash, explained in more detail how manipulating hexagons can help students explore connections between ideas, and demonstrate mastery of a topic.

Here's the basic idea:

1. Place ideas or topics on hexagon-shaped pieces of paper. (For example, drought, Great Depression, New Deal, Fort Peck Dam, 1930s, Indian Reorganization Act, unions...)
2. Then give those pieces of paper to students and ask them to place the hexagons so that they only touch related topics/ideas.
3. Then have students explain their thinking.

One of the great things about this is that there is more than one right way to connect any list of words, which makes it a great tool for constructing and demonstrating understanding. According to Potash, "When you give a small group of students a deck of hexagons and ask them to connect them however they choose, every group will come up with a different web for different reasons. Along the way they’ll hopefully question each other and dig deep into the concepts on the cards, arguing about which idea connects more to an important concept and which example deserves one of those precious six sides."

Anyway, Potash's post led me to a video on how to make digital hexagons. So I tried it, using vocabulary and concepts from Chapter 13 (Homesteading) of Montana: Stories of the Land.

The idea is that students cut and paste each term onto a hexagon. Then they drag the hexagons so that they only touch other hexagons that have related words or ideas.

And then, they drag the numbers to specific connections and on a separate sheet they explain those six connections.

Here are connections I made when I played with my word list, but I could have just as easily created a different set of connections. 

I was obsessed! So I watched another video called "Quick Hexagonal Thinking in Your Class," by Matthew Matera, who kindly posted this link to a blank template for paper hexagons in the video description. Mr. Matera cuts out the hexagons for his students (with words already in them) but I think you could just give students a word list and have them cut out their own (or use hexagonal shaped sticky notes.)

 
And because I couldn't stop, so I created another word list--this one from chapter 7 (Two Worlds Collide), that I also thought could make a good hexagon activity. 

Sovereign                                  Treaties                    Hellgate
reservations                               Fort Laramie           railroads
1851                                           Bozeman Trail        Lame Bull 
Northern Cheyenne Breakout    Red Cloud              1868
Manifest Destiny                        gold                       annuities  
Battle of the Little Bighorn        1855                       misunderstandings

In both the homesteading and treaty examples, I pretty much stuck to text in subheads and bolded vocabulary words to create the word lists. Creating the word lists this way took about five minutes each time.

What do you think? I'd love to hear from you! Did I waste my afternoon or is this a useful strategy? Do you already use it? Even better, do you already use it with Montana history? (And if you end up using the digital hexagon assignment I created with either the homesteading or the treaty period word lists, let me know how it goes and whether you think it is worth working up into a formal lesson plan.) 

P.S. Peter Pappas, the author of the the very first post I read, uses primary sources for his hexagon assignment. I wonder if you could use the primary sources from any of the Annotated Resource Sets? 

 

Teaching Montana History is written by Martha Kohl, Outreach and Interpretation Historian at the Montana Historical Society.