Reader Responses: More on Timelines, National History Day, and Common Core

I love this blog because of the connections it has given me with amazing teachers across the state and I’m always excited when I get responses to a post.

I received three emails about the post on National History Day and Common Core standards. The first was from Lynde Roberts, whose daughter Abigail participated in National History Day last year as an 8th grader as part on her social studies classwork for Lewis and Clark Middle School in Billings. Abigail won the state competition  and represented Montana at the National History Day Competition in Washington D.C.  Lynde said she would be willing to talk to anyone who has questions about the experience.  “It was great and Abigail grew so much with her confidence and public speaking ability.  She was the winner of the Salute to Freedom award and we will be going to New Orleans in January to celebrate the opening of the WWII museum there.” Email mkohl@mt.gov for contact information.

The second was from Billings high school history teacher Bruce Wendt (and the 2012 Gilder Lehrman Montana state National History Teacher of the Year—Congratulations, Bruce!) He pointed out that social studies will soon have its own Common Core standards. Draft text is being unveiled at the National Council of Social Studies annual conference in Seattle, November 16-18. By the way, the program for that conference looks amazing. Just wishing I could attend.

Finally, Ruth Ferris wrote to let me know that the Library of Congress has unveiled a “massive common core resource center” and shared a link from Edudemic.com that describes the new resource in glowing terms.

 There was also great response to the timeline post. Thanks so much to all of you who took time to respond. Of the twenty-three people who completed the short survey, 18 said that they *would* like a Montana history timeline to hang on their classroom wall. But the teachers who emailed me directly put in strong plugs for student created timelines.  Two correspondents had additional timeline resources to recommend and one had a very interesting approach to teaching with timelines. Their comments are below.

Bryan Pechtl, Scobey Schools, wrote: “I think timelines are a great teaching tool, but I like having my students create them.  If something is just hanging on a wall, they will look at it, but they don't have any reason to really know or understand the material.  By creating the timelines in class, students get involved in deciding the most important events to include and defend why they picked those events.  It can be surprising to see why students pick something that I might not have chosen.  Students also benefit by gaining a deeper understanding of what they are studying because they are forced to research their topics in-depth.  Finally, students generally seem to have fun making them, and they can be a fun break from the routine that we all fall into from time to time.”

Billings high school teacher Bruce Wendt echoes the importance of having students create timelines: “To me this is the type of active history that the kids should do, not the teacher.  They learn by doing the activity, not passively looking at a series of dates and putting those on a worksheet.  I would encourage students to not only mark dates of events, but also significance and other higher order thinking skills.”

Julie Saylor at the Indian Education Division of the Office of Public Instruction pointed out that Montana Tribal Histories: Educators Resource Guide, which was donated to all public school libraries and is available online, includes some timeline activities (see Chapter 10, p. 160). In addition, the author, Julie Cajune, created tribal history timelines for each Montana reservation.

MSU education professor Mike Scarlett recommended another online timeline tool: “One website I share in class for making timelines is  http://www.tiki-toki.com.  It is free—at least the basic version is—and pretty easy to use.”

Missoula teacher Gary Stein talked about what he’s trying to teach when he teaches with timelines. He particularly focuses on the bias and perspective of the timeline maker, who gets to decide which events are included and which ones are left out. His full comment is here: “As a history teacher and citizen, I’m no longer shocked or surprised that many (most?) fellow citizens cannot sequence events in American history, much less put them on an accurate timeline. I think in part this is because many adults have rejected their schooldays history lessons for being irrelevant; after all, does knowing when the Constitution was ratified, or was Custer wiped out before or after the Nez Perce War, really matter in our daily lives? Probably not, and I say this as a person who believes that this information is critically  important in our lives. So, for over 20 years, while I’ve provided and helped students create timelines and chronologies, I have tried to focus on the value and application of the timeline. Why is it important to know when things happened? And who gets to make the timeline, and what is their bias, what does the “timeline maker” want people to know/learn? Simply, yes, I do use the timeline provided by mt.gov, as well as multiple timelines, (some of which I’ve created), to get students to focus on bias and perspective. In other words, what is left off a timeline is sometimes more important than what is included.”

Creating Timelines

I spent some time over break playing around with Timeline JS, “an open-source tool that enables anyone to build visually rich, interactive timelines.” Their step-by-step instructions really make it easy, as does the fact that you build the whole thing in Google Sheets using their template. In a couple of hours I created this timeline of Montana homesteading, pulling many of the images from the Montana Memory project. (More on using Montana Memory here.) Granted, it helped that I know the subject matter, but I still think this project is well within a middle-school or high school students' reach.

I wrote about online timeline creation software back in 2012, but never actually sat down to try to use one before now. I'm a convert! (One caveat: All the pictures show up when I view my timeline in Google Chrome, but not when try to view it in Microsoft Edge. Go figure.)


If you like timelines but are tech-shy, or simply don't have the time to incorporate another project into your class, we've got two plug-and-play timeline lesson plans, designed to take one to two class periods each: 

Montana Women at Work: Clothesline Timeline Lesson Plan (Designed for grades 4-12) This primary-source based lesson asks students to analyze historic photographs to draw conclusions about women and work from the 1870s through the 2010s. Students will discover that Montana women have always worked, but that discrimination, cultural expectations, and changing technology have influenced the types of work women undertook.

Montana Women's Legal History Lesson Plan (grades 11-12) Students examine sample Montana legislation from 1871 to 1991 that particularly affected women's lives, try to put them in chronological order, to explore the impact laws have on the lives of ordinary people and why laws change.

Looking for more inspiration? Here's an idea for using the tribal history timelines created by the Montana Office of Public Instruction. 

Timelines

I received a request last spring for a Montana history timeline to hang on the wall based on the timelines we print at the beginning of each chapter of MONTANA: STORIES OF THE LAND. I don't want to invest in this project unless I know it would be widely useful. We have many projects to choose from--so we want to make sure we invest our resources wisely by focusing on producing material that teachers actually want. So, I have a favor. Would you let me know if you think this is a worthwhile product by answering a quick, three question survey? Link to the survey is here.

I wonder if having your class create a timeline might be better than a preprinted one. On Teachinghistory.org, I found this link describing how one teacher uses her low-tech, class-constructed timeline.

High School teacher Joe Jelen, also writing on Teachinghistory.org, suggested having students create digital timelines and provides links to various programs. Joe links to a Free Technology Tools for Teachers post that reviews several different timeline programs, including Timeglider, which was highly recommended at a conference I recently attended as a FREE program in which to create your own timelines.

And just out of curiosity—does anyone ever have students refer to our online timeline?

Do you have any good tips to share on using or creating timelines?

Tools for creating timelines

Back in 2012, this community had a lively discussion about how to use timelines after some teachers asked us to create a wall timeline based on the timelines in Montana: Stories of the Land. Ultimately, we did not pursue the project, mostly because of a lack of resources. But we also heard from lots of teachers who thought the best timelines were ones created by students.

Low-tech timelines are great. But for those who like to incorporate technology in the classroom, there are many free timeline tools, including HSTRY, Timeline JS, RWT Timeline, TimeGlider, Dipity, and MyHistro. FreeTech4Teachers reviewed HSTRY and these other timelines in two very useful articles. (HSTRY got its own article because FreeTech4Teachers learned about it only after he created this chart comparing the other timeline tools.)

Have you used any of these? Share your experiences and opinions. 

Who's In and Who's Out

When we wrote the middle-school textbook Montana: Stories of the Land, we worked hard to make sure we were telling an inclusive story. I think we succeeded in incorporating Montana's Indian history into the main narrative--at least better than many American history textbooks do. (We were less successful in incorporating women's history, a deficit we've tried to address with our Women's History resources and lesson plans.)

I started thinking about this after reading Facing History and Ourselves one-hour lesson plan on LGBT history. That lesson has students work together to create a timeline of significant events in LGBTQ history (basically by playing the game "Timeline" as a class)* and then reflecting on the difference it would make if LGBTQ history, and the histories of groups that received relatively little attention, were woven into the curriculum and given proportional weight in textbooks and literature classes.

It occurred to me that Facing History's lesson plan could easily be adapted to become an IEFA lesson in a high school American history classes using entries from Montana Office of Public Instruction's tribal history timelines as a starting point.

If you try this, I hope you will let me know how it goes.

*Timeline Rules of Play (from "Rules of Play," RulesofPlay.co.uk):

"To begin, one card is randomly drawn from those not given to players. This is placed in the middle of the table, date-side up and is the starting point of a chronological line which will slowly be built by players. The first player then chooses one of their cards and place it before or after the initial card. The player's card is then turned date-side up. If the player was right, it remains on the table. Otherwise, the card is discarded and a new one must be drawn to replace it. Play proceeds clockwise. The more cards which are correctly played, the harder it is to correctly place new ones! The first player to get rid of their cards wins."

P.S. I was inspired by this to work with Nick Zarnowski to create a timeline-based lesson plan focused on women and the law. As often happens, the lesson morphed beyond recognition and bears little resemblance to the inspiration. However, especially if you teach government, I hope you'll try it and then, of course, report back. 

Best of, Middle School Edition 2019

Every spring, I ask folks to share their favorite Montana history of IEFA lesson, the one they would absolutely do again. Go here for the high school teachers' responses. Stay tuned for elementary school teachers' responses. Read on for the responses from middle school teachers with some notes from me, in brackets.

Jennifer Graham, of Philipsburg, who teaches Montana history in 7th grade, wrote, "Mapping Montana, A-Z, THAT WAS THE BEST!  First time I did that this year and it was great.  The students loved it. " [Other teachers--who responded anonymously also listed this as their favorite lesson.] 

Teachers recommended Making an Atlatl [I was excited to see that someone not only used this new lesson of ours but that it was a favorite], Blood on the Marias: Understanding Different Points of View Related to the Baker Massacre of 1870 [one of my favorite lessons too], and Code Talker - A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two.

  

Another teacher shows Montana Mosaic episodes Chapter 6 on Federal Indian Policy, which focuses on the Relocation policy of the 1950s] and Chapter 4 Dislocation/Relocation, which focuses on the Boarding School experience. [Note each episode is less than 20 minutes. The accompanying user guides provide synopses, vocabulary definitions, and post-viewing questions. MHS donated the Montana Mosaic DVD to all public Montana school libraries. The episodes are also available on YouTube]] 

Playing for the World: The 1904 Fort Shaw Indian Boarding School Girls Basketball Team Model Teaching Unit [OPI donated the DVD that accompanies this teaching unit to all public Montana school libraries. The video is also available on YouTube]

Jennifer Hall, 7-8 Eureka, loves our Montana's Charlie Russell PowerPoints and lesson plans. 

Cindy Hatten, Colstrip, 6-8, wrote, "My favorite is the Governor’s Mansion footlocker [Original Governor’s Mansion: Home to the Stewart Family in Turbulent Times, 1913-1921]. I always use it around Christmas and involve the lives of the governors children and what they had done as far as games, presents and Christmas goodies." [Learn more about how to order this or other footlockers on our Hands-on History page.]  

April Wuelfing, Sheridan, 7 grade, wrote: "we used the [Montana: Stories of the Land] textbook's defensible space worksheet [the worksheet accompanies Chapter 12: Logging in the High Lonesome]. After that, I presented the class with more information (largely from California's legislation) on defensible space. This took an entire class period, to which the kids took some notes. The next day, I split the class in two and we had a friendly debate on whether or not home owners should be required to create defensible space around their homes. The kids loved it and did an excellent job presenting arguments for both!

Wendy Davis, Marion School, 6-8, wrote:  "Copper Kings--after learning about the 3 each student draws names of the 3 out of a hat and designs a wordle poster to display on the wall. Students have to go back to the biographies, textbook, handout, and notes to select specific details they want to stress.  We emphasize  descriptive adjectives and significant details in the displays. Not only do the students enjoy designing them, but they also remember the significant differences between the three men." [Wordle, "a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide" is so cool. I love the idea of incorporating it into a lesson.] 

Kathy Harvey, Vaughn School, grades 5-8, also taught about about the Copper Kings. [I hope she used material from Montana: Stories of the Land Chapter 10, "Politics and the Copper Kings," including the point of view worksheet we created with an excerpt from one of my favorite satirical pamphlets, "Helena's Social Supremacy," which is now available to download in its entirety from the Montana Memory Project!] 

Lauren McDonald, 6-8 Whitehall, wrote: "I use the 'Picturing the Past' lesson plan from Montana: Stories of the Land Chapter 11, 'The Early Reservation Years.' It's a great way for students to see the changes that occurred during the early reservation years. Students are so visual these days and movement always helps in a middle school setting.  I'm not sure it would be as effective if students weren't required to move around and observe different aspects.  I teach Montana History to 7th grade students and they're incredibly insightful with their observations as well as the following discussion.  I believe this is in part to the visual nature of this lesson as well as the guiding questions provided for students.  Many students struggle with how to perform a correct observation in this setting, but the lesson has provided a sheet of questions for the students to think about when observing each photograph." [The lesson, subtitled "Understanding Cultural Change and Continuity among Montana's Indians through Historic Photographs," can also be taught as a stand alone lesson--though I think it's even better to teach it in the context of the chapter.]  

Jim Martin, Missoula, 6-8, wrote:  "Not one particular lesson, but, connecting our American Indian culture and timeline as we work through the curriculum of ancient world history." I was curious to learn more so I contacted him for details. he explained that the "6th grade curriculum covers the civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, Greece, and Rome.  It is a tough subject for kids to connect to, and sometimes kids think it moves chronologically through time.  For example, they think that, when learning about Egypt, India hadn't been settled since we haven't covered it yet. ... So, I have a big timeline in the front of the classroom. It's made of yarn, and each civilization has its own line that runs parallel to the rest. This creates a visual to show that, 'while the pyramids are being built in Egypt ... meanwhile in India...' and shows kids that human development occurred simultaneously across the world achieving many of the same milestones; use of iron tools, developing complex religion, etc." The curriculum does not cover either North or South America and Jim wants to make sure that students understand that the people living here in ancient times had rich cultures of their own. He struggles with finding dates and details about what was going on before 1492. Although he recognizes that "each tribe is complex with its own history," his main goal is to make sure students understand the Americas as a whole was home to civilizations, so he includes events across the Americas on his timeline (rather than trying to be tribally specific.) "So, there are events from the Anasazi creating pottery, to Mississippian culture building mounds in the Ohio River valley, to petroglyphs being created in the Pryor Mountains, to the tribes settling the Mexico Valley.  The point is to show students that events and the efforts of human ingenuity occurred all over the globe, not just in these five pockets of the world."

It's not too late! If you have a lesson you think other teachers should know about, for any grade, drop me a line!

Let's Do This!

Welcome back! Or if you are new to Teaching Montana History, welcome. I hope everyone had a good summer. The first posts of the school year are always business, so let's get started.

Help This Community Grow

If you have colleagues you think would enjoy this listserv, please let them know how to subscribe!

Montana History Conference Is Online This Year

Check out the schedule for our virtual history conference, which will be held on Thursdays in September (September 3-September 26). We're sorry not to be able to gather in person this year, but are excited for the presenters we've been able to attract. I'm especially eager to listen to Dartmouth Professor Colin Calloway talk about "The Great Smallpox Pandemic of 1779-1784."

For Students with Learning Disabilities

Did you know? Montana: Stories of the Land is available as an audio book for students with learning disabilities through Learning Ally.

Finding Stuff

Over the course of the next school year you'll get weekly emails filled with links to resources, teaching strategies, and lesson plans as well as information about upcoming workshops and online training opportunities. A number of teachers have mentioned that they have trouble storing or remembering the information for future lessons. That's where the Teaching Montana History blog can help. I post every email on this blog and tag it with labels like "elementary" or "IEFA." The blog also has a search function so if you want to do a timeline exercise and have a vague memory of a past post on the topic, you can go to the search bar, type in "timeline" and see what comes up.  

When Links Don't Work

I hope most of you are already using our Montana history and Indian Education for All resources. If so, would you help us out? Please email mkohl@mt.gov if you find any broken links or other problems in the PDFs or on the site. We can usually fix things quickly—but only if we know about them. So, if you see something, say something.

 

New to MHS Resources?

If you haven't checked out the lesson plans on our website, I hope you will do that now. And don't forget about our online professional development opportunities--for which you can earn OPI Renewal units.

 

Teaching Montana History Facebook Group

We're all craving connection--at least I am. If you are too, and spend time on Facebook, consider participating in the closed Teaching Montana History Facebook group. I look forward to connecting with you there--or through phone or email. Please don't hesitate to contact me.

 

Best of, Elementary Edition

 Every spring, I ask folks to share their favorite Montana history of IEFA lesson, the one they would absolutely do again. Read on for the responses from high school teachers with some notes from me, in brackets. 

April Wills, second grade teacher, Bainville: Following the Trail: We read Seaman’s Journal in class two pages at a time. Because this is a journal we could chronologically timeline events. So we talked about each place in depth, picked out important details from each stop from the text and images. This is what we did for the entire book and in the end each student had their own timeline from the story. My students liked being able to hear the story from a “dog’s perspective”. We had many conversations where they could formulate their own opinions and debate, think -pair-share, and collaborate with library media. This activity tied in multiple standards and they loved it! [Seaman naturally takes Lewis and Clark's perspective when it comes to Indians, especially the Sicanju Lakota. It might be interesting to pair the book with Bad River Boys: A Meeting of the Lakota Sioux with Lewis and Clark.]

Helena elementary school librarian Marla Unruh: I am developing a website to teach Lewis and Clark in - I hope - an innovative way. I am trying to make it personal for 4th and 5th graders. It is unfinished at this time, and I am still doing personal research. I wanted to know why the tribal people referred to L&C's men as "long knives," and that led to a little reading on the espontoon and why Lewis favored it. I created a podcast in which I read aloud from James Willard Schultz's Bird Woman for one of my topics. I am presenting the Indian point of view (third-hand, I know.) I really wonder if I would have done all this if we had not gone to remote learning.  

Susan Seastrand, grades 3-5, Billings: IEFA Model Teaching Unit on Jim Thorpe's Bright Path 

Ron Buck: My favorite lesson is The Art of Storytelling: Plains Indian Perspectives. 

Anonymous: 

• The study of stereotyping to lead into who are the Salish.
• Learning about the winter count and having the student create their own. [This is part of The Art of Storytelling unit, mentioned above.]
• Next year, I found a book called Fry Bread by Kevin Maillard at Costco yesterday and we are going to make our own fry bread after learning about it.
• I used the book about children growing up in Montana's early mining camps to teach history and writing. [This teacher might be referring to Girl from the Gulches: The Story of Mary Ronan. We have posted the first part of the book as a PDF for free download and also created a study guide with lesson plans.]
• We love the Montana A to Z lesson. [This is a perennial favorite.]

Judith Vincent, Shields Valley, k-2: As part of a Montana unit I present each year, my students spend 1 week (or more depending on their engagement & interest) learning about the many uses of the buffalo by Native American tribes. This project incorporates outside resources including learning trunks from several museums, local artifacts & speakers. Students love the hands on activities & personal connection to their state. [She adapts MHS footlockers, including state symbols. Sadly, we've temporarily suspended our footlocker program because of COVID. However, User Guides (some of which include links to PowerPoints with historical images) are available for free download at our website.]

Jennifer Ogden: Art teacher, Victor:  “I enjoyed designing a lesson for 5th grade about Charlie Russell's Guardian Gnome figures. I made beeswax clay and sent cakes of it home to students sheltering in place. The malleable wax is for modeling faces. The rest of the figure is mostly made from natural materials students find at home the way Charlie and his guests scoured the grounds around Bull Head Lodge at Glacier to make theirs. I have been using the food distribution pipeline along our school bus route to deliver art kits and my lesson is posted for them on Google Classroom. I want to teach it in the real classroom some day and have the kids make the clay at school. I was inspired by a photo of CMR modeling beeswax for a group of "dudes" stopped at Browning in 1915.” 

Want more? Stay tuned for the Middle and High School Editions in upcoming weeks and join us on September 15 from 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m for Introduction to Montana History Resources. Register (and provide feedback to help shape the session) here.

 

 

Montana's Labor History

 This is a less practical post than most, but since it's Labor Day, I thought I'd share some resources relating to Montana's labor history. 

First up is this tour in Historic Montana, which features (in brief) a few of Montana labor temples, union halls, and other union-related sites, from Missoula's Free Speech Corner in Missoula to Forsyth's Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers Hall. Note: There are MANY sites that are not included in this list. Not every town in Montana had (or has) a significant union presence, but every railroad division and subdivision point, logging, or mining town did. Where did working people (primarily workingmen) gather in your community?

My colleague, Rich Aarstad, created an intriguing timeline of Montana labor history. Reading it over, several things surprised me, including the first workers to organize a union in Montana in 1866. It's not who you think.

Butte was known as the Gibraltar of Labor, so it's not surprising that there is a lot of material connected to the city.

• The second half of "When Copper Was King," one of the twelve short films that make up Montana Mosaic, focuses on the growth of unions in early twentieth century Butte. (See the user guide for a brief synopsis; find the video.)
• "When Toil Meant Trouble" is a good, brief roundup of Butte's labor history, written by George Everrett. 
• "Death in the West" is an award-winning podcast focused on the murder of Frank Little. The creators also created a tour of Butte sites relating to Frank Little.  
• Anna East created a series of lesson plans to teach material from the book Mining Childhood: Growing Up in Butte, Montana, 1900-1960 (including two of them about unions), and we digitized excerpts from the book to go along with them. 
• For a particularly unsavory moment in Montana's labor history, see this National Archives Lesson Plan on the Silver Bow Trades and Labor Assembly and Butte Miners' Union boycott of Chinese and Japanese businesses. Learn about Hum Fay's lawsuit to end the boycott and read excerpts from his testimony.
• The Clark Chateau worked with a number of contemporary musicians to write new tunes for union songs published in Songs for the Butte Mining Camp, a booklet published by the IWW circa 1918 during the general strike that started after the Speculator-Granite Mountain Mine disaster and now preserved in the Butte-Silver Bow Archives.
• Speaking Speculator-Granite Mountain Mine disaster, here are some of the letters written by J.D. Moore, who died in the mine, some telegrams sent by families to the Anaconda Company, asking if their relatives survived, and here's an article about the disaster.

Most of Montana's unions were exclusively male, but not all of them. Here's a short article about Butte's Women’s Protective Union. Before Montana passed legislation guaranteeing women equal pay for equal work in 1919* (forty-four years before the 1963 federal Equal Pay Act!), women hired to work for the Northern Pacific Railroad in Livingston during World War I received the same wages as their male counterparts because of the union. 

The Montana Historical Society has digitized over 600 oral histories with Montana workers Voices of Labor. I'm honestly not sure how--or whether--teachers can use these. I'd love your ideas. I do know that before looking at any of these oral histories, you, or your students, will want to look at the index, which lists topics covered in the interviews. (Links to the indexes are at the top of the page.) University of Montana has also digitized its Unions and Labor Oral History Collection. 

Happy Labor Day.

*I learned this from Rich's Montana Labor History Timeline, too!

 

P.S. Don't miss the first of our monthly Monday Meetups, September 11, 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. where I'll be sharing an Introduction to Montana Historical Society Resources. Register to earn one Renewal Unit. 

Best of, Middle School

 Every spring, I ask folks to share their favorite Montana history or IEFA lesson, the one they would absolutely do again. Read on for the responses from middle school teachers with some notes from me, in brackets. Stay tuned for high school teacher's responses. Click here to read recommendations from elementary teachers. 

Ron Buck, who teaches 6-8 in Shelby, wrote: "I love teaching placed based education, and the best thing I teach involves attending a place. For instance, I teach about the Marias Massacre. I invite speakers from the Blackfeet tribe to join us and share their story. I take my students to the place of the event (which is in my county), and we walk the grounds. We look at teepee rings, the river, the hills surrounding it, and the cut banks of the river. We discuss the conditions and the setting and how this place has meaning to our history. Students engage more if they can be in the place." [If you want ideas for how to incorporate more place-based education in your Montana history class, Ron is a great resource! Feel free to email him.)   

Jennifer Hall from Eureka wrote: "My students always love the Finger Weaving activity when learning about the Métis culture. The lesson is buried in the "Discover Lewis & Clark" footlocker materials. The footlocker contains a Métis sash, music CD and a book, The Flower Beadwork People. I use these resources to introduce the culture. However, you don't need to order the footlocker to teach this lesson. I bought a copy of the book and just ask for donations of yarn from parents. On day 1, I read the book aloud to the students. There is an educator's guide to the book provided in the lesson. On day 2, we begin to finger weave. There are several You Tube videos to help students. Because it's such a big hit, we will finger weave again on Day 3. During this day, the students are more comfortable with weaving and I play the Métis music in the background. It's one of their favorite lessons of the year. I find that many students will continue finger weaving at home and during their free time.

Jennifer also recommends Montana Women at Work Lesson Plan: Clothesline Timeline. She writes: "I love this lesson for having students analyze photos. It can be used in various ways with multiple topics. Students analyze the photos and then take time to discuss the decade in which the photos were taken. Last, the students sort the photos on a clothesline timeline. As a wrap-up, the class takes a few minutes to discuss their sorting. The students get excited when they walk in the room and see the clothesline hanging across the classroom! This is a great, hands-on activity with lots of time for analyzing and discussion while viewing primary sources." Another anonymous teacher also likes this lesson. She wrote: "It really challenged my students' perceptions of Montana history in terms of both time and gender roles, and it was interesting to both watch them learn and observe their previously held notions as we looked at those together." 

Dylan Huisken, who teaches in Bonner wrote: "Something new I tried was ledger art. The Art of Storytelling materials are great, accessible, easy to use, and engaging." He also recommends the Written Document Analysis worksheets we've included with selected primary sources for every chapter of Montana: Stories of the Land as part of our Learning from Historical Document units. 

Kristopher Schreiner from Kalispell wrote to champion "hands-on history activities tied to MT history content including- atlatl training, bow and arrow practice, flintknapping, fire-making using flint and steel and friction methods, hide tanning, reverse wrap cordage from sinew, hide painting, gold panning, log cabin construction, wheat grinding, butter churning, and homestead-style cast iron cooking." [Here's a link to a lesson on Making an Atlatl.You can find a gold panning activity in the Gold, Silver, and Coal footlocker User Guide, Lesson 3.]  

Jacob Delight from Polson recommends Fire on the Land. This lesson explores traditional and contemporary uses of fire by the Salish and Pend d' Oreille tribes. His students "created posters about fire management on our reservation, the website is great and posters turned out great, worked very well in our culture/environment unit." He also recommends teaching students to take two column notes.

One anonymous teacher loved the Montana Meme Contest that the Montana History Portal puts on every year.

Another wrote: "Using the Digital Inquiry Group resources is helpful in getting students to consider perspectives in primary sources." [I second this! Everyone should at least teach the lunchroom fight, which is part of their Reading Like a Historian History Lessons. And their Civic Online Reasoning material is also dynamite. You need to register to use their materials, but it's free.] 

And another said: "National History Day!" [Learn more about National History Day in Montana here! And make sure to sign up for Melissa's online PDs. She's the bomb diggity, and you'll learn a ton whether or not you are teaching NHD.]

Tech Tools

Billings elementary librarian Ruth Ferris is my tech connection. She recently alerted me to some interesting tools.

Museum Box. Museum Box is a free Web-based service created in England for use in the history classroom that provides tools for collecting and presenting digital versions of primary sources. Students can use Museum Box to collect sources about historical eras, events, biographies, inventions, regions, fashions—in short about anything that can be digitally documented. More on Museum Box here.

History Pin. History Pin is a fairly new site that asks users to “pin” photographic images to a world map. The images can be of any location - outdoors or indoors - at any time in the past. According to their FAQ, if images “are taken outdoors, at street level and at certain angles, will be able to be layered onto Street View (this is a bonus, not a requirement).” The site has some sample classroom projects, and plans to expand its educational outreach in the next year.

Ruth is also turned me on to the blog, “Technology Tidbits,” which is where I saw a plug for Spliced. Spliced, according to the blog’s owner, David Kapauler, “is an excellent site for editing YouTube videos. … All a user has to do is enter a URL and then select their start/stop times to grab the clip of the video that they want.” (I haven’t explored this because the State of Montana blocks YouTube, but it sounded pretty nifty.)

Finally, I found this rave review of Dipity on the Montana Council for History and Civics Education Facebook page: "Looking for some neat technology tools? Here is a timeline maker that is interactive. From Dipity: 'Dipity is a free digital timeline website. Our mission is to organize the web's content by date and time. Users can create, share, embed and collaborate on interactive, visually engaging timelines that integrate video, audio, images, text, links, social media, location and timestamps.' " (MCCE is a fairly new organization, one that’s definitely worth watching, so like their page on Facebook.)

Summer Reading

Before I shut Teaching Montana History down for the summer, I decided to look back at what our most popular posts have been. I found the results interesting, and thought you might too. And I thought the list might be especially useful for new subscribers, who want to dig into the archives during summer break.

Teaching Montana History in Fourth Grade (April 28, 2014) is a post that I wrote in 2014, trying to imagine a fourth grade curriculum. In 2017, I revisited the topic with Teaching Montana History in Fourth of Fifth Grade, Take 2. I think this second take is better than the first, even though it hasn't gotten as many life time hits. So if you are interested in the topic, that's where I'd start--and then I'd check out "Montana Today: A Geographical Study," a new unit we created to kick off an elementary classroom's study of Montana history.

In 2016, I discovered Evidence Analysis Window Frames, a primary source analysis tool--Evidence Analysis Window Frames created by Glenn Weibe, self-described "social studies nerd, consultant, tech guy," and author of the blog History Tech. You all are obviously as enamored by them as I am, because this is my blog's second most read post of all time. 

Teaching Indian Literature and/or Literature about Indians, also from 2016, asks "Should we teach fictional books about Indians by non-Indian authors?" 

These older posts have an advantage when it comes to the numbers game--they've been around longer so more people have had a chance to read them. Here are some of the most read posts from the last year:

• IEFA Resources for Your Classroom (NENUK Tour and Other IEFA Resources) 
• Creating Timelines (Timeline JS) (This post not only talks about the tool, it also includes an illustrated timeline I created on homesteading.)

My favorites are always the posts summarizing your best lessons, which you share with me when taking the annual year-end survey (there's still time--and prizes to be won! Please take a moment to complete the survey now.) Here are last year's answers to question, "Describe (in brief) the best Montana history or IEFA lesson or project or resource you taught this year--the one you will make time for next year no matter what." 

• Best of, High School Edition 
• Best of, Middle School Edition 
• Best of, Elementary Edition 

P.S. There are still spots in "Making It Real: --A Montana Historical Society Workshop for Elementary and Middle School Teachers," June 24, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in Helena. Participants will earn 6 OPI Renewal Units. Learn more and then register.

Welcome Back!

Welcome back! Or if you are new to Teaching Montana History, welcome. I hope everyone had a good summer. The first posts of the school year are always business, so let's get started.

Help This Community Grow

If you have colleagues you think would enjoy this listserv, please let them know how to subscribe!

Montana History Conference Scholarships

Don’t forget: We have travel scholarships available to teachers wishing to attend the 45th Annual Montana History Conference (held this year in Helena) September 26-28. Scholarship applications are due by 11:59 p.m. September 8, 2019. Awards will be announced the following week. You can find the conference program and the scholarship application information here. If you can't attend the entire conference, consider just joining us for the Thursday educator workshop ($25, lunch included, 6 OPI Renewal Units.)

For Students with Learning Disabilities

Did you know? Montana: Stories of the Land is available as an audiobook for students with learning disabilities through Learning Ally.

Finding Stuff

Over the course of the next school year you'll get weekly emails filled with links to resources, teaching strategies, and lesson plans as well as information about upcoming workshops and online training opportunities. A number of teachers have mentioned that they have trouble storing or remembering the information for future lessons. That's where the Teaching Montana History blog can help. I post every email on this blog and tag it with labels like "elementary" or "IEFA." The blog also has a search function so if you want to do a timeline exercise and have a vague memory of a past post on the topic, you can go to the search bar, type in "timeline" and see what comes up.  

MHS Resources

I hope most of you are already using our Montana history and Indian Education for All resources. If so, would you help us out? Please email mkohl@mt.gov if you find any broken links or other problems in the PDFs or on the site. We can usually fix things quickly—but only if we know about them. So, if you see something, say something.

If you haven't checked out the lesson plans on these sites, I hope you will do that now. And don't forget about our online professional development opportunities--for which you can earn OPI Renewal units.

Can we find a teachable moment through the smoke?

If you are on Facebook, I bet your feed is filled with stories about the fires. Mine is.

These articles brought to mind a post I wrote awhile back about using disasters as a way to engage students in larger questions. 

It also made me wonder if this year’s fire season offers a “teachable moment.” If so, here are some resources for teaching about fire and fire history. Most are taken from the Montana: Stories of the Land Teachers Guide and Companion Website, Chapter 12. 

• Tales of the 1910 Fire is an exhibit, including a first-hand account of the fires by a forest ranger, created by Archives & Special Collections, Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library.
• The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes' "Fire of the Land" website is a great resource in itself and includes links to many additional resources.
• The US Forest Service has gathered information on the history of smoke jumping.
• The Great 1910 Fire is a website that has transcribed newspaper articles, lists of fire victims and photographs.
• There's also been much written about the Mann Gulch fire, the most beautiful contribution being Norman Maclean's Young Men and Fire. US Forest Service History also dedicates a page on its website to the deadly 1949 episode. 

Interested in changes how fire policy has changed since 1910? We created this bibliography for National History Day students, but it’s a good starting point for any researcher.  Other interesting sources include:

• NOVA’s Fire Wars 
• National Park Service Fire Timeline
• “Forest Fire in Washington State”
• Articles in the Missoulian, by Shery Devlin, on the Big Burn. To find these online type “Big Burn of 1910 Sherry Devlin” into the Missoulian’s “Advanced Search.”

Wildfires and the appropriate response to them are also at the center of policy debates. 

• What should the government’s approach be toward fire protection in the Wildland-Urban Interface?
• How do state and federal policies affect fires? (Recently, Senator Daines called for more logging to prevent fires and Senator Tester called for action to slow climate change.)
• What are the budget implications of increasing forest fires and how should we pay for fire fighting?

Consider asking students to research and then write (and/or present) policy briefs to your local legislator and/or county commissioners on one of these issues. (Former middle school teacher Jim Schulz said having students present decision-makers with their research—and proposed solutions—to current problems was the all-time best activity he ever did with his students.)

 
If you do end up exploring fire in a meaningful way in your classroom, I'd love to learn what you did and how it went. And in the meantime, I'm sure you join me in wishing for snow.

Little Shell Recognition: It's been a long time coming

You've probably already heard the big news: the Little Shell tribe has finally received federal recognition! It's a momentous occurrence that has been a long time coming--125 years! As such it deserves discussion and provides a great teachable moment.

Government teachers

In addition to providing an opportunity to discuss federal recognition and what it means to tribes, it's also a great opportunity to feature bipartisanship--something all too rare in today's world.  Finally, it's an opportunity to learn about federal riders and the weird way things sometimes get done in D.C. One interesting exercise is to examine the bill itself. First, have students read the summary. Can they find information on the Little Shell? Next have them browse the Defense Appropriations Bill to find mention of the Little Shell. (It's hard to find. They'll ultimately need to do an electronic search.) Ask your students: What category is the recognition under ("Military Construction and General Provisions"). The rider is Subtitle F. What's in Subtitle E?

Other teachers

Consider showing the 2:49 minute video "Indian Nations: Little Shell Chippewa" created by the Montana Office of Tourism and check out the resources I highlighted in this earlier post on the Métis, which includes links to material to use grades 3-12.


In Canada, the Métis are recognized as aboriginal peoples, along with the First Nations and the Inuit. In the U.S. there is no such recognition. Many Little Shell also identify as Métis. Others identify strictly as Chippewa. To understand the Little Shell's connection to the Métis, see the tribe's official website, Nicholas Vrooman's article, "The Persistence of the Little Shell People," in Distinctly Montana, and his longer and more detailed explanation in the Study Guide and Timeline OPI published to accompany 'The Whole County Was ... One Robe': The Little Shell Tribe's America, particularly the introduction to " 'One Robe' Detailed Synopsis."

Two New Women's History Lesson Plans--Just in Time for Women's History Month

As many of you know, 2014 marked the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in Montana (for non-Indian women) and to recognize that centennial, the Montana Historical Society created a yearlong project we called Women's History Matters. (Read more about that endeavor here.)

We're still tying up loose ends on the project, including editing, testing, and publishing several new lesson plans.

I'm pleased to announce that we have just added two new lesson plans to the Women's History Matters site. Both deal with biographies, but one is designed for use in 4th-6th grades and the other for use in high school (or maybe with advanced 8th graders).

Ordinary People Do Extraordinary Things! Connecting Biography to Larger Social Themes Lesson Plan (Designed for grades 8-12)

• This lesson uses essays published on the Women’s History Matters website to help students explore how ordinary people’s lives intersect with larger historical events and trends and to investigate how people’s choices impact their communities. After analyzing two essays on American Indian women from the Women’s History Matters website, students are asked to conduct interviews with people in their own community to learn about how that person has chosen to shape the world around him or her.

Biographical Poems Celebrating Amazing Montana Women Lesson Plan (Designed for grades 4-6)

• This lesson asks students to research specific Montana women (by reading biographical essays) and to use the information they gather to create biographical poems. Through their research (and by hearing their classmates’ poems) they will recognize that there is no single “woman’s experience”; women’s lives are diverse and that people can make a difference in their communities.

As cool as these are--and I really like them both very much--my own favorite lesson remains the Montana Women at Work: Clothesline Timeline Lesson that we posted a while ago. Adaptable to a wide number of ages, this primary-source based lesson asks students to analyze historic photographs to draw conclusions about women and work from the 1870s through the 2010s. Students will discover that Montana women have always worked, but that discrimination, cultural expectations, and changing technology have influenced the types of work women undertook.

I hope you'll check out the Teachers page on Women's History Matters, try out one of these lessons with your students, and then let me know what you think. I'm always interested in feedback.

Women's History Lesson Plans

 Longtime readers know I'm ambivalent about designated months--Black History Month, Native American Heritage Month, Women's History Month--because I believe that we should incorporate these histories into our classrooms EVERY month. At the same time, it's not bad to use the opportunity of a designated month to reflect on how we're doing integrating everyone's history and shining a spotlight where we've come up short.

This is all to say that it wasn't until March was almost over that I realized it was Women's History Month, but I still think it's worthwhile sharing some of my favorite women's history lesson plans with you!

• Looking for a short (max two-class period) lesson to get students thinking about how career opportunities have changed over time? Designed for grades 4-12, Montana Women at Work: Clothesline Timeline Lesson Plan is a primary-source based lesson that asks students to analyze historic photographs to draw conclusions about women and work from the 1870s through the 2010s. Students will discover that Montana women have always worked, but that discrimination, cultural expectations, and changing technology have influenced the types of work women undertook.
• Want to help your upper elementary and middle school students understand that the laws Congress or the state legislature pass affect their lives? Women and Sports: Tracking Change Over Time introduces students to Title IX (a federal civil rights law enacted in 1972 that prohibits sex discrimination in education) and asks them to collect and analyze data to see how this law changed girls’ opportunities to participate in school sports.
• Want to share a Montana connection to the national suffrage movement with your American history students? Hazel Hunkins, Billings Suffragist: A Primary Source Investigation asks students to become historians as they analyze photos, letters, newspaper articles, and other sources to learn more about the suffrage movement as experienced by Billings, Montana, native and National Woman's Party activist Hazel Hunkins. 
• Want to introduce your high school students to some remarkable American Indian women while encouraging them to think about how ordinary people's lives intersect with larger historical events? Part I of Ordinary People Do Extraordinary Things! Connecting Biography to Larger Social Themes asks students to analyze two essays on American Indian women from the Montana Women’s History website. Part II of the lesson asks students to interview someone in their own community to learn about how that person has chosen to shape the world around him or her.
• Do you teach high school Montana government? Montana Women's Legal History Lesson Plan is a 1-2 period activity that asks students to examine sample Montana legislation from 1871 to 1991 that particularly affected women's lives to explore the impact laws have on the lives of ordinary people and why laws change.

You can find links to all of our women's history lessons and resources here and if you are on Facebook, consider following the Montana Women's History Facebook page for stories about Montana women all year round. 

 

Favorite Elementary Lessons

I've been sharing teachers' answers to the following prompt: “Describe (in brief) the best Montana history or IEFA lesson or project or resource your taught this year--the one you will make time for next year no matter what.” (Here are high school and middle school teachers' responses.) Below are the answers we received from elementary school teachers. [I've added a few comments and links in brackets--couldn't resist putting my oar in.] 

MonDak Heritage Center Museum Educator Jessica Newman gave a shout out to using "Visual Thinking Strategies in the analysis of art and historical documents." [I love VTS too! We integrated the technique into our Montana's Charlie Russell lessons, the Coming to Montana footlocker, and our BRAND NEW footlocker, "The Original Governor’s Mansion: Home to the Stewart Family in Turbulent Times, 1913–1921"--coming soon.  Intrigued? read more here.] 

 
An anonymous 3-5 grade teacher wrote: “The students choose a tribe in Montana to research. They produced a report, a replica of the flag, and made models to represent food, shelter, economy, and religion traditionally part of that tribe.”

Another anonymous teacher is excited about ArcGIS mapping: “The best resource that I learned about was the ArcGIS and I have set up an account already.  I look forward to using as we study Montana history.  Students will be able to create an interactive timeline and put information about the Montana famous person or explorer that they do research on for their reports.” 

3-5 grade teacher Sarah White of Shelby wrote, “IEFA Lesson - Comparison of maps of 1850's vs 2000's of land territory, the students made maps of both time frames to get a good visual of how the land territories changed (reservations vs non)  The students also did a spotlight research project on a Blackfeet Tribe concept (flag, small pox, Indian days, tipi, cradleboard, language, etc.)  on a big posterboard - they turned out wonderfully!”

Along the same lines, Whitefish Technology teacher Michael Carmichael worked with his third graders to create animations of the shrinking tribal land. I was intrigued so I asked him to share details. He wrote: "Students were given different animation project choices including one about  Montana Reservations. The students’ task was to show how traditional tribal areas changed and shrank with the introduction of reservations. Students needed to select three tribes to animate the boundary changes. This lesson activated prior classroom knowledge, utilized free online animation program that was age appropriate and allowed students multiple ways to create their animated infographic. Students accessed traditional tribal territory maps and modern Reservation maps to use as their background before using the drawing and painting tools to create the visual of the shrinking reservations. Animate is free and easy to use on all platforms via the web. Some of the map resources students utilized are:

• http://www.montanatribes.org/learning_activities/maps.html
• http://www.native-languages.org/montana.htm
• http://www.opi.mt.gov/pdf/IndianEd/Resources/MTIndiansHistoryLocation.pdf

They also used the  student safe search resource “Bing in the Classroom.”(Free for Schools)

Maps were big: Another teacher said her most successful lesson was “Making Land form maps our of salt dough.”

Susan Seastrand, from the Ayers Colony School, Grass Range, MT, K-8, school liked our new Montana’s Charlie Russell packets. “I love the pictures and the lesson. My students really enjoyed learning about Russell and the time period.” Ditto Billings elementary librarian Ruth Ferris of Billings and K-2 Bozeman teacher Jamie Winjum Chapman. Another teacher recommended our footlockers. "I will order the trunks again next year. I especially like the homesteading one." [We have a brand new footlocker of which we are very proud: “The Original Governor’s Mansion: Home to the Stewart Family in Turbulent Times.” Check it out and then be the first to order it.]

An anonymous librarian wrote, "The book that my students loved the best in 4th grade was It Happened in Montana.”

Another teacher takes her kids on a field trip to a buffalo jump after studying the topic. [Place based learning is the best--and we've got several buffalo jumps to choose from, including First Peoples Buffalo Jump State Park, near Great Falls (Related IEFA lesson plans are available), Madison Buffalo Jump State Park, near Three Forks (Related IEFA lesson plans are available), and Wahkpa Chu'gn Buffalo Jump, near Havre.]

K-2 Bainville teacher April Wills does book studies using “Shep and B is for Big Sky.” And, she wrote, “I also really enjoy doing a large Montana history project that ends with a technology piece attached. Usually an iMovie however, we collaborate with high school students for research and putting together the final project.”

Another teacher does a very in depth, 2-month persuasive writing unit on Native Boarding Schools with her 3-5 grade class.

Laura Dukart from Wibaux recommends “Mapping Montana: A to Z,” as did another anonymous teacher.

A librarian recommended "Jim Thorpe for IEFA." [I assume she used the OPI Indian Education Division's Model Teaching Unit.]

  

Ashlie Fleming, 3-5 teacher at Edgerton Elementary in Kalispell, wrote: “IEFA Heritage Day: I planned a school wide event with 2 of my teaching partners. Each grade level received a reservation in Montana and we planned lessons for each of the 7 reservations. The students then rotated through all 7 classes."

Another teacher uses holidays: "I teach an IEFA Columbus Day and Thanksgiving Day IEFA lesson to our 4th -6th graders that deals with historical inaccuracies and common misconceptions." [Not sure what she uses, but here are some ideas for Columbus Day and some resources to teach about Thanksgiving from Project Archaeology.]

Fourth-fifth grade teacher at Broadwater School in Helena Jodi Delaney's favorite lessons this year related to American history rather than Montana history (because she teaches Montana history every other year), but her recommendation was still worth sharing: “I asked my students what was their favorite lesson(s) and the overwhelming answer was the historical simulations we did (Early Explorers, Revolutionary War, Trail of Tears, Civil War, etc.)  I really like using the Explorers simulation to get at many of the ideas from that time period without getting into 'hero-fication' of the famous explorers.  I have purchased pre-made simulations from Scholastic, and make my own too.  I highly suggest buying the Scholastic ones as they are very easy to use and have everything to you.  I add more information of my own, but the bare bones version works just fine too.” [What do you think? Should we make these for some Montana history topics?]   

Another teacher enjoyed teaching about Henry Plummer and the Vigilantes/gold rushes. She wrote: "We had a great visit from Ellen Baumler-the kids loved her ghostly visit." [You may be able to get Ellen to come to your classroom too--through Humanities Montana's Speakers in the Schools.]

It's not too late--if you have a great lesson you'd like to tell teachers about, send it along.