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. 

Montana Memory is easier to use than ever

I've long had a love-hate relationship with the Montana Memory Project, which provides access to digital collections that relate to Montana’s cultural heritage and government to make previously unavailable historic and cultural content available to the general public. (Think of it as Montana's version of the Library of Congress's American Memory Project.)

Love, because there's so much great stuff available. Hate, because in the past, it has been hard to find what I'm looking for. That last part is changing—thanks to the work that Jennifer Birnel and friends have been doing to make searching Montana Memory easier.

The new Collections Page makes it easy to narrow your search by collection (for example, Mapping Montana and the West or Photographs from the Montana Historical Society). That page also makes it easier to refine your search by the type of material you want to search (for example, photographs, documents). Once you've pulled up a list of search items, you can use the date feature on the left hand side of the page to narrow your search even further.

Intrigued? Jennifer created a brief video on searching the new Collections Page that you may find helpful. She's also always happy to answer questions.

Better yet, plan on attending our session at the upcoming Indian Education for All Best Practices Conference on finding primary sources, where Jennifer will provide a training in finding IEFA-related materials on Montana Memory.

You can register for the March 2 - 3, 2019, conference (which will be held at Carroll College, in Helena) here.

Stipends for Summer PD

It's January, which means it's time to start day-dreaming about summer--and particularly summer opportunities to recharge and reconnect with your love of history and the humanities through professional development. 

I'm a huge fan of the NEH's Summer Seminars and Institutes for School Teachers, which offer tuition-free opportunities for K-12 educators to spend between one to four weeks on in-depth study of a humanities topic. NEH stipends of $1,200-$3,300 help cover expenses for these programs, which next summer include Discovering Native History along the Lewis and Clark Trail (Billings to Bismarck), Teaching Native American Histories (Martha's Vineyard and Cap Cod, MA), Re-Enchanting Nature: Humanities Perspectives (Helena), and The Battle of the Bighorn and the Great Sioux War (in Billings). You can find a list of all the different options from Shakespeare to the Civil Rights Movement to the The First Amendment in 21st Century America here. (Deadline to apply is March 1, but applications are competitive and typically require written recommendations, so start early!)

NEH isn't the only organization that provides dynamite teacher workshops.  The Gilder-Lerhman Institute of American History also is also offering a series of workshops this summer, including one on Westward Expansion, led by western history rock star Patty Limerick. (Program is free plus participants are offered a $400 stipend to reduce travel costs. Deadline to apply is February 18--and there are hoops to jump through to be eligible, so start early!) 

Once again the Montana Network of Holocaust/IEFA Educators is hosting "Worlds Apart But Not Strangers: Holocaust Education and Indian Education for All. The seminar is for all educators, grades 4 through college professors, who are currently teaching or interested in teaching the Holocaust and/or the Indian Education for All. Held on the campus of MSU-Billings, June 9-15, 2019, this intensive, inquiry-based seminar bridges past and present. Participants build background knowledge about the Holocaust and IEFA and gain writing-based classroom strategies for building community and processing difficult information. The seminar is free (three graduate credits are available for $135) and includes copies of selected books and teaching materials, lunches and most dinners, several field trips, and the opportunity to apply for mini-grants of up to $1,000. Low-cost dorm housing is available.

Finally, a colleague asked me to let folks know about the USS Midway Museum's Institute for Teachers in San Diego: The Cold War, Korea and Vietnam. Participants receive a $1000 stipend plus travel support, instructional materials and meas aboard ship. They have never hosted a Montana teacher and are very eager to recruit one (we're one of only 6 states they haven't touched and they are going for fifty.) Application deadline is March 4.

"Jigsawing" the Textbook to Make Room for Primary Source Investigations (Plus Links to Fur Trade Resources)

Friends in Billings are designing a new semester class in Montana history, which has led me to think more about how I would build on the material we have available--particularly our award-winning textbook Montana: Stories of the Land--to teach Montana history. (Because, as we all know, a textbook, no matter how good it is, is not a curriculum.) Over the next few weeks I'm going to expand on a few ideas. I hope they will have immediate practical application for some of you teaching Montana history, while also providing some models that can be applied to other courses.

The first idea comes from Great Falls teacher Jana Mora, who created  her Montana Fur Trade: Four Square Primary Source Lesson Plan as part of a three-year Teaching American History professional development program coordinated by the Montana Council for History and Civics Education. Jana designed her lesson for grades 9-12, but I think it is adaptable to middle school classes as well.

Jana asked students to look at a variety of sources--journals, pictures, stories, and biographies to explore four specific areas in depth before creating a four square display with the information they uncovered.

One thing I particularly love about her lesson is her use of  "jigsawing." Jana assigns groups of students different parts of Chapter 5, "Beaver, Bison, and Black Robes: Montana's Fur Trade, 1800-1860."  Each group becomes an expert on their section. Then she reorganizes the groups so that an expert for each section is in each group and can teach the other group members. That way, everyone gets all the information from chapter 5 without having to read the entire chapter. This make sure that everyone has basic background while freeing up time to dive into primary sources.

Jana required each student to examine two journals and two pictures. Under the journals, the students create "dialectical journals, creating a dialogue by selecting phrases they find important or interesting and writing a reaction for each phrase. For each image students complete an image analysis worksheet she created called "Stepping into a Picture."

Each day of the project, Jana ends the class with a brief discussion, during which she asks, "What did you find out today that you didn't know or that challenges something you thought you knew?" What a great question! She also has students tie what they learned that day back to essential questions she posed at the beginning of the lesson plan. (Her questions included "How did beaver change the history of Montana?" "In what ways were the Indian people involved in the fur trade?" "What induced the shift in the marked from beaver to bison?" and "Who were the 'Black Robes' and what influence did they have on Indian living in Montana during this time?")

After all students have completed their four squares (which show the journals and pictures and their analyses), students complete peer evaluations, rotating and responding to each others' work. I love this part, too, because it engages students in even more sources and asks them to note connections and ask questions. Finally, students write a paragraph summarizing the overall significance of the fur trade and responding to the essential questions that kicked off the investigation.

Jana's lesson plan includes detailed instructions, a rubric, and list of likely primary sources, so it's more or less plug-and-play for Chapter 5 of Montana: Stories of the Land (though, of course, you'll want to check the links). But it is also a great model for other topics, because it balances

1.  the need to provide background information (students can't do a good job learning about a topic or analyzing primary sources without it) with 
2. allowing students to conduct their own investigations and 
3. having students spend time experiencing primary sources, which is often what brings history alive.

Do you have other successful strategies for accomplishing these (sometimes competing) goals?  If so, tell me about them so I can share.