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 middles school teachers with some notes from me, in brackets. You can find elementary teachers' responses here.
Sue Reynolds, founder of Everyday Native, recommends Patricia’s Story. Everyday Native--a site created to help bridge the gap of understanding that is held about Native Americans by non-Indians by emphasizing the everyday life of contemporary Native Americans as opposed to popular stereotypes created by movies, TV, books and news media, is free to use but requires registration.
Jenifer Powell, Corvallis Middle School: had her kids participate in the Montana Memory Project's meme contest last spring. It was one of her favorite lessons (and she's shared the link so you can recreate it in your classroom.) It's GREAT for distance learning.
Dylan Huisken, Bonner Middle School, does a lesson on the the Hellgate Treaty of 1855. He introduces it by having students playing a game to illustrate the problems of translation (A priest who observed the 1855 Hellgate Treaty negotiation with the Salish, Kootenai and Pend d’Oreille said that the translations were so poor that “not a tenth of it was actually understood by either party.”). Here's the game in the nutshell: Student 1 writes a phrase or sentence. Student 2 draws a picture to represent that sentence. Student 3 writes a new sentence from the picture. Student 4 draws a new picture from Student 3's sentence. Student 5 writes a new sentence based on Student 4's picture. Then the students compare the first and last sentences.
Jessica Gray (Holy Spirit, Great Falls), teaches a lesson on the vigilantes that she’s adapted to distance learning and allowed us to share (Students explored the Vigilantes using Montana Stories of the Land, the primary source from Montana Memory Vigilantes Record and the story behind 3-7-77 at the Montana Troopers Association Website. Then they wrote their opinion if they believe vigilantes were a good thing or not.)
Lynn White, 6 grade Montana history, Bridger, wrote "I have two actually that I love. WW1: the students made ration recipes for us to try, we did a "chopped History" lesson and watched War Horse. Next year I am going to try to trade the movie 1917 for War Horse. [Looking for authentic recipes? Check out the Red Cross Cookbook from Hot Springs.
"The other is the building an atlatl lesson that I have improved year after year and that is a student favorite. Coupled with a trip to the Pictograph Caves in Billings, this was a great IEFA lesson." [I don't know if Lynn has her own atlatl lesson, or if she's using this one, which Jim Schulz created for us sometime back.]
Laura Dukart, 7-8 Wibaux, wrote that "My best lesson/activity is In Memoriam. It's a lesson I do with my MT history students that involves a trip to our local cemetery."
Middle School librarian Kathi Hoyt Found primary sources from Montana Memory Project and used it with a self-paced Pear Deck. [New to the MMP? Save yourself a lot of frustration and watch this video on how to search the site.]
Susi Byrne, 6-8, Cayuse Prairie: “One of my many but by far my favorite IEFA projects is my lesson/project on Native American Cultural regions. This project included a research component, a writing component and a hands on crafting component. My students research various cultural regions, they pick one and follow several writing prompts such as what type of Native American lodging was typical for your region, natural resources found in your region, what Native American tribes lived in your region, animals, describe the environment.... According to their findings my students are asked to craft a shoe box diorama depicting their region with an example of the dwelling, animals, resources..... All of this work is done in class. At the end of the project I invite parent judges to the classroom. My students are required to present their dioramas with the help of a guided rubric to the judges.”
Chad Williams Montana history grade 7, Hamilton Middle School: “I teach a lesson on the fur trade in which I bring in a reenactor of the fur trade who has an incredible amount of authentic and recreated artifacts from the fur trade era, including a apothecary display and early surgical tools used during Rendezvous. The kids enjoy the hands on learning and are assessed with a subjective essay and research project of the lesson.”
Wendy Davis, 6-8, Marion School: "We only had a semester this year due to Covid. So this year my favorite lesson was my first lesson as an introduction to Montana history. Small groups put together puzzles of Montana and answered trivia questions about abstract events and places in Montana (the answers are located on the puzzle pieces). The students love putting the puzzles together and they get to take a very close look at places in the state as they put it together."
Kathy Harvey, 3-8, Vaughn: Montana ghost towns
Craig Claver, 6-8 Stanford: The Bozeman Trail and its influence on settling Montana's interior.
Other teachers answered anonymously, recommending the following lessons:
Mapping Montana, A-Z: "It is such a great lesson that allows students to explore our state. If we are distance learning next year it would be an easy adaptable lesson with Google Earth and pindrops which would allow it to be a great cross-curricular with science while also allowing it to be taught via technology." [This is a perennial favorite--more than one person recommended it.]
View from the Shore [This video shares Native American perspectives on their discovery of Lewis and Clark.]
A lesson that I make time for each year in Montana History is Ledger Art. I purchase ledger paper and have students create their own Ledger Art. [I don't know if this teacher is using our ledger art lesson plans, PowerPoint and resources, but you can find them here.]
Montana's three great disasters: the Supervolcano, Glacial Lake Missoula, and Quake Lake. We cover all three and then the students write an essay about the one that they thought was the most interesting.
The Montana Historical Society's PowerPoint Lesson Plans. I love those! We need MORE!!! :)
One teacher had her seventh grade students use images from Montana Memory Project and material from the digitized newspapers to create a class timeline of Montana history. [This sounds so cool! I'd love to see samples.]
"I taught about the homesteading movement through a Dungeons & Dragons-style table-top RPG, with students securing lots of land with specific resources, choosing which crops/animals to raise on those lots, and dice rolls determining if they had a strong or weak year. They still had agency determining how to manage their homesteads, but the random elements helped teach them how little was truly in their control on the farm/ranch. My kids got really into it, even being competitive to see who would make the most money."
"I teach PE. I taught double ball and had the students do research on other games with Native American Origins. They loved it!"
Indian Boarding Schools. Student read the chapter, then watch the Montana Mosaic episode and have a form to answer after. Then, they create a Google Slides presentation on a boarding school of their choice covering 4 or more topics revealing the structure and purpose of the school. [You can also find a user guide for the video here.]
3 Regions of Montana - the uniqueness of the western, central, and eastern regions of Montana; identifying major rivers, mountains, cities; Compare and Contrast the regions to one another in terms of wildlife, species of fish and birds, climate, precipitation, population etc. [Find some resources for this in Chapter 1 of Montana: Stories of the Land.]
Finally, I asked teachers about how they adapted material to distance learning.
Laura Dukart said that for distance learning, she used the user guide for the Oral History in the Classroom footlocker to set up an interview project.
Susi Byrne required her students to follow journal entries in the style of Lewis and Clark using the inspiration of their own yards and surrounding.
One teacher laid out her process in detail (including her use of Google slides:
1. Reading component - Turned one chapter into a power-point (cut and pasted the pages from the online textbook, did a voice over of the text) because I have quite a few students who struggle with reading.
2. Debate - Used class google slide as debate platforms. I posed a question on the first slide on materials we had covered and had one slide for arguments in favor and another slide for arguments opposed.
3. Geography - Figured out how to make a google slides project with a map of Montana's rivers that was the slide background, and then I added text boxes with the names of the rivers. Students then dragged the names of the rivers to the appropriate river.
4. Speech - Created a class google slides project in which students each researched a Mountain Man and created a slide about the mountain man with a voice-over.
5. Primary documents - Created a google slide presentation with 2 primary documents on hunting buffalo (with voice over of me reading the documents for my struggling readers). Then students had to compare the information in the documents with a painting called "Indian Hunting Buffalo" by Troy Denton, and a video clip from Dances With Wolves. The student created a thesis statement that answered the writing prompt of "After reading the 2 primary documents, how accurate do you think this painting/video clip is? Support your thesis with 3 facts from the documents.
6. Reading Comprehension - Made reading comprehension worksheets to accompany sections of the history book for students to complete as they read.
Want more? Stay tuned for the High School Edition in next week.
Teaching Montana History is written by Martha Kohl, Outreach and Interpretation Historian at the Montana Historical Society.
