A Note on Links: When reading back posts, please be aware that links have a short half-life. You can find working links to all of the MHS resources on our Educator Resources Page.

Thursday, September 24, 2020

Interested in testing some fourth-grade lessons?

 Late last February, I finished a draft of the third unit in our fourth grade curriculum. (The first unit, Montana Today: A Geographic Study, and the second unit, Montana's First Peoples, are available to download from our website.)

I reached out and lined up teachers to test the unit and then--well, you know what happened. So, I'm going to try again. If you teach fourth grade and are interested in testing one or more of these lessons, read on. 

Coming to Montana investigates some of the push-pull factors that brought people to the state: European settlement in the east that pushed tribes westward, the fur trade, Montana's mineral and timber wealth, and its rich grasslands.  (Still to come is a unit that will focus on homesteading, allotment, boarding schools, and twentieth-century immigration). 

Coming to Montana is broken into 7 parts:

  • Part 1: Should I Stay or Should I Go? (1-2 days)
  • Part 2: Montana's First Peoples (1-2 days)
  • Part 3: The Next Big Pull Factor: Precious Metals (contains 4 separate lessons, 5-6 days to do all 4)
  • Part 4: Ranching (contains two separate lessons, 4 days to do both)
  • Part 5: Logging (2 days)
  • Part 6: the Shrinking Reservation (1-2 days)
  • Part 7: Wrap-up (1 day, but you need to have done at least a few of the other lessons for this)

It incorporates some previously published lesson plans:

But it also has material created specifically for this unit, including

  • a guided research project on life for cowboys on the ranching frontier using excerpts from Teddy Blue Abbott's reminiscence, We Pointed Them North and historical photographs from our collection*;
  • An examination of census information to discover who lived in logging camps*; 
  • a math-based lesson on the Indian land loss*; and
  • a card-game lesson on cause and effect.

Are you interested in trying this unit out with your fourth-grade class and providing feedback? I'm should be able to have material to you by the end of February. The entire unit should take 15-20 days but I'd be happy to test individual pieces as well.

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

*I think these can be adapted for distance learning--but some of the content is challenging so students may need more scaffolding than distance learning allows; you'll need to make that determination yourself.


P.S. My last email advertised Colin Calloway's talk, The Great Smallpox Pandemic of 1779-1784 but I forgot to include the time and date! It is today (Thursday, September 24) at 6:30 p.m. Hope you can join us.

Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Best of, High School Edition

Every spring, I ask folks to share their favorite Montana history of IEFA lesson, the one they would absolutely do again. You can find elementary and middle school teachers’ responses in these earlier posts. Read on for responses from high school teachers with some notes from me, in brackets.

 Kim Konen, Dillon HS: “For my gold rush unit this year I used the Mary Ronan story. I love that book and have read it several times! I had students read the 6 chapters that were available and then complete chapter questions. It really gave the students a first hand perspective of someone who lived in Bannack, Virginia City and Helena during the gold boom!” [The questions Kim mentions are from our Girl from the Gulches: The Story of Mary Ronan Study Guide.]

Art teacher Jeri Rittel, Helena: "I used the online art for my virtual museums class. The students were amazed at the art we have in the vaults at the Historical Society."

Betty Bennett, 9-12 English, Missoula: "Normally Blood on the Marias is her favorite lesson (she teaches it in conjunction with Fools Crow.) "It makes the book so much more significant, especially for my NA students." Last year she planned to try to use focus on the newspaper articles to show "how the positions and attitudes reflected the readership between Montanans who felt they were endangered or that their lands were endangered opposed to those in a more distant readership who looked at it as a humanitarian issue. This allows us to discuss the issues of distortion of history, political decisions, bias, use of specific language to influence readers, etc."

Betty also really likes "The Art of Storytelling." The hands-on activities tap a whole new dimension of learning, understanding, and appreciation of the stories that make us see history as relevant and current. I didn't have a way to make that happen on line this year."

Elaine Warn, 9-12 English, Bozeman: "I teach in a collaborative classroom with a history teacher. One of our favorite projects is one that we call 'Then and Now'. We have compiled a collection of interesting historical photos of our local area (most within walking distance of the school). Students choose a photo. They then have to recreate the photo as closely as possible. They write 4-6 paragraph narrative essays exploring the changes and shifts between the original photo and the current one. They can explore historical events, geographical shifts, economical changes, etc. It turns out fantastic! We got the idea from reading William Wyckoff's On the Road Again: Montana's Changing Landscape." [I cannot say enough how much I LOVE this idea! And Bill's book is great too.] 

Two teachers talked about how they incorporated Montana history into US history. Alex Rosenleaf, 9-12, Great Falls, wrote: “The Copper Kings of Butte in relation to the Gilded Age and Robber Barons.” Lynn Mason, 9-12 Ravalli, wrote: "I incorporate both [Montana and US history] in every unit I teach to bring the curriculum closer to home. When we discuss industrialization, we examine the impact this had on Montana as a territory with the gold rush and the impact this had on Native Americans. Then we look at how this has helped to shape the world we live in today and how all of us are dealing with the past."

Lori Messenger English teacher at Seeley-Swan High School: "Well, the unit has gotten decimated here at the end of the year, but it's still about Norman Maclean and the Mann Gulch Fire connected to reading Young Men and Fire.”

Bill Wagner of Drummond takes his students on an annual bison hunt.

Do you have a lesson or idea to share? If so, let me know so I can share it out! 

P.S. Don't forget to tune into The Great Smallpox Pandemic of 1779-1784 on Thursday, September 24 at 6:30 p.m. In this talk, Dr. Colin Calloway (Dartmouth) will trace the smallpox epidemic that spread across the West, from Mexico to Canada, at the time of the American Revolution and consider its impact on the history of both Native America and the burgeoning United States. One OPI Renewal Unit is available by completing this form by Monday, September 28, 11:59 p.m. Late submissions will not be accepted.


 

  

Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Best of, Middle School 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 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.

 

Thursday, September 3, 2020

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 RonanWe 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 ResourcesRegister (and provide feedback to help shape the session) here.

 

 

Tuesday, September 1, 2020

What I Learned on My Summer Vacation

Just kidding--about the summer vacation, that is. (Darn COVID!) But I did learn stuff. 

We had two great sessions in August featuring Colleen Call Smith of the National Museum of the American Indian and Professor Sam Wineburg of the Stanford History Education Group.

Colleen Call Smith introduced us to lesson plans at Native Knowledge 360º, with a deeper dive into the lesson "Northern Plains History and Cultures: How Do Native People and Nations Experience Belonging?"  One of my takeaways from the session is how easy it is to mine the amazing material they've made accessible to add more and varied voices into our lesson plans--even if you can't incorporate an entire lesson plan.

 Sam Wineburg focused on Reading Like a Historian resources from the Stanford History Education Group and his new project Civic Online Reasoning. The biggest takeaway for most of us (based on the evaluations) was the idea of "reading laterally," a way to check to veracity of information on the web. Sam provided us with a handout of "Digital Hacks" for checking the reliability of websites and a reading list. He also announced that MIT EdX is offering a free online course based SHEG's work called "Sorting Truth from Fiction: Civic Online Reasoning." The four week class, which begins September 15,  is free and you can get a verified certificate of completion for $49. It looks great! Here are the units:

 Unit 1: Search Like a Fact Checker

Unit 2: The Two Big Fact Checker Moves: Lateral Reading & Click Restraint

Unit 3: Evaluating Different Types of Evidence

Unit 4: Adapting Civic Online Reasoning

Another really fun thing I did this summer was meet with a small group for a "Google Classroom and Montana History" course and with our "Teacher Leaders in Montana History." One thing that came out of those meetings is the Teaching Montana History Facebook group. This private group is a place for teachers (YOU!) to share resources with one another. Folks can post files as well as simply post to the group.  If you are a Facebooker, I hope you'll consider joining and participating.

During these classes, everyone expressed interest in continuing to gather--even virtually--so we are going to host online professional development meet-ups every third Tuesday of the month (except December). The first session, on September 15, from 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m., will be an introduction to Montana history resources. You can register here. We'll be offering renewal units to attendees.

Finally, the Montana Office of Public Instruction's Indian Education for All unit is hosting a free six-session live webinar series exploring the Essential Understandings regarding Montana Indians (EUs). Participants are encouraged to attend all six sessions to gain familiarity with each of the EUs; explore practical classroom integration of IEFA; engage in meaningful live discussions; build community and share resources; and earn renewal units (two per session.) The sessions will be on Wednesdays, 4:00-5:30 p.m., September 9, 23, 30, October 14, 28, and November 4. Register here or contact Jennifer Stadum for more information. 

Finally, don't forget to join us for the First (and hopefully last) Virtual and 47th Annual Montana History Conference. Happening every Thursday and some Saturdays in September (and continuing into October too).


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