IEFA PD

 Looking to improve your understanding of IEFA? The Western Montana Professional Learning Collaborative offers a great array of self-paced online courses, Current Events in Indian Country, Art and Literature IEFA Integration (K-5), Plants in Montana Native Cultures, and American Indian Sovereignty. You can find information about these and other courses as well as cost and links to register on the WMPLC website. 

Cool Stuff on the Internet (IEFA Edition)

When I see things that interest me--and that I think might interest you--I save the links until I have a "post's worth"--however many that is. Here are a few things I've seen relating to Indian Education for All that I thought were worth sharing. 

• I had never heard of the 1861 Bear River Massacre until I read this Washington Post article: Bear River Massacre killed 350 Northwestern Shoshone Indians, worst in U.S. history.
• The curriculum resources from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition look really good. Have you used them?
• The Smithsonian published this article on "A Spectacular Collection of Native American Quilts."
• This article from the Pew Charitable Trust provided food for thought: "Growing Number of Cities Weigh Tribal Land Acknowledgements."  

 

Have you read anything that's worth sharing? Send it along or post it in the Teaching Montana History Facebook Group.

 And speaking of sharing, teachers are going to be sharing their favorite strategies to engage students at our November 10 Professional Development: Hooks! (online from 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.) Last year’s session on hooks was the overwhelming crowd favorite, so we thought we’d do it again. Bring your best strategies for engaging students to share and/or come to learn what has worked in your colleagues’ classrooms. Register here before November 9 to receive a link to the Zoom meeting.

 

Bell Ringers

I'm sure many of you are way ahead of me in appreciating and using material from Matt Miller's Ditch that Textbook, like this Yelp Review template (for reviewing a place as a historical character), or one of these 20 ideas for exit tickets, which include

• The class sketchnote: At the end of class, ask students to draw, doodle, diagram, etc. a part of the lesson they remembered on the whiteboard/chalkboard at the front of class. Seeing everyone’s responses in one place is a fun visual experience. Plus, when you see lots of similar responses — or a lack of certain responses! — it can show you what stuck and what didn’t.
• The sticky note mosaic: Grab a few pads of sticky notes of different colors. Tell students what each color stands for: something that know for sure, something they’re still unclear on, something they need to tell the teacher, etc. Stick the sticky notes on the board randomly or in groups as they leave. The colors will help you sort them quickly.

A lot of Matt Miller's ideas sound really great (if you have a favorite, let me know). I was particularly taken with Caption This, the very first item on his list of "20 digital bell ringer activities to kickstart class." 

Per the Ditch that Textbook, the activity works because it forces students to make inferences and think about perspective. It's also fun!  

I was so taken with it that I made a few for Montana history--including one for Lewis and Clark, two for the fur trade, one for gold mining, one for the Tenth Cavalry, one for homesteading, and one for logging.

These were easy to do using Ditch That Textbook's template--and if you don't want to have your students working online, you can simply print out the slides. Feel free to use the ones I created--and if you create any others around a Montana history theme, send them to me and I'll add them to this shared folder so everyone can access them.

 

Use sources to gather evidence to develop and refine claims (SS.K12.4) and communicate conclusions (SS.K12.5) with this clever assignment

Carrie Sorensen who teaches Montana history to middle school students in Fortine designed a really ingenious way for her students to communicate their understanding of the forces set loose during the War of the Copper kings and the fight for money, ideology, and power at the turn of the century. She asked her students to pick a character (The Company, a miner, a rancher, a populist, William Clark, Marcus Daly, Augustus Heinze, or William Hogan), decide whether their character was a hero or a villain, and create a comic book telling their story using their class notes and information they gleaned from the Montana: Stories of the Land textbook. Here's a copy of her instructions.  

I love this assignment not only for its creativity, but because creating comic books forces students to summarize and synthesize--both important skills to learn. 

Some time back, Jennifer Graham of Philipsburg told me that she had her students show what they knew through a War of the Copper Kings twitter fight, another great possibility for studying this combative era! 

Do you have a great strategy or lesson that you'd like to share? Feel free to email me and/or join our November 10 online PD from 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. on "Hooks!" during which we'll ask folks share their best strategies for engaging students. Find a link to register here: https://mhs.mt.gov/education/OnlineProDevelop. 

 

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

  

Footlockers Are Back!

The Society's Footlocker program offers thematic "traveling trunks" focused on a wide variety of topics, from archaeology to World War II. Each footlocker is filled with reproductions of clothing, tools, everyday objects, maps, photographs, documents. In addition, each footlocker user guide includes historical narratives for educators and students, lesson plans (many of which do not require material from the footlockers), and Amazing Montanan biographies. We've also just finished aligning all of the lesson plans included in the user guides to the new Montana social studies standards.   

We make footlockers available to Montana educators for two weeks at a time at no charge. However, schools are responsible for the cost of shipping the footlocker to the next venue via United Parcel Service (UPS) or the United States Postal Service (USPS). Can't afford shipping (or the footlocker you want is already reserved for the time you want it)? Many of the lessons in the User Guides can be completed without ordering the footlocker, and our newer footlockers have the two-dimensional artifacts (photos, posters, etc.) available as PowerPoints that you can download.  

• Learn more about the program and how to order a footlocker here. 
• Find a list of titles and links to the user guides and standards alignment here. 

 And speaking of standards alignment--tomorrow is the last day to register for our October 13 online professional development: Diving into the New Social Studies Standards.  We'll be meeting from 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.. Attendees will receive one OPI renewal unit. Register here.

See you in Great Falls!

I just finished looking over the line-up for both the Montana Council on Social Studies and the Montana Council for History and Civics Education and am more excited than ever for the MFPE Educators Conference in Great Falls, October 21-22, 2021.

For me the highlights are Little Shell Chairman Gerald Gray's talk "Little Shell and Our Fight for Federal Recognition" at 10:00 AM on Friday, the roundtable on Social Studies Issues on Thursday at noon, and all the sessions on implementing the new social studies standards. I'm also looking forward to presenting on our new fourth-grade curriculum (1:00 PM on Thursday) and having one-on-one conversations in the exhibit hall.   

Although I didn't include them in the list below, Lewis and Clark enthusiasts will be pleased that there are a number of Lewis and Clark-related sessions (to find them type Lewis and Clark into a key word search).  

Read on to whet your appetite, and if you will be in Great Falls, I hope you'll come see us at our booth in the exhibit hall.  

Thursday, October 21, 2021

8:00 - 8:50 AM

• C3 Framework and integrating the new MT SS Standards, Janna Lind and Cheyenne Aldrich, CMR 217
• Heart Mountain Japanese Relocation Center, Armand Lohof, CMR 215

9:00 - 10:50 AM

• New and Improved Montana Memory Project, Jennifer Birnel, CMR 102

10:00 - 11:50 AM

• Responsible teaching of the Holocaust, Carol Shipley, CMR 217

11:00 - 11:50 AM

• (Virtual) Social Studies Update! Overview of 5 New Montana Content Standards, Stephanie Swigart, Michelle McCarthy, and Colet Bartow
• Where I AM: Reading and Writing About Place, Noel Osterman, CMR 221
• MCHCE Business Meeting, CMR 212

12:00 - 12:50 PM

• Social Studies Issues, Bruce Wendt and Janna Lind, CMR 215

1:00 - 1:50 PM  

• (Virtual) Continuity and Change in the History of Yellowstone National Park, Michael Breis, MFPE EDCON 7
• Does "We the People" Include Me?, Sandra Oldendorf, CMR 216
• New Standards, No Problem: Resources for 4th Grade Social Studies, Martha Kohl, CMR 217

2:00 - 2:50 PM

• How the IEFA Essential Understandings fit in an AP curriculum, Cheyenne Aldrich and Janna Lind, CMR 215
• Teaching Social Studies in the Remote Classroom, Alex Rosenleaf, CMR 213

3:00 - 3:50 PM

• Connections of history/literature: Take One, Ken Egan, Jr. and Bruce Wendt, CMR 216
• Bringing History Alive for Children!, Jodi Delaney, CMR 212

4:00 - 4:50 PM

• Connections of history/literature: Take Two, Ken Egan, Jr. and Bruce Wendt, CMR 216
• Russell for Learning: Educational Resources from the C.M. Russell Museum, Melissa Werber, C.M. Russell Museum
• Infusing Indigenous/Young Adult Literature into our Classrooms, Rebecca Chatham, CMR 207

Friday, October 22, 2021

8:00 - 8:50 AM  

• (Virtual) Applying MT Social Studies to the Inquiry Design Model, Hailey Hancock, MFPE EDCON 1

9:00 - 9:50 AM  

• Parks and Trees in Great Falls, Montana’s Early Development, 1883-1916, Troy Hallsell, CMR 216

10:00 - 10:50 AM

• Little Shell and Our Fight for Federal Recognition, Gerald Gray, AUDITORIUM
• (Virtual) Forward Montana presents: The Montana State Budget System Template, McKeely Shannon, MFPE EDCON 7

11:00 - 11:50 AM

• IEFA Resources to Support the New Social Studies Standards, Mike Jetty, CMR 216

12:00 - 12:50 PM

• MCSS Business Meeting, CMR 217

1:00 - 1:50 PM  

• (Virtual) Brave Conversations in the Social Studies Classroom: Strategies and Standards, Hailey Hancock, MFPE EDCON 1

2:00 - 2:50 PM  

• Mesh C3 with New Social Studies Curriculum, Bruce Wendt, CMR 217

 

Social Studies Skills, Continued

Last week I introduced a new periodic series on resources to teach the new social studies standards with post on developing questions. This week, I'm going to focus on planning inquiries and comparing and evaluating sources for relevance, perspective, and accuracy.  

Skill #2 (SS.K12.2): Plan Inquiries 

I bet most of you already work with students to conduct inquiries--from posters on the different tribes of Montana and "living statues/wax museums" in elementary grades to more in-depth research projects in middle and high school.   

To reassure yourself that you've been doing inquiry all along (or for a quick introduction to the idea) check out Edutopia's  "What the Heck Is Inquiry-Based Learning".   

Unless you, as the teacher, provide the guiding question, the first step is developing a research question. I covered developing questions pretty thoroughly in my email last week, but I forgot to mention resources from Teachinghistory.org that focus specifically on helping students develop research questions.  

The next steps typically include other skills listed in the standards (compare and evaluate sources for relevance, perspective, and accuracy; use sources to gather evidence to develop and refine claims; and communicate conclusions). That's why inquiry is so powerful!

National Geographic has educator resources to support implementing the Geo-Inquiry Process into your classroom. 

The Stanford History Education Group creates some of the smartest, best curricular material out there. Designed for middle and high school students, their Reading Like a Historian lessons ask students to engage in a historical inquiry by analyzing primary sources from different points of view to answer a guiding question. To access their lessons--over 150 of them--you have to register, but registration is free. If you teach middle or high school, and don't use SHEG's resources, I encourage you to take a moment and browse their site. You'll like what you see. 

For middle and high school classes, National History Day is a natural way to integrate inquiry.  Montana's contest is on hiatus this year, but that doesn't mean that you can't use NHD resources in your classroom to help students plan inquiries. Use these links to find NHD's Middle School Teacher Resources booklet and their two part high school booklet (Part 1 and Part 2).  

Do you have a favorite resource for helping students plan inquiries? If so, please share! And stay tuned for the next installment on the social studies standards.  

P.S. Don't forget to sign up for our next online PD,  October 13, from 4-5: "Diving into the New Social Studies Standards." Register here before October 12 to receive a link to the Zoom meeting.