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, February 6, 2025

Student Opportunities plus Place-Based Learning and Money for Field Trips

 

World of 8 billion Student Video Contest

The World of 8 Billion student video contest brings technology and creativity into middle and high school classes. Particularly appropriate for world geography/world culture classes, the contest challenges students to create a short video connecting world population growth to one of three global challenges: Child Wellbeing, Rainforest Ecosystems, and Sanitation. 80+ cash prizes will be awarded, and participating teachers will receive free curriculum resources. The deadline for submissions is March 5, 2025

Gilder Lehrman Student Advisory Council

The Gilder Lehrman Institute is looking for a few high-achieving middle or high school students (grades 8-12) to join its Student Advisory Council. The council meets on the second Saturday of each month at 1 p.m. ET. During each meeting, students provide valuable feedback on the Institute’s programs and materials, helping the Institute refine its outreach with the needs of young people in mind. Students are also educated about a critical document in American History from a curator and will hear presentations from guest speakers or fellow members of the SAC. Learn more and find a link to apply. Note: Even though the website says applications were due in October, they are still looking for (at least one) Montana representative, so encourage your students to apply!

Montana Students on the Land Travel Grants

Glacier National Park and the Montana Environmental Education Association is offering $300 grants for fieldtrips to public and tribal lands across Montana. 

How to Apply for a grant:

To apply for a grant, complete a 2024-25 Montana Students on the Land Travel Grant Application. Grant applications will be reviewed on a monthly basis and continued to be awarded as long as funds are available.

Field trips must take place by June 1, 2025. Applicants must indicate that their trip will visit a public land or tribal land site supported by the Open Outdoors for Kids Grant Program. Educators who receive grant awards are required to complete a post-visit report after their field trip that includes a field trip photo.

Preference will be given to applicants that:

  • Describe in their applications how they will implement a “three aspect” project that includes a pre-visit lesson, the field day, and post visit elements. (Ex. Plan to include interpretative and/or educational programs at public lands sites.)
  • Hold Title 1 school classification during the 2024-25 school year (if the applicant is school-based)
  • Have a majority of fourth graders in their classroom/group.
  • Originate from underrepresented geographic areas across the state.

You can find answers to commonly asked questions on their FAQ sheet. If you have other questions please contact glac_education@nps.gov.

Teaching with Historic Places

Don't forget to register to attend Teaching with Historic Places, with Ron Buck and Jennifer Hall on February 11, from 4:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m. Learn tips for making fieldtrips more meaningful and why and how to incorporate place-based learning into your curriculum. 

Bell Ringers to Encourage Historical Thinking

 My colleague Melissa Hibbard shared this interesting article from Edutopia about using bell ringers in middle and high school classes to encourage historical thinking

The point of the article is well taken. Sometimes it's really hard to balance content coverage with teaching social studies skills and historical thinking. But to meet the standards and to help students become critical thinkers who actively engage with history, these skills need to be explicitly taught and practiced. 

The skills include:

  • Sourcing
  • Corroboration
  • Contextualization
  • Use of Evidence
  • Close reading

The article has some good suggestions and is worth checking out. I'd also recommend spending some time on the website of the Digital Inquiry Group (formerly Stanford History Education Group.)  They have over 140 examples of what they call History Assessments of Thinking (HATs), "easy-to-use assessments that measure students' historical thinking." And they have them divided by skill as well as by era/topic. Using HATs throughout the year is a great way to measure student growth with specific historical thinking skills.

Also on their site are Reading Like a Historian Lessons, that engage students in historical inquiries that teach them "how to investigate historical questions by employing reading strategies such as sourcing, contextualizing, corroborating, and close reading."  

I also like their printable posters. My favorite is their Historical Thinking Chart, but they also have posters that focus on specific skills: Close Reading, Sourcing, Contextualization, and Corroboration

To access any of the Digital Inquiry Group's material, you need to register, but it's free and it would be well worth it even if it weren't. If I taught world or U.S. history in high school, or even eighth grade, I'd be very tempted to ditch the textbook and base my entire class around their lessons. In fact, this is what Melissa did when she taught eleventh and eighth grade U.S. History. At the very least, it's worth trying to incorporate at least one Reading Like a Historian Lesson and one HAT per unit.

P.S. If you teach media literacy, the Digital Inquiry Group also has you covered. Their Civic Online Reasoning materials are designed to teach students how to evaluate online information.

P.P.S. Don't forget to register for our upcoming PD, Teaching with Historic Places, February 11, 4:30-5:30 p.m., and earn one OPI renewal unit.

 

  

Monday, February 3, 2025

Curriculum Collections and Classroom Toolkit

 Colleague Melissa Hibbard sent me a link to Curriculum Collections, which was created by the Philadelphia Writing Project to support "civically engaged argument writing with primary sources." I was intrigued by some of their collections, including one that focused on debates over monuments, memorials, and public memory; one on sports mascots; and one on museums, artifacts, and repatriation--all of which are highly relevant to Montana history and/or IEFA.

But mostly I was excited by their teacher tools, many of which come from Teacher Toolkit. Some are recognizable. For example, Classroom Mingle is what I've heard referred to as a "tea party" and is one of my favorite activities. Creating an Atwoodian Table looks to be a cousin of "Circle of Viewpoints" and I think could be very useful in getting students to consider multiple points of view. Others were less familiar, including Accountable Discussions, which use sentence stem cards like "I believe___ because" to get students in the practice of providing evidence for their opinions. 

Happy exploring! 

P.S. Don't forget to register to attend Teaching with Historic Places, with Ron Buck and Jennifer Hall on February 11, from 4:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m. Learn tips for making fieldtrips more meaningful and why and how to incorporate place-based learning into your curriculum.