Best of, Middle School Edition

Two weeks ago, I shared elementary teachers' favorite lessons and strategies--collected during Teaching Montana History's annual year-end survey. Here are your middle school colleagues' answers to the request:

• "Describe the best Montana history or IEFA lesson or project or resource you taught this year--the one you will make time for next year no matter what" and
• "Describe a great teaching strategy that you'll be incorporating into next year's classes."

Also find notes from me in brackets.

Dylan Huisken of Bonner wrote: "Blood on the Marias Lesson by MTHS. It requires students to do research, consider the importance of perspective, identify themes, and consider narrative/audience. There is also a deeply human aspect to this lesson, it requires students sit up a little and pay close attention and acknowledging the gravity of the lesson and their duty as historians.

Dylan also shared this strategy: For many MTHS primary sources, or any primary source, I use gallery walks. This works great with the Charles Russell lesson plan where I can display his art, but also with quotes or images about a Montana topic. For example, for homesteading I can have quotes from Hattie Big Sky, pictures of Montana farms/homesteaders, natural disaster descriptions, and other primary sources about the homesteading experience. Each different source is printed on a single sheet of paper with a number. Students rotate to different stations with a partner and a clip board and analyze a question that goes with the source, or come up with questions on their own. This is a great strategy when I want to teach the abolitionist movement because there are SO many authors I want my students to read but can't cram them all in a month. I can also break up the texts/quotes with images, and this makes it easy to differentiate for students on IEPS. So if you want students to get snippets of major works, themes, or authors, this is a good strategy.

Charlie Brown of Fairfield wrote: "I love the Atlatl project. It is fun watching the kids try and throw the dart." [See our Making an Atlatl lesson.]

Jim Martin wrote that next year he'll be incorporating Socratic Seminars and that he'd like to have a Socratic Seminar debating Frank Little and the IWW's actions. 

Michelle Meyer from Victor wrote: "I have found that I am using more stop and jots to prompt thinking. These are helpful for those that want to answer questions but need a few seconds to compose their thoughts. This small step has made discussions so much more valuable and rich." 

Mary Zuchowski from Frazer teaches Christmas Menorahs:How a Town Fought Hate, [The picture book is based on a 1993 episode in Billings. After members of a hate group threw a rock through a Jewish family's window during Hanukkah, the community organized in opposition. Over 10,000 Billings residents displayed pictures of menorahs in their windows as an expression of solidarity with their Jewish neighbors. The event sparked a larger movement called Not in Our Town.] Mary got the book and lesson from the Montana Jewish Project, who will be giving books away again this year. She says: "It was a great way to go into Christmas break as well as incorporating some Montana history into all of my classes."

These teachers shared anonymously:

Hands on gold panning [Lesson 3 of our mining footlocker has instructions for doing this in your classroom]. 

I made a digital escape room that included the montanaplacenames.org site [now on the Montana History Portal] and information on all the tribes in our state. It was very in depth and took hours for students to complete in multiple chunks.

Native Knowledge 360 continues to be a fantastic resource. I love all of the online lessons because of the interactive multimodal learning design. Some of the lessons that stand out to me are "The Fish Wars" & "Why do the foods we eat matter?". These lessons state for grades 9-12; however, I have used them in my K-8 one-room classroom. As well, this is such a powerful short video from NPR that I use every year in the classroom and make sure I watch is several times a year, too: Why Treaties Matter. 

"Poems for Two Voices". I turned the worksheets into a manipulative PowerPoint and then had them record themselves reading their poems with a partner. Kids remembered it and referenced throughout the year (using vocab from the EUs!.) It was great.