Reflecting & Storytelling About Teaching
Right now I’m barreling into the year with a project I’m beyond excited about. It asks students to choose a current issue in the news and then write and film their own spoken word poem about it. This spoken word poetry project feels unusual (okay, scary) to me in a number of ways… Continue reading
Participation has always been one of the most difficult things to assess and encourage for my 8th grade history students. Sometimes the quietest students in discussion are the most devoted in their writing, and sometimes the most vocal students are not aware… Continue reading
Three Broadway musicals from throughout the 1970s – Follies, A Chorus Line, and Annie – in the intentions of their creators and actors, in the reception by critics and audiences, and in the messages of the book and music themselves – reflected larger social issues of the time… Continue reading
One of my favorite activities to help students understand the richness of the news is also one of the simplest. I often do it at the beginning of the year, but you could do it anytime you wanted students to think more deeply… Continue reading
On Wednesday my 8th grade U.S. history students slammed into class, some distraught and some delighted after hearing the election results from the night before… Continue reading
Reading History Class Revisited in the summer made me really miss the middle schoolers who fill my classroom each fall. On each page, Jody Passanisi shows a deep knowledge and affection for these students’ minds and hearts. Along the way she offers… Continue reading
Strangely, it has been a decade since I’ve asked my history students to do a hand-drawn concept map, a graphical representation of connections between their ideas. Part of the reason is that… Continue reading
Here are six approaches – most of which can be pulled out on the fly – that have made my classroom slightly more civilized than it might otherwise have been… Continue reading
In a never-ending search to infuse garlic and oregano into the plain marinara sauce of textbook history, sometimes I ask students to read a scholarly journal article or a chapter of a popular history book… Continue reading
For adults who love history, the spark of the past arrives not in packaged textbook bites but in zingers that we can’t forget. We see a historical reference in the newspaper and can’t wait to share it with our breakfast table companions – children, partners, dogs, cats… Continue reading
Sarah Cooper 