The theme of my recent Harlem Renaissance unit was "Finding Your Own Voice". The idea was that my students would be able to wrap their heads around the concept of African-Americans being able to express themselves, if it was more personal and relatable. A couple of days before I presented my 8th graders with material about Harlem itself, I asked them if they had ever been frustrated at not being able to communicate something important - either because someone wouldn't listen to them, or because they couldn't find a way to get their message across. This was something that they could pretty much all relate to. As a homework assignment, I had them fill out a worksheet where they speculated on what kind of art they would make if time, money and talent weren't a restriction. Then I had them call my GoogleVoice account and tell me about it. Here's a compilation of their ideas: I think I may be onto something here. Add Comment A session I presented at last year's Sakai Summer Institute about blogging in the classroom:  Every year, I finish the year with my 8th graders studying the history and geography of New York City to get them ready for their class trip there in June. We visit Central Park, so we study Central Park ahead of time. We spend time in Times Square, so we study that too. We visit the World Trade Center, Chinatown and the Lower East Side, so we study them, as well. One place we visit, that I haven't always devoted enough time to, is Harlem. For the past several years, one of the highlights of our trip has been visiting the Apollo Theater on 125th St. The students get a tour of the theater, hear stories about its history and even perform on stage. It's really memorable. Except that our almost entirely white student population has no context to put any of it into. Yes, we talk about African-American history throughout the year. We watch, discuss and blog about Roots. We discuss Jim Crow, Plessy Vs. Fergusson and segregation. I try really hard to relate how various historical topics - like Immigration or Jacksonian politics relates to African-Americans. But when it comes right down to it, our well-to-do, white students, who live in a homogenous, rural community in New Hampshire don't really have any way to relate to the Black Urban Experience. So, this year, I decided to tackle the Harlem Renaissance. The highlights from this year's 7th Grade Medieval Fair. A session I presented at a conference last summer. 
One of my professional development goals for this three-year, re-certification cycle is to spiral coverage of various Social Studies topics, so that they keep coming up again and again, thus impressing themselves on 7th and 8th grade students, who would rather devote their brain cells to more urgent things, like tacos, cat videos and fart jokes. As part of the notes I gave my 8th graders, while we were studying the Civil War, I covered some of the technological advances during the war, including the introduction of rifles, iron-clad battle ships and the Gatling gun. Because we are a New Hampshire school, I included the use of hot-air balloons by the Union Army. (Most of the notable balloonists of the period were from New Hampshire.) I pointed out that using balloons for observation led almost directly to the use of blimps and dirigibles half a century later in World War One, which led to the use of fighter planes and bombers, which led to modern air warfare. This was all well and good - if a bit over-simplified - but probably didn't make much of an impression on most of my students. Until we ran across this account of the Battle of Fredericksburg while investigating our Mystery Soldier of the 9th New Hampshire Volunteers: 
I like it when stuff like this works out. Here are some of the themes I've discussed with my 8th grade American History class over the past two weeks that are alluded to in the above scene from Episode Six of Roots:
[Note - Id like to point out that at this point, we are a grand total of 41 seconds into this scene.]
Roots comes in for a lot of criticism, and certainly it has its flaws, but for clearly demonstrating a LOT of historical themes in a very efficient and gripping way, it is the best tool in my box. This is the second year that I've had my 7th graders make Medieval-style illuminated manuscripts from their favorite song lyrics. Illuminated Manuscripts from John Fladd on Vimeo. Lessons learned:
 For several years, my 8th grade American History students used to devote a month or so to a project we called the Adopt a Dead Person Project, or as my students called it, "The Dead Guy Thing".
The gist was essentially this: We would take a field trip to three of our town's 100+ cemeteries. Students would find 19th century gravestones that interested them, then each class would choose one person whose grave they had seen to study. I would then spend the next several months collecting as much primary source data about these people from census and probate records, town reports and military pensions. I would present what I had found to the students, and they would do research on aspects of each person's life. For instance, they investigated the death of a railroad brakeman who had been run over by a train or what life was like for a Civil War veteran who had died of tuberculosis. The idea was that when we were done, we'd have compiled a reasonably comprehensive biography of an otherwise obscure historical figure. Over the years however, the project has fallen by the wayside, primarily because of the huge amount of legwork involved on my part. 
Once or twice a year, I have my 8th graders do a Chalk Talk. The goal is to have them think about and discuss knotty philosophical issues from a fresh perspective. As we start our Civil War unit, I like to ask three provocative questions:
This year, my students were very resistant to digging deeply into any of these questions. Q: Is there such a thing as a good war? A: "Yes." "Yes." "I don't know." "Maybe" "Probably" I discovered quickly, that for this group, I needed to frame my questions much more specifically:
A good lesson for me. 
As always, their answers were really interesting, if you compare them to what a Civil War-Era Southerner might have said. | AuthorMr. Fladd is a recognized authority in... er... um... something. CategoriesAll |
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