How to teacher history...

Although I've seen myself faced with challenges as a teacher and rise above it, I'm now teaching a subject that's somewhat new to me, at least in this concentrated form.   

I've minored in history when I was in college, and I've always been interested in history, but one of the issues I'm facing is how to approach social studies.

I spent most of my summer break preparing for the school year.  I went through the textbooks and materials and planned how I would teach social studies.  The week before school began I still didn't feel satisfied with how I was going to go about it all.  I really didn't like the idea of following the book, and Surprise! Surprise! history isn't interesting to all students.

And, to add to the pressure, I also learned that I have a few history buffs in my classes, so now I was worried about meeting their expectations.  I won't lie.  This created more pressure on me than any that I felt from my administrators.

Okay, mine was more of pushing a delete key.

So, that week before school started, I ended up tossing out my plans for the year.  I know.  Crazy!  I found an approach I liked instead that I hadn't heard about before, teaching history backwards.  It immediately made perfect sense!


The first thing I did, after the preliminary first days of school stuff, I had the students create a list of 3-5 issues that concerned them.  The issues could be anything at all.  I had them do this on sticky notes then they placed them on chart paper when they were done.  We then discussed them and created a list from their concerns that we will work from.

Not my real students

The topics consisted of current events in the US and world (It didn't matter which class this was in, they all did this step), and we then categorized the topics as foreign and domestic politics, popculture, economy, and so forth. I then had students do an online survey (google forms or Surveymonkey) about which topics they were interested in researching.  They were then placed into groups based on interest and they researched their topic until where the textbook left off (2007-2008).  

Now here's the reflection piece.  The group work went well, although some of the groups were way too big.  I knew how to deal with the slackers, and the projects came out really well, but when I look back on this activity, there are definite changes I want to make for next year.  

I should have had them focus more on the issues and researched how the issues got to that point.  For example, the battles going on between Israel and Palestine.  I could have had students who chose this topic focus on what got these two countries to this point.  This would have brought them quite a ways back in history.  If it was in a US history class, then they could have had to find why it matters to Americans.  In geography class, I could have had them look into how the political boundaries changed in time, and why this area of land is fought over so much.

What are my plans for the future?  Well, I've been on harvest break (potato harvest in our area) and we're back to school next week.  I've spent a good part of our break reflecting and trying to find a way to continue from here.

My plans for next week are basically to review what we were covering before break, and give a summative assessment.  Then my next step is to go in the direction I described above.  Have students discuss what has been going on in the US and the world while we were out.  This will get those out of the loop up to speed, and those in the know the opportunity to enlighten their peers.  Then they'll get the opportunity to research what's going on more deeply in small groups, if not in pairs.  Definitely no more than 3 in a group.

If any of you out there have any suggestions or feedback, I'd be happy to read it.  Don't forget to follow my page.