Day 3, MYP Humanities (Individuals and Societies) Workshop

Posted on July 2, 2014 by admin

The last day of the workshop. The group has gelled together well and we now all know where to get the best coffee and how to find our way around. I get so much value out of speaking to other teachers, find out what they do and how they do it.

In this session we had some very useful conversations about different ways of reporting. We compared different reporting software and ways of writing reports.

In the morning Danielle Veilleux came along, she is the IB MYP curriculum and assessment manager for arts, individuals and societies and MYP Projects.

We looked at a sample of student work, marked it and then standardised our results. I must say the Teacher Support Material is very useful. You can find it on the OCC, under “general comments”.

MYP projects & service

Community project is optional, but compulsory if you stop in MYP 4.
Community project is very useful to feed into the MYP Personal Project though.

Continue reading “Day 3, MYP Humanities (Individuals and Societies) Workshop”

Day 2, MYP Humanities (Individuals and Societies) Workshop

Posted on July 1, 2014 by admin

Change management

The day started with a key note address by Robert Harrison, Curriculum Manager for Continuum Development. He addressed challenges and opportunities for change management in schools; very timely since the MYP represents a huge change in everything we do at our school. Continue reading “Day 2, MYP Humanities (Individuals and Societies) Workshop”

Lynn Erickson: Concept Based Learning

Posted on May 24, 2014 by admin

Causes of WW2, Hexagons!

Posted on May 19, 2014 by admin

Hexagons are better than circles or squares because hexagons fit together in many ways. Much has been written about Hexagon Learning, and this activity is my interpretation of it. I have used it twice in my classes and both times have been very successful. The best thing about this activity is that it gets students discussing and arguing about the Causes of World War 2. They have to come to an agreement about how to arrange the hexagons and because the possibilities are endless, many different versions will arise.

Below are three Word Files. I hope they speak for themselves.

Continue reading “Causes of WW2, Hexagons!”

Recognizing and Addressing the Barriers to Adolescents’ “Reading Like Historians”

Posted on April 25, 2014 by admin

I believe that every History teacher should read Professor Jeffery Nokes’ well-written paper on “Recognizing and Addressing the Barriers to Adolescents’
“Reading Like Historians”. He makes a very strong argument for creating a learning and questioning culture that is more like the actual discipline of History, rather than just uncritically rote learning and accepting what is in a textbook. Nokes’ research is firmly rooted in real classroom practice, which makes it all the more powerful and easier to apply practically.

Below you will find my highlighted sections and summary of the article. There is also a very clear overview table that lists the four barriers to “Reading like a Historian” and some suggestions as to how to overcome these barriers.

Some resources:

http://teachinghistory.org/
A blog post about ‘ahistorical thinking’
http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/why/
http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/high-school-teachers/807
http://www.historymatters.group.shef.ac.uk/
http://www.thinkinghistory.co.uk/index.php
Great reading: http://www.criticalthinking.org/files/historical%20thinking.pdf
Using the textbook as A source, not THE source. Here are some guided questions for students while reading A textbook and here are some ways to challenge the textbook, created by Stanford University.
Nokes’ book: Building Students’ Historical Literacies: Learning to Read and Reason with Historical Texts and Evidence

Continue reading “Recognizing and Addressing the Barriers to Adolescents’ “Reading Like Historians””

Some Brain Teasers

Posted on April 1, 2014 by admin

I am sure these brain teasers will come in handy in some class at some point. The key is given too. Let your mind go and use your creative thinking skills. Good Luck.

(Generated using this site: http://worksheets.theteacherscorner.net/make-your-own/brain-teasers/)

Evernote in education

Posted on March 8, 2014 by admin

Today I learnt about Evernote. I have been using it on and off for a while, but I was aware that I was not using its full functionality. So I attended a free #evernotemeetup, organised by Bec Spink. I came away with many new ideas and I feel inspired to organise myself better. I look forward to using Evernote in the classroom and in my personal life.

Ways to use Evernote in the classroom:

Create a notebook for each student, keep track of all notes and correspondence etc
As a digital portfolio, take photos and upload students’ work
Students upload their homework to a shared notebook
Work with teachers on projects
Students can use Evernote for research projects
Perfect iPad integration, kids organise their own schoolwork in Evernote
See this site: http://evernote.com/teachers/

Using Evernote in Personal / Professional life:

Scan paper or take photos of documents. Live paperless. You can use the inbuilt Evernote Document Camera or a purpose built scanner apps (Info here)
Tag every note and use it to organise your tasks. Great ideas here: http://www.thesecretweapon.org/

I know I’m only scratching the surface with this powerful tool, I’ll share more when I discover more.

Below is my overview of the tweets sent during the Evernote meetup: Continue reading “Evernote in education”

Histedchat 12/02/14: A succesful History classroom

Posted on February 12, 2014 by admin

This was the first night of #histedchat for 2014. We had many participants and some great discussions.

The questions were as follows:

Time went so fast that we skipped Q4, pity really, because I’m genuinly interested in what other history teachers hang on their walls. Might be something for a future chat.

Below you find all the Tweets sent in the Histedchat hour. I did try to make a Storify but that site just never ceases to frustrate me. Hard to get all the tweets in, many double ups, glitchy site… the annoyances just never stop. I “harvested” the tweets below by copying and pasting them from Tweetchat, which is a live site that shows all tweets in a certain hast tag. I hope you find the Tweets easy to read and interesting. See you all in #histedchat in two weeks. Continue reading “Histedchat 12/02/14: A succesful History classroom”

Colorized Photos, Ghosts of History

Posted on January 18, 2014 by admin

I see more and more amazing examples of “colorized” (You have to use the US spelling to get more results on Google) photos and “ghosts of history” photos. New technology is really bringing history to life. Look at these two photos:

The original, from Reddit. The comments at the bottom of the Reddit stream are worth reading.

The “Ghost of History” version, combining the old and new version: (see Reddit comments here) Continue reading “Colorized Photos, Ghosts of History”

Historians on World War 1, the debate goes on

Posted on January 4, 2014 by admin

Conservative politician Michael Gove, UK’s Secretary of Education

It promises to be a great year for World War One Historiography. In the first week of 2014 UK’s Tory Secretary of Education Michael Gove started a heated debate about the way the centenary of WW1 should be commemorated. Gove attacked the “Left-wing” and “the Blackadder” interpretations WW1. Twitter erupted in response and soon many respected historians weighed in on the debate. I found all of these viewpoints fascinating so I collected some of the recent articles and summarised them. Below you will find key excerpts of articles by Richard Evans, Gary Sheffield and Nigel Birrar. I outlined book reviews of Christopher Clark, Sean McMeekin and Margaret McMillan and there is a great article by History teacher John Blake. I included an old interview (YouTube) with Niall Ferguson on his book “The Pity of War” and there is a fantastic Twitter discussion between History teacher Russel Tarr and Historians Simon Schama, Tom Holland and Gary Sheffield.

It is vital for any society to discuss historical interpretations so we should be thankful to Michael Gove for igniting this debate. It also highlights the importance of good History teachers, they should present students with different viewpoints and let them arrive at their own well-informed and well-substantiated conclusions.

‘History: the best debates and the best arguments’ #historyteacher #histedchat http://t.co/YXMq9Ce7bc

Download a Word version of the WW1 historiography dinner party. The sheet contains student tasks and all information in this post.

Continue reading “Historians on World War 1, the debate goes on”

ThinkEdu Blog

Thinking, Learning, Teaching by @vanweringh

Category: ideas