Reminder that the monthly drawing for a $25 gift card is still going on for June and will include responses to the May blog as well. All you have to do to get your name in the drawing is post a response to any of the May or June blogs. You don't have to be a member of NCCS to respond. Gift cards are from your choice of: Publix, Walmart, Olive Garden-Red Lobster, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon.
Geography is my favorite subject to teach and to learn. Enthusiasm is high for this subject. As usual for one discussing one's favorite subject, I don't see how you can live without it. Bear with my joy here.
I believe a student should be learning geography almost every year. It is one of the most practical of subjects. Understanding the world involves knowing geography. If I don't know the difference between a state and a country, how can I possibly understand political, cultural, and economic issues? If I believe that Greece is one of the states of the US, as I heard someone say recently, am I going to panic hearing that Greece is going bankrupt? And even if it isn't a state, shouldn't I still be concerned? Geography affects how you dress, how your home is built, what you eat, how you travel, and many other basic everyday functions.
Kindergarten is a great time to begin learning geography. I once wrote a Kindergarten and First Grade geography curriculum that focused on two aspects of this subject. The first was how physical geography affects cultural geography. The second was on how geography affects mission activities. It was even used in the classroom by teachers who found it to be a great program, even though it had hand-drawn activity pages and I'm not that much of an artist.
Geography can first be taught using one's own life. Children can learn about the climate of their area by keeping a chart of weather each day. (This also helps in the science sense.) The parent can help them make the connection between the weather and how we dress and what we do because of the weather that day. We can go to local farmers' markets and see locally produced fruits and vegetables and then visit a grocery store and talk about how things that are non-native to our area are going to be more costly to buy because of the greater amount of gasoline and other shipping costs. Florida oranges in orange season will be cheaper than Chilean oranges in Chilean orange season, which is at the opposite time of year.
The clothes I wear today are chosen because of the weather. I chose light-weight clothing such as slacks and short-sleeved shirt that allows air to flow to keep cool but not so light as to make me cold indoors in air conditioning. If I were going to be outside today for more than a few minutes at a time, I would probably have chosen shorts, a light colored shirt and a long-sleeved white shirt to keep the sun off my arms and neck. Those choices have to do with geography.
When I lived in Texas, where the land was more than pretty flat, we talked about distances in terms of miles. How far was it to grandma's house? 220 miles. How far was it to the grocery store? About 2 and a half miles. The land was flat; the weather was pretty constant. You knew how long that would take you in the car. The road stretched to the horizon. When I lived in the central part of Pennsylvania, all that changed. Central Pennsylvania is mountainous, though they are short ones. When I asked how far away something was, people would say 20 minutes or 3 hours or about 12 minutes. It really took me by surprise. And when I asked, "But how FAR is it?", they'd look at me dumbfounded. Who cared how many miles? Why the difference?
When a place is 10 miles away on the map, it could be flat land or hilly land or mountainous land. Ten miles didn't mean anything. Ten minutes on flat land would get you ten miles; ten minutes in mountainous land might get you only 4 miles, because the straight line distance of ten miles on the map was actually a curvy road that would take your car 20 miles to cover, and the speeds would be changeable depending upon the grade. In winter, you had to add more time, because you'd be driving much slower over slick, icy roads, maybe even with more snow or sleet or ice coming down. Your speed would be much lower, so the time would increase greatly. Being told how much time it would take you was much more practical to what would happen.
There are a number of different types of geography that you should study. Physical geography is the study of the land itself and its climate. It includes the study of the available water and resources. It is the geography you can see from space. Knowing the principles of physical geography will allow you to figure out many political situations and economic situations. It allows you to understand military campaigns more easily. Island nations will need resources from abroad and will usually have both fishing fleets and military fleets. Plains nations will often have vast agricultural areas, so getting food isn't such a problem. High mountains mean one side will usually be more desert-like and one side more lush or even have jungle. They will be a natural border for political divisions. The type of mountain can influence history as well in such events as earthquakes and volcanic activity. Mountains can give military advantage by providing high ground or can be a disadvantage due to the nature of that particular type of mountain. Mountains usually mean coal, gold, silver, and other mineral resources. So knowing the principles of physical geography will enormously enhance one's understanding of the world and the competition between nations.
Cultural geography is the study of how the land and climate have affected everyday choices, such as the available food, the necessary clothing, the shelter types, the transportation system, and even religion and the arts. Certain types of religions are more likely to develop in mountain countries. Certain other types are more likely to develop in desert countries. Think it's a coincidence that Christianity, Islam, and the Jewish faith all developed in desert countries? There's a reason. Study cultural geography and find out. I mean, if you don't have any trees, you probably aren't going to develop a religion based on worshipping trees, right? This kind of study is extremely valuable for those in the church who need to understand cultural geography as they make church decisions about missions. I hate it when television reporters say that the average citizen of the country of Mars only makes $20 a month because it DOESN'T say that "and by the way, it only costs 12 cents to go to the movies, and you can eat an entire meal for less than 15 cents, and the house didn't cost anything, because it was made from wood available to everyone, and no one owns any of the land - you just park where you want. This doesn't mean there is no poverty. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that, unless you know the microeconomics of that country, knowing their salary is pointless. When TV commercials guilt you by saying it takes only 20 cents a day to feed that child, it also means that 20 cents covers most meals for most of the people.
I once lived in a country where the houses had dirt floors. It was an advantage. There was almost no rain in that country, and the floors were packed hard. If water dripped on the floor, it just soaked in. You didn't have to clean it up. The floor was so hard packed that there wasn't even dust from it. It was almost like rock. It retained warms in the winter and was cool in the summer. Yet commercials talked about it to ignorant Americans as "look at these poor people who have no floors." The same principle works with those "houses have no walls." That means it is cooler all year. And they have almost no domestic violence because eveyone knows how you treat your family because everyone will see what you do. Sigh. Off my soapbox. Knowing cultural geography means understanding the beauty and goodness of other cultures and their choices, which may be highly reasonable in their geographic region.
Political geography is the third major area of geographic study. This involves the study of the political divisions {both international and intranational boundaries}, government types, military usages, diplomatic relationships, exports, imports, products, etc. It involves knowing the infrastructures available to a region. Political geography is the most unstable area of geography as nations come and go, and boundaries shift, wars change relationships, and nations progress scientifically, artistically, and economically. Political geography can be the least important of the 3 areas to master, since it will change so much in so little time. For this area of study, it is more important to know how to find the information when you need it: almanacs, resource guides, etc. and what those terms mean so that you can understand a country quickly when you need to do so. For example, if I already know what an oligarchy, a tyranny, a marxist, a communist, a democratic, and a capitalist government are, and I have need of studying the country of Peru, I can look in an almanac, get the current form of government, the GNP, the resources, the population growth rate, educational levels, and a few more factors and if I can locate the country on a map and tell you its physical geography issues, I can pretty much know the current country of Peru ENOUGH to understand some political issue that arose or what issues we might face placing a permanent mission there. I haven't walked a mile in their shoes yet, but I would know the kind of shoes in which I'd be walking.
As said earlier, the study of geography can begin very early with physical and cultural geography. Eating the food of a country, learning how to say some standard phrases, wearing the clothes of that country (made out of paper of course), and drawing maps are easily enjoyed by young children. Take a different country each month. Talk about how far away that country is in terms easily understood. (It would take 40 days of walking ten hours a day to get to that country from our house .) Pray for the leaders. Pray daily for the Christians there to be good testimonies of the Lord. Pray for more workers to teach. Watch a movie from that country or about that country. Visit the country's internet site. Listen to their news on the internet in their own language daily for a month. You'd be surprised how fast the kids go from thinking "that's a bizarre language" to "I almost think I could understand it."
For older kids, there are some really nice programs out there. One I love for grades 7 and up is Runkle's Geography. It is a Saxon-like approach to the principles of physical geography. In the first year, your student will learn all the principles of physical geography with units on how water placement affects life, how mountains affect life, how resources affect life, etc. He or she will also learn to draw by heart maps of each continent, including countries and rivers and mountains. There are other things to memorize as well. It is wonderfully easy to use.
Bob Jones Press has a wonderful high school geography course that focuses the first half of the book on physical geography principles {and you get to create your own nation as you go}and the last half of the book on political and historical geography.
Rod and Staff has a great book on Latin American History and Geography (about half a year of each). Your students will learn about Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America. In the history section, you will learn how the history of the regions has played a tremendous role in the problems they now have as well as the victories they now have. When have you ever heard of the Pacific War, the War of the Triple Alliance, the Cenepa War, the Chaco War, The Thousand Day War, the Rebellion of Tupac Amaru II, Federal War, the Dirty War, the Plantine War, the War of the Confederation, the Gran Colombia-Peru War, the Chilean War, the Argentine War, the Spanish-Portuguese War, or the French-Portuguese War? It's a boy's dream world of whole new wars about which to learn!
Galloping the Globe and the Trail Guide are two series for elementary kids that have great reviews from our parents. I have not used them myself, but I've looked through them and they do a good job.
Another series is Alpha Omega's 3rd grade and 4th grade social studies. In 3rd grade, you learn US geography by focusing on about 8 key types of states (plains, mountain, industrial, etc.). In 4th grade, you focus on world geography, using a trio of physically similar nations in each unit (3 island nations, 3 mountain nations, etc.). These are great fun for the kids IF you include the activities suggested in the teacher's manual, including reading the novels set in each country.
Six items should be in every home studying geography:
• The first is a globe with physical geography prominent. Get one that's bumpy for the mountains. One on a floor stand will not take up limited desk or table space.
• Also, get two 3D maps, one of the world and one of the US. You will be amazed how much history you understand when touching one of these kinds of maps. I'd recommend one of the state of Florida as well, but it isn't worth the cost because it isn't much different from a 2D map of Florida.
• I'd also have Uncle Josh's Outline Map Book by Wiggers. It is a book of outline maps for all states, all regions of the world, and many, many countries of the world. I got my husband to use his saw and cut the pages away from the binding so I could hole-punch them into a notebook for much easier scanning on the printer.
• A Geography Terms Chart, available for about $5 from Geography Matters at http://www.geomatters.com
• Get Eat Your Way Around the World by Arimini for all those cultural foods OR just use the internet to get recipes as you need them.
This is geography. It's my school subject passion. I've already written 2, 350+ words, so now I'll stop. I've got a million ideas I could share about geography for all ages. Invite me to a Mc Soda some day, and I'll share them.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
History and All That Jazz
Reminder that the monthly drawing for a $25 gift card is still going on for June and will include responses to the May blog as well. All you have to do to get your name in the drawing is post a response to any of the May or June blogs. You don't have to be a member of NCCS to respond. Gift cards are from your choice of: Publix, Walmart, Olive Garden-Red Lobster, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon.
To finish off our series on various subject areas, I wanted to talk about social studies. Some people like to call it social sciences, but there is a real difference. Let's look at that difference first.
Social studies is study - discovering facts about something - and it usually occurs in the lower elementary through high school years. Social sciences often cover the same topics but in a different way. Social sciences stress the analytical aspect of the subjects. We learn to take, organize, and analyze the statistical data about man as an individual, man as a member of social groups, man as a member of community, and man in broad ethnic and national groups. It has more of the feel of science, and often involves experiments and surveys and focuses less on surface facts and more on motivations for actions. Interestingly, history is NOT considered a part of the social sciences because one cannot do experiments on past events and then recreate them. History is, therefore, considered a humanities subject for social science people.
Now, we will turn our attention to what is usually taught in schools, social studies. Generally, this means history and geography. Now this will take two blogs, so be prepared.
First, let's look at history. There are a number of ways to teach history. By its nature, history is a chronological subject. That is, one should teach it in time order. That being said and before I lose the unit studies people, let me say that one can study topics in history. To do it well still requires some sort of connection to a time line. That means that your student (or yourself) needs some way to hang the topic in time and space.
I can choose to study clothing as a history element. However, unless I also link that study to dates and places, my student will not know whether pantaloons came before or after George Washington nor will he know why that is important to know. Some clothing styles came into popularity because of odd political, geographical, or social events. Try this link for a fun read. http://www.poloindia.com/historyoftrousers/right_frame.htm
Studying the clothing without studying the events will not help the student truly understand the development of clothing. For example, certain hat styles came about when a popular queen started going bald and began wearing hats to cover her baldness. The people loved her so much that they wanted to copy her hats. So the question should be asked, why was she so popular that people wanted to be like her? The answer would come from studying her policies and her government, the wars into which her country became involved, the economic situation, etc.
Without the chronological study as well, the student is faced with an endless series of facts swirling inside his head. In other words, unit studies without chronology is like teaching history for a Trivial Pursuit game: nothing but unconnected facts that may or may not get you a chip. If you like the unit studies approach, make sure that you incorporate timelines and that your children have a strong basic understanding of history before beginning the study.
Another interesting approach to teaching history involves breaking history into broad categories, such as Old Testament history, Greek history, Roman history, medieval history, etc., and then taking a year to study each. I have to admit, I love the idea of this idea. If I could begin from the beginning with my kids, this would probably be a strong way to do this for the elementary grades. It does require a 4 or 5 or more year commitment to that one style and to homeschooling. It requires you know and don't fear being out of sync for testing for a few years, which isn't a bad thing, unless you worry about where you are all the time. For the upper grades, the multi-year study would not be as good, as you SHOULD then be spending more time looking at history's broad strokes and patterns, making all the dots connect from all the various histories you've studied and trying to understand the complex reasons behind things.
One weakness I have seen in the multi-year approach has to do with the fact that the underpinnings of our current world are anchored in those earliest of times. In this approach to history, those early times are studied at the youngest age when a student is least able to understand the political policies and the writings of those ages. Very few 2nd and 3rd graders can follow Caesar's Gallic Wars, although it is well written and easily followed by a more mature mind. Cicero's writing, pithy pieces and, by the way vastly applicable to today's politics, would not connect with the mind of young children.
What ends up happening is that the students study the curious aspects of Roman culture with brief interludes into the history and military battles; such things as the economics that were driving the military situations and the slavery needed in a society that valued freedom almost as much as Americans did 20 years ago cannot be studied as the mind is not yet ready. The student, and parent, believes he knows Roman history because he knows what they ate, how they dressed, how they built their houses, and how they were transported. He knows how their weapons are used but doesn't have the analytical ability or geographic knowledge yet to understand WHY they are being used.
These cultural facts that cause the students to believe they have studied the history leave them unprepared for dealing with modern world history and American history when they are older. Those histories depend upon an understanding of the older ages' philosophies and policies, things which couldn't be covered at the much younger age. So perhaps there is a major drawback to this approach to history for the young, that of matching mind skills with topics. Does that mean not using this approach? No, it means working this approach so that this weakness is resolved.
Deciding upon an approach to teaching history must include an awareness of the mental development processes within a child. We must also get past our own boredom with relearning something we learned in our childhood and realize that THEY haven't heard it and THEY NEED this material. We must understand that, in early years, children are best equipped to learn vast quantities of facts (dates, places, names, etc.) attached to general themes, such as time placement of the facts. They memorize easily. We do not, and we feel bad that we are asking them to memorize things. So we decide, let's build something instead of memorizing things. Instead, do BOTH! Memorize AS you are building things.
Scripture tells us that one way to teach our children their scriptures is to write them on the doorposts, the walls, our foreheads, whatever is needed to do the memory work. So take that example for your facts work.
Put a list of the ten highest mountains & their locations on the wall next to the toilet. Don't tell them to memorize it. Just put it there. Mention mountains in your conversation. "I've heard about this mountain called Mt. McKinley. I was wondering if it would be a good vacation to go there. What do YOU think? Do you know where it is? No? Hmmm. Okay." Don't tell them to go find out. Yet, sometime soon, the child will come back with the information you wanted them to know. "Mom, I found out that Mt. McKinley is in Alaska." This is called subtle memory work.
However, overt memory work is great as well. Let's come up with ten lists of ten things to know this year, kids. How about the ten largest American cities, the ten highest mountains in the world, the first ten presidents, ten top inventors and what they invented, ten elements from the periodic table, ten great composers & the name of one of their famous pieces, ten great American artists, ten Impressionist painters, ten birds and what they look like, ten vitamins we need, etc. Each month, choose one of the lists and, at the start of the day, just read the list out loud together once. In 3 weeks or less, your child will probably have the list memorized just from reading it out loud. Then the next month, start another list.
Another approach to history is to use good textbooks. Good textbooks are broken into units on specific topics. They give you a broad overview of a time period, and then you have the chance, if you are interested, of doing an in-depth study of a part of that section.
For example, the Bob Jones University Press 4th grade American history text has standard history chapters. I had my children read a chapter on Monday or on Monday and Tuesday (depending upon the length of the chapter), and then we orally did the questions over lunch. On Wednesday, we (sometimes me, sometimes them) picked some topic within the chapter and researched it (sometimes I'd have the books ready ahead of time, sometimes not) on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday was a great day for either choosing another topic for a quicker, one day study, or we might watch a video or build something or go somewhere related to the study or even read about the first topic more.
The textbook allows you to have someone else - the textbook author - do the basic research for you while the teacher's manual will tell you other ideas and projects. I mean, the purpose of studying history is to learn from the past, so do that by not feeling like you must reinvent the wheel by doing all the setup work yourself. Rather, you can allow someone else (an author) to do the grunt work of setting up a time period for you in the textbook. The author also gets to run around looking for the information at libraries, etc., instead of you doing that and wasting gas and energy and irreplacable time. Textbooks can be an extremely easy and interesting way to teach history while making sure you have all the connections in place. Just use the textbook instead of letting it rule you.
Jesse Stuart, a famous Appalachian teacher who did extraordinary things with his students, came to the conclusion after decades of teaching that the student's ability to learn had much more to do with his enthusiasm level regarding the subject than it had to do with the difficulty level of the subject. To go with that, remember that feelings follow actions. If you act angry, you will become angry. If you act like you like something, you may find that you do. Try it as you teach history and geography this year. It will change how much your students enjoy this fabulous subject. Know the approach you choose to use and eliminate its weaknesses; no one way works for everyone, but we DO need to understand the broad picture of what is taking place in our teaching and in our students' learning.
Suggested reading: Jesse Stuart's The Thread That Runs So True
Teaching Geography: see the next blog.
To finish off our series on various subject areas, I wanted to talk about social studies. Some people like to call it social sciences, but there is a real difference. Let's look at that difference first.
Social studies is study - discovering facts about something - and it usually occurs in the lower elementary through high school years. Social sciences often cover the same topics but in a different way. Social sciences stress the analytical aspect of the subjects. We learn to take, organize, and analyze the statistical data about man as an individual, man as a member of social groups, man as a member of community, and man in broad ethnic and national groups. It has more of the feel of science, and often involves experiments and surveys and focuses less on surface facts and more on motivations for actions. Interestingly, history is NOT considered a part of the social sciences because one cannot do experiments on past events and then recreate them. History is, therefore, considered a humanities subject for social science people.
Now, we will turn our attention to what is usually taught in schools, social studies. Generally, this means history and geography. Now this will take two blogs, so be prepared.
First, let's look at history. There are a number of ways to teach history. By its nature, history is a chronological subject. That is, one should teach it in time order. That being said and before I lose the unit studies people, let me say that one can study topics in history. To do it well still requires some sort of connection to a time line. That means that your student (or yourself) needs some way to hang the topic in time and space.
I can choose to study clothing as a history element. However, unless I also link that study to dates and places, my student will not know whether pantaloons came before or after George Washington nor will he know why that is important to know. Some clothing styles came into popularity because of odd political, geographical, or social events. Try this link for a fun read. http://www.poloindia.com/historyoftrousers/right_frame.htm
Studying the clothing without studying the events will not help the student truly understand the development of clothing. For example, certain hat styles came about when a popular queen started going bald and began wearing hats to cover her baldness. The people loved her so much that they wanted to copy her hats. So the question should be asked, why was she so popular that people wanted to be like her? The answer would come from studying her policies and her government, the wars into which her country became involved, the economic situation, etc.
Without the chronological study as well, the student is faced with an endless series of facts swirling inside his head. In other words, unit studies without chronology is like teaching history for a Trivial Pursuit game: nothing but unconnected facts that may or may not get you a chip. If you like the unit studies approach, make sure that you incorporate timelines and that your children have a strong basic understanding of history before beginning the study.
Another interesting approach to teaching history involves breaking history into broad categories, such as Old Testament history, Greek history, Roman history, medieval history, etc., and then taking a year to study each. I have to admit, I love the idea of this idea. If I could begin from the beginning with my kids, this would probably be a strong way to do this for the elementary grades. It does require a 4 or 5 or more year commitment to that one style and to homeschooling. It requires you know and don't fear being out of sync for testing for a few years, which isn't a bad thing, unless you worry about where you are all the time. For the upper grades, the multi-year study would not be as good, as you SHOULD then be spending more time looking at history's broad strokes and patterns, making all the dots connect from all the various histories you've studied and trying to understand the complex reasons behind things.
One weakness I have seen in the multi-year approach has to do with the fact that the underpinnings of our current world are anchored in those earliest of times. In this approach to history, those early times are studied at the youngest age when a student is least able to understand the political policies and the writings of those ages. Very few 2nd and 3rd graders can follow Caesar's Gallic Wars, although it is well written and easily followed by a more mature mind. Cicero's writing, pithy pieces and, by the way vastly applicable to today's politics, would not connect with the mind of young children.
What ends up happening is that the students study the curious aspects of Roman culture with brief interludes into the history and military battles; such things as the economics that were driving the military situations and the slavery needed in a society that valued freedom almost as much as Americans did 20 years ago cannot be studied as the mind is not yet ready. The student, and parent, believes he knows Roman history because he knows what they ate, how they dressed, how they built their houses, and how they were transported. He knows how their weapons are used but doesn't have the analytical ability or geographic knowledge yet to understand WHY they are being used.
These cultural facts that cause the students to believe they have studied the history leave them unprepared for dealing with modern world history and American history when they are older. Those histories depend upon an understanding of the older ages' philosophies and policies, things which couldn't be covered at the much younger age. So perhaps there is a major drawback to this approach to history for the young, that of matching mind skills with topics. Does that mean not using this approach? No, it means working this approach so that this weakness is resolved.
Deciding upon an approach to teaching history must include an awareness of the mental development processes within a child. We must also get past our own boredom with relearning something we learned in our childhood and realize that THEY haven't heard it and THEY NEED this material. We must understand that, in early years, children are best equipped to learn vast quantities of facts (dates, places, names, etc.) attached to general themes, such as time placement of the facts. They memorize easily. We do not, and we feel bad that we are asking them to memorize things. So we decide, let's build something instead of memorizing things. Instead, do BOTH! Memorize AS you are building things.
Scripture tells us that one way to teach our children their scriptures is to write them on the doorposts, the walls, our foreheads, whatever is needed to do the memory work. So take that example for your facts work.
Put a list of the ten highest mountains & their locations on the wall next to the toilet. Don't tell them to memorize it. Just put it there. Mention mountains in your conversation. "I've heard about this mountain called Mt. McKinley. I was wondering if it would be a good vacation to go there. What do YOU think? Do you know where it is? No? Hmmm. Okay." Don't tell them to go find out. Yet, sometime soon, the child will come back with the information you wanted them to know. "Mom, I found out that Mt. McKinley is in Alaska." This is called subtle memory work.
However, overt memory work is great as well. Let's come up with ten lists of ten things to know this year, kids. How about the ten largest American cities, the ten highest mountains in the world, the first ten presidents, ten top inventors and what they invented, ten elements from the periodic table, ten great composers & the name of one of their famous pieces, ten great American artists, ten Impressionist painters, ten birds and what they look like, ten vitamins we need, etc. Each month, choose one of the lists and, at the start of the day, just read the list out loud together once. In 3 weeks or less, your child will probably have the list memorized just from reading it out loud. Then the next month, start another list.
Another approach to history is to use good textbooks. Good textbooks are broken into units on specific topics. They give you a broad overview of a time period, and then you have the chance, if you are interested, of doing an in-depth study of a part of that section.
For example, the Bob Jones University Press 4th grade American history text has standard history chapters. I had my children read a chapter on Monday or on Monday and Tuesday (depending upon the length of the chapter), and then we orally did the questions over lunch. On Wednesday, we (sometimes me, sometimes them) picked some topic within the chapter and researched it (sometimes I'd have the books ready ahead of time, sometimes not) on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday was a great day for either choosing another topic for a quicker, one day study, or we might watch a video or build something or go somewhere related to the study or even read about the first topic more.
The textbook allows you to have someone else - the textbook author - do the basic research for you while the teacher's manual will tell you other ideas and projects. I mean, the purpose of studying history is to learn from the past, so do that by not feeling like you must reinvent the wheel by doing all the setup work yourself. Rather, you can allow someone else (an author) to do the grunt work of setting up a time period for you in the textbook. The author also gets to run around looking for the information at libraries, etc., instead of you doing that and wasting gas and energy and irreplacable time. Textbooks can be an extremely easy and interesting way to teach history while making sure you have all the connections in place. Just use the textbook instead of letting it rule you.
Jesse Stuart, a famous Appalachian teacher who did extraordinary things with his students, came to the conclusion after decades of teaching that the student's ability to learn had much more to do with his enthusiasm level regarding the subject than it had to do with the difficulty level of the subject. To go with that, remember that feelings follow actions. If you act angry, you will become angry. If you act like you like something, you may find that you do. Try it as you teach history and geography this year. It will change how much your students enjoy this fabulous subject. Know the approach you choose to use and eliminate its weaknesses; no one way works for everyone, but we DO need to understand the broad picture of what is taking place in our teaching and in our students' learning.
Suggested reading: Jesse Stuart's The Thread That Runs So True
Teaching Geography: see the next blog.
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