As many of us struggle through this transition from chronological to thematic teaching of history one idea is to teach history using big ideas. The link below is to the book, "Teaching History with Big Ideas," by Grant and Gradwell. Not only does it present ideas about framing history in more engaging ways for our students but offers interesting case studies of teaching History to Honors classes and more. Google Books offers the first 100+ pages of the book for free so take advantage!
Tom O'Toole, formerly of Waltham Public Schools, the current Humanities Director for Essex Tech visited Lawrence High School to present demonstration lessons in English and History. Mr. O'Toole used Brenna Chalifour's US History II classroom to demonstrate how history teachers can use close reading and his system of color-coding the text to write exemplary open responses on MCAS.
Several high schools on campus, notably HLD, utilized writing with colors last school year. HLD students averaged a 2.75 score on the ELA open responses last year. This was higher than the state average of 2.68.
Here is the introduction to Mr. O'Toole's lesson on writing with colors which shows the text they were using (The Things they Carried by Tom O'Brien) and how the system he uses works.
Mr. O'Toole goes on to demonstrate how to properly close read a text for an open response question with students. The lesson is below.
Finally, Mr. O'Toole shares with students anchor papers that illustrate what it entails to get a 4, 3, 2 and 1 on MCAS open response based on the question that was asked. Below Mr. O'Toole breaks down a 4 with students in Ms. Chalifour's class.
