October 22nd, 2007 walkere
Can’t think of a way to force your students to process information and utilize higher order thinking skills? Make them draw! By converting written words and thoughts into pictures, students are at least applying the knowledge and at best synthesizing it into something brand new.
A great method for Social Studies and Language Arts that uses this approach is called historical heads. What do you need? Knowledge of a person or group of people, a blank outline of a head (Blank Historical Head), and some creativity.
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October 19th, 2007 walkere
Looking for an electronic gradebook? I know I was.
In the first weeks of school, I’ve had dozens of students move on, off, or around my rosters. If I’d been using a pen and paper gradebook, it would be scribbled and erased half to death. Thankfully, from the first day I kept my main records on an electronic gradebook.
I first used Gradekeeper. It’s fairly useful and cheap. It had most of the functionality I wanted, but it didn’t leave me fully satisfied.
Then one day at school I found out that we had a site license to Easy Grade Pro. This was a more robust database program for tracking students’ grades and attendance. I love the program and there aren’t many tweaks that I would want to change. Check out my full review of Easy Grade Pro at AssociatedContent.com.
Some useful features include:
- Copying students and assignments directly from one class to another
- Saving custom data on students (i.e. addresses, phone numbers, parent names)
- An array of custom grade scores (missing, excused, absent, and plenty more)
- Thorough score reporting for individual students and entire classes
- Ability to curve individual assignments and override student grades
Check it out. It’s worth the money. If you’re district bought it for you, it’s even better.
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October 13th, 2007 walkere
The century after the Reformation was an extremely violent one in Europe. Protestants and Catholics completed unspeakable atrocities on each other. Wars raged for decades at a time.
The period is significant for both European History and US History. In the European context, the wars and the eventual peace (the Peace of Westphalia) created the basis of the modern state system. In the American context, religious violence and persecution encouraged many people to flee to the British and French colonies.
Check out this lesson plan on religious violence. It involves a good anticipatory set, working with some primary documents, and challenging students to write creatively. Quite a powerful lesson, overall, and students are unlikely to forget the content.
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