Celebrating Failure in Rm 613

Created using Canva . One of my favorite projects is Down with the Sickness, where students research the effects that disease have on both past and present societies. I still consider it as my top project of the 2015/2016 school year, which I described in a previous post . With a year of experience, I was able to streamline the project and improve student engagement as shown by the end of the semester survey: "I really liked the medical aspect of our history class because it wasn't a typical kind of study for a history class. I had never done anything like it before and it was a lot of fun."  "I enjoyed researching different disease and learning more in depth about how the CDC and the WHO deal with these situations. Creating an infographic was fun because I prefer to show people what I've learned through graphics/art." Contagion Activity with link. I liked creating the infographics and I really enjoyed learning about different disease...

This year marked the 15th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, but it is also the first time that I had a group of students who had no memory of the attacks. In fact, almost  every teacher is experiencing this  as students are born farther and farther away from 2001 and it has completely transformed the way I discuss 9/11 with them. When I first started teaching, I would start class by showing the following video:   Then follow up by discussing what I remember about that day and what I witnessed. I was also a very history-oriented child and I collected every magazine and newspaper that discussed 9/11 over ten years so I would show them those materials; I'm working on compiling them into a scrapbook for students to look at. Students would then share what memories they had or the memories of their parents, but most of the time they would ask me specific questions about the event, like why it happened, how the world changed, etc. Many times it too...

By far one of my favorite historical simulations to do is the trench warfare simulation for WWI. Initially, the thought of allowing students to turn the classroom into a war zone made me hesitant to do the simulation, but I finally took a deep breath in 2014 and decided to try it out.* I began the class period with the following presentation to have some order to the madness. From my first experiences, I highly recommend that you go over the rules and expectations BEFORE the trench construction begins. With all of the student excitement and noise, it is difficult to get their attention, especially if they begin hiding in the trenches; I would divide up the classroom and allow construction and then it was herding cats to get everyone to refocus for more direction. The main rules I have is that when the lights are on nothing is thrown, but when the lights go off and the war begins then its fair game. As I said, explain everything THEN allow construction to begin. Even thoug...