Hamilton, music, and the power of emotion to engage your learners

Almost exactly three years ago, away back in 2015, I wrote a short post about the Hamilton musical. My kids have a standing order that requires them to keep me updated with the latest pop culture from the youths. And my daughter was already in love with Lin-Manuel Miranda and the way he incorporated music and dance to tell the story of Alexander Hamilton.

While I hadn’t seen the show, I was able to read enough, see enough, and hear enough to be convinced about the power of the story. And was convinced that using the story and music would be a great way to help kids better understand the broader story of the Revolution and America’s founding fathers.

Last Friday, while in Chicago for the #ncss18 conference, I finally had the chance to actually see Hamilton in person.

Wow. Just. Wow.

I am now even more convinced about how this secondary source re-telling of the period of the late 1700s can help connect our kids to both past and present. And while Hamilton is a particularly spectacular example of the power of music and emotion to engage the learner, it’s not the only way we can use music in the classroom. So this morning, I’m re-posting another quick set of resources that I put together a year ago that can help you begin to think about what the integration of music might look like.

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I am not

History Nerdfest 2018: Encouraging Historical Thinking Through Picture Books

It ranks right up there with the Holiday season, KC Chiefs football, and the first weekend of the college basketball tournament. It’s National Council for the Social Studies conference week. I’m lucky enough to get front row seats and am trying to live blog my way through it.

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I’ve always been a fan of Dr. Dan Krutka. While in the Kansas area and now at the University of North Texas, Dan has always been a huge supporter of social studies and integrating tech. And the cool thing is he’s here at #ncss18 talking about how to use picture books to support elementary social studies best practices. Even better? My new friend Dr. Michelle Bauml from Texas Christian University is here as co-presenter.

I’m smarter just being in the same room.

They start with the basics. Why should we be using picture books to help teach social studies?

• emphasis on math and reading so very little for social studies specific instruction
• textbooks are old and boring
• need for teaching introducing historical thinking to kids
• lots of children’s lit already being used as teaching tools

We moved on to a brand new site for me called the Historical Thinking Project. Created by the Canadian government, the project highlight six historical thinking concepts and a ton of resources. The concepts are especially useful because we can use them to help develop essential questions around the content in picture books.

• Establish historical significance
• Use primary source evidence
• Identify continuity and change
• Analyze cause and consequence
• Take historical perspectives, and
• Understand the ethical dimension of historical interpretations.

Dan and Michelle simple steps to designing a lesson using the concepts and book content:

History Nerdfest 2018: Using Structured Academic Controversy to teach 21st century skills

It ranks right up there with the Holiday season, KC Chiefs football, and the first weekend of the college basketball tournament. It’s National Council for the Social Studies conference week. I’m lucky enough to get front row seats and am trying to live blog my way through it.

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Like most of you, I first ran across the Structured Academic Controversy idea via Sam Wineburg and his Stanford History Education Group’s Reading Like a Historian curriculum. Specifically SHEG’s Was Lincoln a Racist lesson. But there’s always been that sense that Wineburg and his troop of SHEG geniuses adapted the strategy to fit their needs. And maybe I’ve been doing it wrong. So thanks Georgia Brown from Grayslake, Illinois who led a conversation this afternoon about what it can look like outside the SHEG universe.

So let’s start with the basics. What is a Structured Academic Controversy?

It’s a cooperative learning strategy developed brothers David and Roger Johnson to engage small groups of students in the discussion of controversial issues. Through a series of steps, add to their understanding of an issue or question. After students have fully explored and analyzed the pro and con arguments on an issue or question, they work as a group to reach a consensus on the issue.

So it’s not a debate. There are no winners and losers here. We’re just trying to find the best answer to the question. But looking at pros and cons gives kids the chance to look at multiple perspectives without the pressure of having to “win.”

Feel free to head over to the original Johnson brothers article and get their research and instructions. And you’re done. But we had a great conversation about what it can look like in the classroom so don’t be afraid to head back here for a few more tips and tricks.

Georgia started with the basic steps in the process she uses:

History Nerdfest 2018: Unpacking color consciousness

It ranks right up there with the Holiday season, KC Chiefs football, and the first weekend of the college basketball tournament. It’s National Council for the Social Studies conference week. I’m lucky enough to get front row seats and am trying to live blog my way through it.

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Bob Marley was playing as I walked into Saturday’s first session.

I’m not complaining. #NCSS week is always awesome (and I was able to catch Hamilton last night so even awesomer) but Saturday morning is hard. Since Wednesday, I’ve met old friends, made some new ones, preformed my civic duty at House of Delegates, sat in on some committee meetings, and generally jumped into the deep end of history nerdness. But Saturday is when this stuff gets real. Multiple sessions today – back to back. Learning because harder.

So Bob in the morning makes life just a little easier.

And a quote from Yuri Kochiyama, American activist, set the tone:

“Remember that consciousness is power. Consciousness is education and knowledge. Consciousness is becoming aware. It is the perfect vehicle for students. Consciousness-raising is pertinent for power, and be sure that power will not be abusively used, but used for building trust and goodwill domestically and internationally. Tomorrow’s world is yours to build.”

Ruth Berson from Note Dame High School in San Jose is guiding the conversation this morning about encouraging and implementing a color conscious learning environment. Her first piece of advice in the process in becoming more aware and color conscience is becoming aware of the issues.

We talked quite a bit about the types of bias and the differences between bias and racism by digging into implicit and confirmation bias. And chatted about how that can lead to what Ruth labeled

History Nerdfest 2018: Civic Engagement in actual practice – handouts, resources, and rubrics

It ranks right up there with the Holiday season, KC Chiefs football, and the first weekend of the college basketball tournament. It’s National Council for the Social Studies conference week. I’m lucky enough to get front row seats and am trying to live blog my way through it.

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Civic Engagement is one of the latest social studies buzzwords. And hopefully it’s one that sticks around a while. We want kids to identify problems in their communities, develop creative solutions, and implement those solutions in the real world.

But there’s a ton of conversation about what civic engagement actually looks like in practice. Whitney Wilda and Chris Wilbur of Hinsdale Central High School in Hinsdale, Illinois have developed their own version of how it can play out with a semester long civic engagement process. They use this with 10th graders.

And the awesome thing is that they’re sharing it all with us. Get the full 24 pages of

History Nerdfest 2018: Girl Scouts and Journey Taking through the C3

It ranks right up there with the Holiday season, KC Chiefs football, and the first weekend of the college basketball tournament. It’s National Council for the Social Studies conference week. I’m lucky enough to get front row seats and am trying to live blog my way through it.

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We start the session hearing about the huge number of female public servants and politicians are former Girl Scouts. Why? Because the Girl Scouts help kids focus on how to create positive change in their communities.

How cool is that?

At ESSDACK, we’ve been doing a lot of work in the last year or so working with the Boy Scouts – using their badging system as a way to begin integration Problem-Based Learning in middle and high school classrooms. The badge requirements and activities tie in a very sweet ways to our state’s social studies standards and our huge statewide School Redesign project.

So I was intrigued when I saw this session. How can the Girl Scouts help social studies teachers do their jobs better? How can it blend with the NCSS C3 Framework’s Inquiry Arc?