What do you do for high school history other than read?

[JennifersLost]

We're working through Spielvogel and reading classics from the WTM list, but right now that's about all we've done. Do you have your students take notes? Write essays? Book reviews? Do discuss them formally? Use books like Cliff Notes to go over main ideas and important parts of them?

 

I need ideas to jazz up our history program.

[Brenda in MA]

during 10th & 11th grades. In addition to his reading about that period, I had him do "Decade" Reports, which consisted of a 3 - 4 page mini-research report, a timeline of important events during that decade, and a couple of maps relevant to that decade. The mini-reports varied from biographies (Henry Ford) to histories (development of the computer) to historical events (Watergate). My son learned a lot doing these reports, and now he had a deeper understanding of some important events.

 

HTH,

Brenda

[kathleen]

I taught a two-year Western Civilization course using Spielvogel. I purchased the Instructor's Manuals along with the text, and adapted those for exams and essay ideas. We had discussions, too. We also read more primary source material and watched several Teaching Company courses. There were four major exams each year, along with an essay every other week or so, plus a major research paper each year.

 

Our literature reading (of novels and Great Books) was done as a separate course, though I tried to dovetail as much as possible.

[kathleen]

during 10th & 11th grades. In addition to his reading about that period, I had him do "Decade" Reports, which consisted of a 3 - 4 page mini-research report, a timeline of important events during that decade, and a couple of maps relevant to that decade.

 

Oh, Brenda! What a great idea! I'm teaching 20th C history and literature next year and I think I'll borrow this from you. By the way, what history spine did you use (if any)? Can you give me any more information? I don't mean to hijack this thread, but I'm curious.

[kate in seattle]

I LOVE the decade report idea and am officially stealing it as of now. Wow! great idea.

 

Some other history things I have my rhetoric kids do in my co-op.

 

Timelines (yes, this is a grammar level exercise but it is a good overview). They are also repsonsible for explaining the significance of the events they have chosen for their timelines.

 

A creative project - cooking something, writing a skit, making a video. I had some great ones on the crusades last year.

 

a Living History - have to dress as a person from the time period we are studying and speak as that person. Has to be completely memorized and in character. Fun to do if you have a group.

 

A research paper every year.

 

A newsletter for the six week unit (editorials, ads, letters to editors, interviews, fashion reports, they are very creative). Sometimes a nice way to pull a unit together.

 

Maps - I use the World History rhough maps. Sometimes they have to do large poster size maps and explain them.

 

I am going to do some required movies next year (moderns) as so many movies are part of our current culture.

 

Any ideas on great books AFTER 1950 that are appropriate for conservative Christian co-op?

 

Again, great idea - and now it is spread across the country!

 

Thanks,

Kate in Seattle

[teachmom3]

I had my high school dd prepare history lectures and then deliver them to her little brother and his two friends, who were all homeschooled middle-schoolers at the time. (All four of them were going through the same periods in history simultaneously.)

 

It forced her to decide what was important enough to include in a lecture and to organize the subject. It also gave her an appreciation for the difficulty that teachers have in engaging students in the topic. At one point she was reduced to rewarding the boys with candy if they answered her questions correctly.

 

Heh heh. I love homeschooling.

[Brenda in MA]

Oh, Brenda! What a great idea! I'm teaching 20th C history and literature next year and I think I'll borrow this from you. By the way, what history spine did you use (if any)? Can you give me any more information? I don't mean to hijack this thread, but I'm curious.

 

Kathleen,

 

We were using Sonlight's Core 300 over 3 semesters, so we used the DK 20th Century book, but I think the decade report approach could be used with almost any spine. My son also read a few of the SL history readers and several books on his report topics to augment the DK book. He also read the SL 300 literature and wrote essays on those for a separate english/literature credit.

 

Despite all the work involved, my son enjoyed the research for the reports. I generally let him pick the topic, but I told him that he couldn't do the same "type" of report for each decade. He tended to want to choose to do a biography or an invention, so after he'd picked one of each, I made him choose some other topics.

 

HTH,

Brenda

[Jenny in Florida]

[The "official" descriptions are in italics. I added some notes beneath each one.]

 

9th Grade: American History Through Literature and Fiction

An interdisciplinary exploration of significant events in American history, with special emphasis on issues of social justice. Sources include documents from the period and modern works of both fiction and non-fiction. Independent research and an essay on each topic are required.

Basically, we did a series of five units (American Indian Experience; Slavery, Abolition and the Civil War; Suffragist Movement; WWII, the Holocaust and Japanese Internment; Desegregation and Civil Rights). She read some book son her own, and we read at least one book aloud together for each unit. We also watched lots of videos and DVDs, both documentaries and movies about each period/subject. At the end of each unit, she chose a topic and wrote about what she had read. She could do whatever additional research she wanted to do, but I required that her papers also include brief summaries of at least one or two of the books she had read.

10th Grade: History and Literature of the Ancient World

This interdisciplinary course allows the student to explore the history and cultures of the ancient world by reading its literature and doing independent research to place each work in its historical context. The reading list is supplemented with modern historical works and fiction to more fully illuminate the people and places. Field trips and hands-on projects are also required. Written work includes brief reports on the background and significance of major works read and several lengthier essays addressing the works, themselves.

For this one, I started having her do a “context page†for most of the books she read before she started reading. We took a geographical/civilization-based approach that year, rather than strictly chronological and divided the year into, I think, six units. And, again, we watched lots of DVDs and videos and managed several really good field trips. At the end of each unit, she had to either write an essay or come up with some other, equivalent project. She did mostly essays, but a couple of more creative things, including designing the art and writing all the copy for a boxed set of The Illiad and The Odyssey. We also did a bunch of the blackline map activities from Knowledge Quest.

11th Grade: History, Literature and Theater of the Middle Ages and Renaissance

An interdisciplinary course taking the student on a tour of the significant people, places, events and geography of the years from 400 to 1700, viewed through literature and historical sources both from and about the period. The student will pay special attention to the theatrical contributions of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Brief essays on historical topics, as well as other essays and research papers, are required to fulfill the literature and historical credits. An additional half-credit in Theatre Arts requires completion of a special project.

Okay, she didn’t do a lot of “output†for history that year. Most of her writing was from Wordsmith assignments. We started out with the idea of using History Scholar templates (like History Scribe, but for older students), but she did those only for most of the first semester before she started finding the format really tedious. In the second semester, her major history project was tracing the family tree of the English monarchy from 1066 until the 1600s. She plotted out the whole thing and created a display board with the family crests and other information along with the chart.

 

(Please don't ask me what her project was for the theatre credit. It's completely slipped my mind!)

[Jenny in Florida]

(Please don't ask me what her project was for the theatre credit. It's completely slipped my mind!)

 

Oh! I just remembered. We had gone to Staunton, VA, that year for the prospective student overnight at the college she ended up attending this year. While we were there, she got to go on a tour of Blackfriar's Playhouse, where she learned about "original practices" and how they run their shows and so on. We also went to see a production while we were in town.

 

She has grown up going to the Shakespeare theatre here in Orlando. So, for her theatre project, she wrote a review of the show and a newspaper-style article comparing and contrasting the two styles and created a whole faux newspaper around the two pieces.

[JennifersLost]

Some great ideas - keep them coming! I'm returning to more serious homeschooling after taking some time off and letting ds15 direct his own learning for awhile. I need the boost of good ideas!

[LisaNY]

I used WEM as our guide for discussion of the Great Books. I had my dd write summaries of each book in the Iliad and Odyssey, as well as a summary of characters. For the Greek plays, my dd did a summary of each scene.

[Kendall]

I'm so excited to see responses to your question. I can take all of the input I can get in this area. I posted a similar question a while back and you might want to read the responses, because they were great. I just replied in that thread so it should jump to the top of the list.

[Nan in Mass]

Not jazzy, but my son has written short papers answering one of the think about questions in Speilvogel. He gets the jazziness by traveling and doing things like walking for a day on a Roman road or crossing Hadrian's wall or visiting Hiroshima.

[Julie in GA]

We use Omnibus, and it's loaded with discussion questions, essay assignments, etc. If you can afford to buy it, you could use it as a reference or for ideas, even if you don't want to use it as a primary text.

[Kathleen in VA]

Brenda,

 

This is such a great idea. Thanks for sharing,

 

Kathleen

 

during 10th & 11th grades. In addition to his reading about that period, I had him do "Decade" Reports, which consisted of a 3 - 4 page mini-research report, a timeline of important events during that decade, and a couple of maps relevant to that decade. The mini-reports varied from biographies (Henry Ford) to histories (development of the computer) to historical events (Watergate). My son learned a lot doing these reports, and now he had a deeper understanding of some important events.

 

HTH,

Brenda