jibaker103 Posted December 10, 2009 Share Posted December 10, 2009 I was thinking about using this for 9th and 10th grades when we study BF US & World History. Is this worth the price the Critical Thinking Co. is asking? Can it work for a student to do alone? Is there something better out there for primary sources and critical thinking? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brenda in MA Posted December 10, 2009 Share Posted December 10, 2009 Jennifer, I like it a lot and have used it with 2 different students. I used it to provide more depth to our US History studies while we are using Hakim's History of the US series as a spine. The thing that I like the best about Critical Thinking in US History is the variety of points of view presented in the primary source materials. I think there is definite value in having a student read one piece about the causes of the witch trials in Salem and hear one author's conclusion given the evidence and then read another piece using essentially the same evidence to support a completely different conclusion. I think it really shows a student how much historical accounts depend on the biases of the authors. I also like the fact that they teach a few simple processes to evaluate the strength of evidence presented. A student can easily adapt these tools to analyzing other history books, newspaper articles, tv reports, etc. I have found the series to be a bit difficult to schedule. Most of the lessons are able to be used in a home setting, but a few are really more suited to a classroom. The TM does have some guidance on this, though. I also think that you really have to sit with your student and discuss the lessons. You can have him/her read the lesson and do the worksheets that come with some lessons, but I think the most learning happens during the discussions of the material. HTH, Brenda Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jibaker103 Posted December 10, 2009 Author Share Posted December 10, 2009 Jennifer, I like it a lot and have used it with 2 different students. I used it to provide more depth to our US History studies while we are using Hakim's History of the US series as a spine. The thing that I like the best about Critical Thinking in US History is the variety of points of view presented in the primary source materials. I think there is definite value in having a student read one piece about the causes of the witch trials in Salem and hear one author's conclusion given the evidence and then read another piece using essentially the same evidence to support a completely different conclusion. I think it really shows a student how much historical accounts depend on the biases of the authors. I also like the fact that they teach a few simple processes to evaluate the strength of evidence presented. A student can easily adapt these tools to analyzing other history books, newspaper articles, tv reports, etc. I have found the series to be a bit difficult to schedule. Most of the lessons are able to be used in a home setting, but a few are really more suited to a classroom. The TM does have some guidance on this, though. I also think that you really have to sit with your student and discuss the lessons. You can have him/her read the lesson and do the worksheets that come with some lessons, but I think the most learning happens during the discussions of the material. HTH, Brenda Thank you so much Brenda! I have a couple of questions for you: Do you have a guide to use your spine or are you just going through the books on your own? Do I need the TM for each of the 4 guides? What makes it so difficult to schedule? What were the ages and grades of your children when you used this? I agree about the discussions! My son and I have learned so much this past year just by talking about what we have read. It definitely beats how we were both learned in ps!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kareni Posted December 10, 2009 Share Posted December 10, 2009 If you click on the 'Critical Thinking in US His' below, you'll see a couple of prior discussions which I also tagged. Here's what I wrote in one of those threads: My 9th grader and I dipped into several of these that year and in 8th. I found them of value but somewhat challenging to incorporate. I do think that you might benefit if you had more than one child using these at a time in order to get some discussion going. We did these verbally. Regards, Kareni Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jibaker103 Posted December 10, 2009 Author Share Posted December 10, 2009 If you click on the 'Critical Thinking in US His' below, you'll see a couple of prior discussions which I also tagged. Here's what I wrote in one of those threads: My 9th grader and I dipped into several of these that year and in 8th. I found them of value but somewhat challenging to incorporate. I do think that you might benefit if you had more than one child using these at a time in order to get some discussion going. We did these verbally. Regards, Kareni Thank you so much for your help. I sent a pm to Brenda to see if she could send me a copy of her schedule. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brenda in MA Posted December 10, 2009 Share Posted December 10, 2009 Thank you so much Brenda! I have a couple of questions for you: Do you have a guide to use your spine or are you just going through the books on your own? Do I need the TM for each of the 4 guides? What makes it so difficult to schedule? What were the ages and grades of your children when you used this? I agree about the discussions! My son and I have learned so much this past year just by talking about what we have read. It definitely beats how we were both learned in ps!! Jennifer, You would need the TM for each of the 4 books. If you think you might like to try out the series, I'd recommend getting the first book and its TM and giving it a try. You can invest in the other ones later if you decide you like the series. I use this in 8th/9th grades. What makes it difficult to schedule is that the lessons are of varying length. Some might take 30-60 min. to do and require 1 or 2 pages of reading from the book, while others require 15-20 pages of reading and would take several 45-60 minute periods to fully discuss/explore. Some of the longer topics have many different perspectives offered. You can often do a decent job covering the subject by reading 3-4 of the opinions instead of all 10 that are provided. What I found that I had to do when scheduling this was to sit down for several hours with the book ahead of time and look through each lesson to get a feel for how we'd approach it and how long we'd spend on it. Once I had a rough/plan schedule, then I just matched up the topics with our history. I did email you my schedules. One thing I forgot to note is that you will find on my schedule notations like: Lesson 14A, 14B, 14C. What that means is that I broke lesson 14 into 3 parts and we covered it on three separate days. There are no distinctions in the book of lesson 14A, B, or C. One other thing that we've found extremely valuable in studying history is to take field trips. The kids really seem to learn/remember things better when we've been able to visit historical sights. One of our best trips, and it was just dumb luck, was to happen upon the James Buchanan house in Lancaster, PA on the one day a year where they had the house full of costumed actors pretending it was the day Buchanan was nominated to run for president. They had people playing local newpapermen, Buchanan's neighbors, other businessmen, and Buchanan himself. It was very memorable & enjoyable. HTH, Brenda Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jibaker103 Posted December 10, 2009 Author Share Posted December 10, 2009 Jennifer, You would need the TM for each of the 4 books. If you think you might like to try out the series, I'd recommend getting the first book and its TM and giving it a try. You can invest in the other ones later if you decide you like the series. I use this in 8th/9th grades. What makes it difficult to schedule is that the lessons are of varying length. Some might take 30-60 min. to do and require 1 or 2 pages of reading from the book, while others require 15-20 pages of reading and would take several 45-60 minute periods to fully discuss/explore. Some of the longer topics have many different perspectives offered. You can often do a decent job covering the subject by reading 3-4 of the opinions instead of all 10 that are provided. What I found that I had to do when scheduling this was to sit down for several hours with the book ahead of time and look through each lesson to get a feel for how we'd approach it and how long we'd spend on it. Once I had a rough/plan schedule, then I just matched up the topics with our history. I did email you my schedules. One thing I forgot to note is that you will find on my schedule notations like: Lesson 14A, 14B, 14C. What that means is that I broke lesson 14 into 3 parts and we covered it on three separate days. There are no distinctions in the book of lesson 14A, B, or C. One other thing that we've found extremely valuable in studying history is to take field trips. The kids really seem to learn/remember things better when we've been able to visit historical sights. One of our best trips, and it was just dumb luck, was to happen upon the James Buchanan house in Lancaster, PA on the one day a year where they had the house full of costumed actors pretending it was the day Buchanan was nominated to run for president. They had people playing local newpapermen, Buchanan's neighbors, other businessmen, and Buchanan himself. It was very memorable & enjoyable. HTH, Brenda Thank you Brenda. I will look over what you sent and see if I have any questions. We will cover American History during 9th and 10th grade. I will have to see what kind of trips we can take for next year. It's a little hard since we are in TX. However, my son and I have been itching to go east ever since we saw National Treasure, lol!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Julie in MN Posted December 10, 2009 Share Posted December 10, 2009 I was thinking about using this for 9th and 10th grades when we study BF US & World History. Is this worth the price the Critical Thinking Co. is asking? Can it work for a student to do alone? Is there something better out there for primary sources and critical thinking? Something inexpensive & shorter that we've used only a bit is You Are The President, Great Decisions Series by Nathan Aaseng (our library had this in the adult nonfiction section) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jibaker103 Posted December 11, 2009 Author Share Posted December 11, 2009 Something inexpensive & shorter that we've used only a bit isYou Are The President, Great Decisions Series by Nathan Aaseng (our library had this in the adult nonfiction section) Thank you Julie. I will check into this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt_Uhura Posted December 11, 2009 Share Posted December 11, 2009 Kareni wrote: "If you click on the 'Critical Thinking in US His' below, you'll see a couple of prior discussions which I also tagged." Pardon my ignorance :lol: but I don't understand what you meant by the above statement? I'd love to read more of the reads on Critical THinking in US History CDs from Critical Thinking Co. I tried searching using that but came up w/ a lot of stuff. Thanks for your help and your helpful post! Capt_Uhura Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kareni Posted December 12, 2009 Share Posted December 12, 2009 Kareni wrote: "If you click on the 'Critical Thinking in US His' below, you'll see a couple of prior discussions which I also tagged." Pardon my ignorance :lol: but I don't understand what you meant by the above statement? I'd love to read more of the reads on Critical THinking in US History CDs from Critical Thinking Co. I tried searching using that but came up w/ a lot of stuff. Capt_Uhura Hello there, Capt_Uhura! (Would you happen to be a Star Trek fan?) If you look beneath the last post in this thread, you'll see right underneath the "Post Reply" button a thin band of dark blue. On the leftmost edge of that band is the word "Tags". Underneath that is a lighter blue band. In that band are any tags that have been bestowed on a given thread. If you click on a tag there, it will show you other threads that have also been tagged with the same name. (To add a tag to a thread, you use the "Edit Tags" function at the far right hand edge of the darker blue band.) Regards, Kareni Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt_Uhura Posted December 12, 2009 Share Posted December 12, 2009 YES, I'm a huge Star Trek fan! :D I had no idea about the tags!!! I've seen them mentioned once but didn't no what they were. GREAT! Thank you! Capt_Uhura Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kareni Posted December 12, 2009 Share Posted December 12, 2009 You are quite welcome, Capt_Uhura! If you haven't already read it, I heartily recommend the book Uhura's Song by Janet Kagan. It's one of my favorite of the Star Trek novels, and Uhura plays a large role in it. Regards, Kareni Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt_Uhura Posted December 12, 2009 Share Posted December 12, 2009 Kareni, Actually that cover looks familiar but I haven't read it. Probably one of the many Star Trek books I buy for 50c at the library but haven't had a chance to read. I'm finishing up a Voyager Trilogy which was really good. Thanks for the rec! Capt_Uhura Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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