Broad & shallow or narrow & deep? (Third grade and below)

[YsgolYGair]

So I'm already starting to think about next year where I will be tackling Ancient / Old Testament history. I like writing my own curriculum, so I'm planning to do that again, but I'm trying to decide between more of a survey course, snippets of events, or to pick out just a handful of people and civilizations to study deeply. I really enjoy getting down and deep with things, but my husband suggested doing more of a survey to get an overall picture, so now I'm torn. What do you all do? What would you suggest?

 

[Bluegoat]

It might depend a bit on your students.  Quite a few kids at that age only have a very shakey sense of time, and I think that limits the kind of history you can do - it makes connectivity a little difficult.

 

I tend to think for students that age, It's often best to think in terms of specific peoples or groups, and teach the "story" of those people.   So, you might teach about prehistory, and then the Mesopotamians, The Egyptions, whatever.  Over the course of the year you could cover four or five civilizations, maybe in timeline order to some extent but without too much emphasis on that aspect.

 

I suspect there are natural limits on how "deep" you can go with history at that age because kids won't be developmentally ready for more abstract history approaches, and also many don't even remember basic facts like names and dates very well. 

 

I do think that biographies, if they are well written, can be really good ways to teach history at that age.  The child is especially interested in the people, but a lot of other ideas are remembered as a result of that interest.

[fralala]

My little ones work best when we focus on memorable people and civilizations more deeply-- I think many young kids will become intrigued by these kinds of details and be able to recollect them later if you go into them deeply in a way that they cannot with some kind of broad survey. (As an adult, I like situating myself this way, but it certainly is easier to do so when I can connect the things I'm learning to famous people and places I already know.)

[YsgolYGair]

Thank you both for those great responses. My fear of the shallow was exactly that - that they'd come out if it with nothing at all. (Which is exactly how I came out of history survey courses even in college, come to think of it.) I think I will go the route of studying the main people and civilizations and leave the survey course for some college professor to tackle. Thanks again!!

[Clemsondana]

I think this can be very child-dependent. One of my children loves learning about history, especially military history. He's great at remembering things in order because 'A conquored B, who were overtaken by C' links it all together. :-) I got a world history timeline and he fits things in between the battles that he already knows. My other child has little interest in history. With her, I've taken more 'what was the culture like?' approach. She was more interested in the food and foot-binding of ancient China, while my son was interested in the various factions that fought each other. She is also has a fiesty temperament, so she's interested when oppressive leaders show up, because she things they're terrible and should be overthrown. Since there's so much history to learn, it's been OK to work with both children's quirky interests, while constantly relating them back to the timeline and location on the map.

Edited September 23, 2016 by ClemsonDana

[happypamama]

I think it can be good either way.  At that age, I'm personally aiming for a general survey, giving them familiarity with the names and places and such, with a little depth in certain spots, depending on interest (and let's be honest, time).  I'm not worried about whether they remember everything the first time around.

 

I have a Bachelor's degree in medieval history, and I studied a lot of US history in school, so I feel pretty decently familiar with those.  I even got a little modern world history in high school too.  I never studied ancient history at all in school, not even a little bit, and that was at a reasonably decent school system.  We learned about the Pilgrims and Native Americans and the Boston Tea Party and the Civil War a lot, but nobody did pyramids and togas and such with us.  The only ancient history I knew was from the Bible, and although I knew that pretty well, I didn't know the bigger context of it.

 

So when I did SOTW 1 with my older two children when they were in 5th and 2nd.  I certainly didn't remember every detail, but the basic familiarity was helpful.  I was able to take the Bible history I knew and fill in a bigger context.

 

And then when I went through SOTW 1 again with my third and fourth children last year, I found that I remembered more and understood more.  My second child went through a second round of ancients last year, and he remembered some from the first time and was able to go into more depth that time.  So I think there is a lot to be said for a survey the first time through, and then more depth the next time around.

 

Or focus on a few civilizations and really immerse yourself in them and don't worry about the bigger context.  Get the kids excited about some specific things and let them really "own" them.  Nothing wrong with that either.  

[EmilyGF]

I like doing broad but leaving free time for exploration. That way kids have ideas about what they like to investigate more while having the time to do it.

Emily

[Reefgazer]

I think knowing a broad overview of history is important for a student, especially in the younger grades.  I would save deep for high school when the student had a good grasp of generalities. 

[Bluegoat]

As far as overviews, I think the trick is maybe to figure out how broad you can go without losing a coherent narrative.

 

To me, the narrative of the story is about the best way toa overcome the difficulty small kids have with timelines - A follows B as someone said above.

 

But - if you go too broad, often there isn't a very good narrative structure - this is the biggest problem I had with SOTW for the early years - one chapter didn't really follow in an A follows B way from another.  It's hard to cover the history of the whole world in a way where everything seems connected, because a lot of it isn't.