I need more interesting ideas for US history

[klmama]

I've been planning my dc's 11th grade US history course.  I've lined up the topics and materials (text plus Great Courses lectures), plus some movies and a few field trips (assuming they stay open).  It all looks okay, just kind of... boring.  What did your dc do in US history that was particularly interesting?  Please share about projects, must-have resources, field trips, or anything else you or they found especially interesting!  Thank you!!!!

 

 

[Lori D.]

Well, actually your plan sounds good to me! If your student hasn't been a rabid History fan all along, there's nothing wrong with a "get 'er done" U.S. History course. 😉  Projects or extras might just sound exhausting rather than fun to your student. What does your student say s/he wants to do?


On the other hand, if you have a History buff, one family I know got into a History recreation group the year they were doing U.S. History -- costumes, food, history event recreations, etc. -- and had a blast. Another family had a DS who was ho-hum about history per-se, but was very interested in weaponry, so they focused on History of Weaponry and he blacksmith-ed some knives as part of his History "output".

Do you have a creative sort of student? If so, what about writing a journal/play/story about a person/event of high interest? Cook/bake your way through the history time periods/areas? Make a board game involving elements from the time period? Or make a short film recreating an event? A slideshow/oral presentation? A short YouTube documentary or song video as "output"...?

Edited August 8, 2020 by Lori D.

[Alte Veste Academy]

7 minutes ago, Plum said:

What about focusing on one topic that is important to your student and tracking how it has changed throughout US History? I'm hooked on the idea of taking current events and working backwards to see how we got here.  

This is the most fun. I am working yet again on a History of Current Events!

ETA: and to answer the actual question, lol...

I like the idea of picking several themes and following them specifically as you go through the general outline. So if you think of history as a tapestry of many different themes woven together through time and illustrated by the contributions of different people through the years, you should see those themes over and over.

One thing we enjoyed doing was reading simultaneously through two general histories, a conservative and liberal choice, and comparing interpretations of the same events.

Edited August 8, 2020 by Alte Veste Academy

[Farrar]

I'm in the midst of planning our US history and lit year, which will then get turned into the third level of the curriculum I'm writing. I'm... ahem... further behind than I was at this point in previous years. I blame life. Oh, and the pandemic. It's the pandemic's fault.

Anyway, I kept thinking that I feel like unlike the history of other places and the world, which... my kids were totally exposed to a full history cycle, but I know they didn't really absorb it... I think US history is totally in the air all the time here and that most kids know the basic ten sentence outline summary of it already and have impressions and ideas of big figures and events. So I feel less pressure to cover that stuff in a systematic way. So instead, I'm dividing it up into four themes. I *think* they're going to be:

Culture 
Ideas
Race
Migration

So then we'll "do" American history through each lens all the way through - one per quarter. I'm getting slightly excited for it. I think it'll be a good year. Kids are looking forward to culture because we talked about doing American pop culture, entertainment, etc. from the start to the present and they think that'll be interesting. I'm excited for Race and Migration as units... I'm psyched for conceptually turning each theme into a big lens. It feels like we'll get a bit more in depth in the same amount of space this way.

[Farrar]

13 minutes ago, Plum said:

What about focusing on one topic that is important to your student and tracking how it has changed throughout US History? I'm hooked on the idea of taking current events and working backwards to see how we got here.  

So, one of my early teaching mentors famously taught American history backwards. For decades it was taught backwards at Sidwell Friends because of him. He did some really neat things with it. I thought about doing it this way for us and decided against it, but I do keep returning to it as a concept... I think it's absolutely a cool way to approach it.

[medawyn]

9 hours ago, Farrar said:

I'm in the midst of planning our US history and lit year, which will then get turned into the third level of the curriculum I'm writing. I'm... ahem... further behind than I was at this point in previous years. I blame life. Oh, and the pandemic. It's the pandemic's fault.

Anyway, I kept thinking that I feel like unlike the history of other places and the world, which... my kids were totally exposed to a full history cycle, but I know they didn't really absorb it... I think US history is totally in the air all the time here and that most kids know the basic ten sentence outline summary of it already and have impressions and ideas of big figures and events. So I feel less pressure to cover that stuff in a systematic way. So instead, I'm dividing it up into four themes. I *think* they're going to be:

Culture 
Ideas
Race
Migration

So then we'll "do" American history through each lens all the way through - one per quarter. I'm getting slightly excited for it. I think it'll be a good year. Kids are looking forward to culture because we talked about doing American pop culture, entertainment, etc. from the start to the present and they think that'll be interesting. I'm excited for Race and Migration as units... I'm psyched for conceptually turning each theme into a big lens. It feels like we'll get a bit more in depth in the same amount of space this way.

This was how my high school taught European History back in the day.  I was in the pioneer class, and it was awesome.  I remember so much from that class, not only because the teachers were passionate about the new program but because events were hung together through a lense that connected them.  I eventually studied most of that history again in other ways, but I’m shocked by how much I remember from 10th grade.

[Junie]

We actually split U.S. History into two years.  So the four-year sequence (in various orders because of combining students) -- Economics/Government, World History, Early U.S. History, and 20th Century History.

The 20th Century class is my favorite.  We actually take 10+ months to work through it because we do one decade per month.  Each time we've done this we've had a different focus.  Ds19 really enjoyed war history, so that was a major focus.  Dd15 is a seamstress, so she likes learning about the fashion of each decade.

We try to watch at least one movie and/or TV show from each decade (Star Wars!) and sometimes incorporate foods such as Oreos (which have been around since the 1910s).  I also like to include a work of literature.

 

Edited August 8, 2020 by Junie

[katilac]

Memorize all the lyrics to Hamilton and then track down what's accurate and what' not? 

I've done history through the lens of protest and protest songs and that's always interesting. You can start with current songs and popular artists and then make those connections and comparisons. Billie Holiday singing Strange Fruit in 1939 and Trey Songz singing How Many Times? in 2020 and all the ones in between. What are the differences between John Lennon's Imagine and then Power to the People? What makes a protest song, and what songs are frequently not recognized as such? Do protest songs actually help a movement? 

You can do chronologically alongside your standard history, you can do it by theme (labor movement, civil rights, environment). If you look more broadly at protest in general, you can find great clips on Youtube of the more modern stuff. It's one thing to read about protest, and it's another thing to actually watch a person facing down a military tank. 

 

[klmama]

Thanks for all these great ideas, everyone!   

 

 

 

[BusyMom5]

I found a book- American Cakes by Anne Byrn- that takes the reader through baking from 1650, forward.  We just started,  and it makes for a fun Friday afternoon 😀  My other thought is to have DD make her own timeline that includes movies, literature, music,  inventions,  and clothes for each decade.  Planning to start this for 1900-2000 as a project.

[kbutton]

2 hours ago, BusyMom5 said:

I found a book- American Cakes by Anne Byrn- that takes the reader through baking from 1650, forward.  We just started,  and it makes for a fun Friday afternoon 😀  My other thought is to have DD make her own timeline that includes movies, literature, music,  inventions,  and clothes for each decade.  Planning to start this for 1900-2000 as a project.

I think she has a cookie book too. I haven't seen either one, but Stuff You Missed in History interviewed her about both for their podcast. If you like the cakes, you might the other one. 🙂 

[Runningmom80]

This may not help at all but I'm roughly planning a Social Justice Humanities type course. These are the resources I'm using. There may be something in there for you to add. 🙂 

https://trello.com/b/B3VdyDHl/high-school-social-justice-humanities-resources

[cintinative]

FYI.  I just got an email that Center for Lit is offering a memoir based U.S. history course. Maybe some of the books they are using will be of interest?
 

https://www.centerforlit.com/hneg201

[Runningmom80]

3 hours ago, cintinative said:

FYI.  I just got an email that Center for Lit is offering a memoir based U.S. history course. Maybe some of the books they are using will be of interest?
 

https://www.centerforlit.com/hneg201

 

This looks so good! 

 

homeschooling high school is so expensive 

[*Jessica*]

On 8/7/2020 at 11:17 PM, Alte Veste Academy said:

This is the most fun. I am working yet again on a History of Current Events!

Please tell me more?!  This sounds like a fantastic way to spend my oldest’s senior year (next year).  

On 8/11/2020 at 9:14 AM, cintinative said:

FYI.  I just got an email that Center for Lit is offering a memoir based U.S. history course. Maybe some of the books they are using will be of interest?
 

https://www.centerforlit.com/hneg201

I was excited to see this, but then disappointed when I realized it was targeted at the middle school level.

[cintinative]

1 minute ago, Mom2mthj said:

I was excited to see this, but then disappointed when I realized it was targeted at the middle school level.

 

There is a middle school and a high school class.  They are two separate classes. The link above is for high school. I hope that helps!

Edited August 12, 2020 by cintinative

1 hour ago, cintinative said:

 

There is a middle school and a high school class.  They are two separate classes. The link above is for high school. I hope that helps!

Thanks!  Not sure why my email from them only seemed to bring up the middle school class as I had a high schooler enrolled last year.  It does look very interesting.

Now that I look at the center for lit description more closely, do you think it is enough to be a credit in us history?  Some of the books are long, but there is only two hours of discussion a month.

[cintinative]

1 hour ago, Mom2mthj said:

Now that I look at the center for lit description more closely, do you think it is enough to be a credit in us history?  Some of the books are long, but there is only two hours of discussion a month.

 

I wondered that as well.  I am not clear on what assignments are given beyond the reading, if any.

[PeachyDoodle]

We're doing a Decades Book for US history this year. It's kind of like a digital scrapbook with a page for each decade (we're doing 1770's to 2000's). She includes important people, places, events, cultural developments, etc. We've only been at it two weeks but so far she is having fun with it.

[Alice]

We started listening to a great podcast last year for Government and are still working our way through it. It’s called Wicked Game and it’s covering every US election, one week at a time. It’s due to wrap up in November with the 2020 election. 

[*Jessica*]

4 hours ago, Alice said:

We started listening to a great podcast last year for Government and are still working our way through it. It’s called Wicked Game and it’s covering every US election, one week at a time. It’s due to wrap up in November with the 2020 election. 

This sounds excellent!  Thanks for mentioning it.  I’m almost done with the first episode and it is so well done!  We’re definitely adding this for our government studies this semester.

23 hours ago, Alice said:

We started listening to a great podcast last year for Government and are still working our way through it. It’s called Wicked Game and it’s covering every US election, one week at a time. It’s due to wrap up in November with the 2020 election. 

Pardon my ignorance, but I have never listened to podcasts.  How do you access it and is there a fee?

[Alice]

On 8/14/2020 at 2:00 PM, Mom2mthj said:

Pardon my ignorance, but I have never listened to podcasts.  How do you access it and is there a fee?

 

No fee. We listen through Apple podcasts. There are a few ads, but not a ton. I think there are apps you can listen to that are a fee and have no ads but I haven’t used them. There are other podcast apps but we just use Apple because we have iphones and it’s easy. 

[klmama]

On 8/14/2020 at 1:00 PM, Mom2mthj said:

Pardon my ignorance, but I have never listened to podcasts.  How do you access it and is there a fee?

You can listen to Wicked Game podcasts online here.