V. Summary of How to Engage Students
Experiencing the Civil War: Engaging Strategies for All Students
Create an environment for thinking.
Bring them from their level (drag them if you have to).
Make them generate and test their ideas.
Build their thinking process.
You make them think, it’s a boost of confidence they’ll learn!
Do you care about the kids, first?
Are you enthusiastic about the learning?
Bibliography of Sorts
Barton, K. C., & Levstik, L. S. (2003). Why don’t more history teachers
engage students in interpretation? Social Education (68), 6, 358-361.
Dunn, R., & Dunn, K. (1993). Teaching secondary students through their
individual learning styles: Practical approaches for grades 7-12. Allyn
& Bacon: Boston.
Husbands, C. (1996). What is history teaching? Bristol, PA: Open University
Press.
VanSledright (2002) In search of America’s past. New York: Teacher’s
College Press
VanSledright, B. A. (2000). Can ten-year olds learn to investigate history as
historians do? OAH Newsletter, (28), 3, 7.
Wineburg, S. S. (2001). Historical thinking and other unnatural acts:
Charting the future of teaching the past. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
NARA Document Analysis Worksheets
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/worksheets/
Also found in Social Education 67(3), pp. 417-428. 2003
Dr. Brad Burenheide
College of Education
Kansas State University
bburen@ksu.edu
NCHE Annual Conference 2011
Charleston, SC
2 April 2011
Agenda for Session
About Your Presenter
A Learning Theory
Overview of the Three Strategies
Primary Sources and History
Simulations
Instructional Gaming
I.
About Your Presenter
My kids…my kids…my kids
Classroom Teacher
Got to think
You think by Doing
Ergo, Get the kids Doing
II. Kolb’s Theory of Experiential Learning
4 Steps to the Theory
Concrete experience—the learner experiences or does
an action.
Reflective experience—the learner recalls, reflects, or
observes what has happened.
Abstract conceptualization—the learner creates an
explanatory theory or model, thinks about the meaning of what
happened, or generalizes what was observed.
Active experimentation—the learner plans how to test
or model the theory
Does the theory have to go in order? IMHO, no.
IMPLICATIONS FOR HISTORY/SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHERS:
•Our classes have to become a lab setting
•Engagement is the key to enhancing learning
•Our kids have multiple modalities of learning, we have to tap these
ways of learning in a rigorous and intense form of learning.
•The strategies presented here are built around these concepts. Let’s
go through them
III. Primary Source Investigation
Use the tools of history to become better thinkers,
NOT miniature historians, per se.
Where academic history and student history differ?
What should the content be?
How do you scaffold these investigations?
Examples
IV. Simulations & Instructional Gaming
Interact Simulations
It’s not just playing a game…setting, authenticity, feedback and responses.
“Choose you own adventure?” What if I don’t like the choices?
Why do a wargame?
www.Juniorgeneral.org
The big picture of how I taught the American Civil War…