Team 8-1 American History Students are well on their way with a brand new collaborative project that focuses on the Federalist Papers and iBook Author! Before I explain this new and exciting endeavor, let’s take a quick look at the past two weeks in Team 8-1 American History Class…
Following the investigation of the Articles of Confederation, students participated in a simulation based on the Constitutional Convention. Students were each assigned an actual member of the Convention, and performed a bit of research on their Convention member. Students were then presented with the “Burning Issues” that faced the fragile United States following the American Revolution. These “Burning Issues” included:
Acting as their assigned member of the Constitutional Convention, Team 8-1 Students used their knowledge of their assigned individual and that of the constituents that they represent to make decisions on the above mentioned “Burning Issues”. Once these decisions were made, our delegates worked with delegates from their region (New England, Middle, & Southern) to create official stances for these “Burning Issues”. A chosen delegate presented these official stances to our Convention in order to create compromises between each region in the hope to aid our struggling nation during the late 1780s. Once these compromises were created, students took time to investigate the real events of the Constitutional Convention and compared the actual convention with the Team 8-1 American History Convention. Unfortunately, I missed several days of school last week due to illness, but the show still continued for my students! While I was out sick, I recorded several lessons for my students outlining the key components of the United States Constitution. Using the Ed Puzzle application, students watched these videos (in some cases it took several tries to film the video due to my coughs & sneezing), and gathered pertinent information for an upcoming project. On the day before my return, students used an online tutorial to investigate the Federalist & the Anti-Federalists. The tutorial, created by CPALMS, included awesome practice activities for students to check their understanding! Thanks to all my students for the patience that they showed while I was out! For some time now, I have been contemplating a way for students to create with iBook Author. I have created several iBooks during my time as an educator, and have always enjoyed the research and thought that goes into each creation. Several weeks ago, I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be awesome for my students to create with iBook Author?”…. and the following project began to come into fruition. Due to the popular Hamilton Musical, several of my students have acquired a deep interest in Alexander Hamilton. I have read the Alexander Hamilton biography by Ron Chernow (a great read!), and can understand why students find Hamilton to be a polarizing figure, with or without a musical that bears his name. Therefore, I took this idea of a student created iBook and began to develop ideas on how to include Hamilton. After narrowing down my list of ideas, I settled on focusing this new project on the Federalist Papers. If you are not aware, the Federalists Papers are a collection of 85 essays published in New York that gave support for the newly created Constitution. I wanted my students to look at a select few Federalists Papers and perform document analysis of these primary sources. From there, I thought it would be interesting for students to “translate” these essays into their own words and provide explanations on how these papers still apply to us today. With all of these ideas in my head, I began to design the Federalist Papers iBook Creation Project for my students. Team 8-1 American History students will be working with Mr. Jourdan Englert’s American History students on this project. In addition, students will be utilizing the collaborative iCreate Studio space! Students will be creating video introductions for their iBook within the One-Button Studio and also designing the iBook as a group. When I pitched this idea to my colleague, we both felt that it would be beneficial for students to make the majority of the decisions in terms of the actual contents of the iBook. This project will not only call for students to perform research, but will also put their primary source analysis skills to the task. Students will also show of their creativity because they will be the “editors” of their own iBooks. I cannot wait to display some of the student work that will come from this project! Thus far, students have analyzed Federalists #1, 10, 54, & 81 and have began brainstorming ideas on what to include in their iBook!
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Mr. Steve Hartnett
Mr. Hartnett will update the Room 212 Blog with classroom updates on a regular basis. Be sure to follow me on Twitter @ MrHartnett212 Archives
July 2019
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