Embedded Files
I'm back to teaching middle school (thank goodness) and created quite a few new lessons this year - some of which even worked! It has definitely been a year of relearning for me. My 7th graders, while much more curious and enjoyable than many of my seniors were, were not much more dedicated to their learning, and particularly completing work. So, some lessons felt like me dragging them along, but others really worked great. Here's the top 5 new lessons of 24-25... Wait... there's more than 5? It really was a good year! Okay, cool.
Here's the top 10 new lessons of 24-25!
*Most of these are PowerPoint files. Though they will open in Google Slides, they will not look or function properly. Use PowerPoint!
My goal last summer was to create an opening lesson to hammer home the fundamentals of historical writing for my soon-to-be 7th graders. I worked a ton, along with a colleague, to create a story-driven lesson where students would learn the 6 basic rules we agreed on. The lesson seemed to work fine when I did it the second week of school. The students enjoyed it and participated well.
However, almost none of it stuck. Here I am in May, at the end of the year, and I still have far too many students who don't put punctuation on sentences, overuse pronouns and write evidence that has little to nothing to do with their claim.
I'm not giving up, but I am cutting back. I dropped one of the 5 rules and combined two others, so there will only be four to emphasize next year. I'm also creating practice activities for those four rules that will be used repeatedly throughout the year.
Our students really need the lesson, so even though the results were not perfect this year, I'm happy with the starting frame and look forward to seeing how the improvements work out.
I'm not only back at middle school but back to teaching an unnamed-for-legal-reasons College Prep Elective. (Yes, they sent me a cease and desist from even mentioning their name in my shared lessons... Disney doesn't care but AV- unnamed-for-legal-reasons does!) I wanted something new for my 7th graders to do for a college project. I'm tired of banners, posters and brochures. So, this year, I put them in the role of recruiters who had to present their college to prospective students. They created a campus map, designed school merch and yes, even explained things like academic programs. It was fun and I feel like my students learned more about college than they ever did with those other projects! (That said, like most things in unnamed-college-prep-elective, it took WAY longer than it should.)
I made a concerted effort this year to talk less. Anyone who has followed me for any length of time (or read my incredible book!) knows that I am a fervent supporter of direct instruction and lecture when appropriate in education. However, the attention span of my students is far shorter than it has ever been. Whereas lecture days were often their favorites in the past, they often felt more dry this year. I didn't get nearly the amount of interaction that I was accustomed to. So, I wanted to find ways of less talking at them, or at least to encourage active listening when I did.
Enter Chronology (or maybe Pitch Meeting.)
I came up with the idea of giving students a story from history broken down into key events. They have to arrange the story blocks in chronological order using only context clues like "next" or "before that" as best they could. I would then tell them the story and give them a chance to rearrange the story again. They'd then create a storyboard of the story using only pictures.
I came up with a storyline where they'd roleplay as production assistants who had dropped their notes before a big pitch meeting (leading to the temptation of changing the name... but I had such a cool title image so I held on - still not sure which direction to go.)
I tried it once and immediately realized I had WAY overestimated my students' abilities to read context. After first period I changed it up and told the story first, then had them rearrange it. I thought that would be way too easy. Yeah, it wasn't. They were still challenged by the activity, so, good enough for me! The storyboard part was fun and the students absolutely retained more about the story (in this case the Spanish Sad Night) than they had in the past.
It was good enough that I made a second version for Japan later in the year. I'll look to make at least one more for next year as well. I love that it enforces the need to listen and helps students at least think a bit about those context clues.
7. Rafael's Art Museum
Presentation File (Use PowerPoint!)
I've long done a lesson adapted from TCI where students have to identify art from different periods of European history. I took that lesson and updated it this year. I made it into a virtual museum with the story that students were gifted a bunch of art but it was not labeled. They had to put it in the right wing of their museum. At the end, based on how well they did, they'd get a Yelp review of some number of stars. I wrote up absolutely ridiculous Yelp reviews and it made for a fun ending to the lesson. That was Raphael's Art Museum.
It was so good that I knew I wanted to do it again. So, I started with that virtual museum and made a similar lesson for Latin American art. This time instead of comparing European Art from different eras, they'd compared Latin American art from different civilizations (Maya, Aztec and Inca.) I wrote updated Yelp reviews (with some having continuing storylines from the previous Yelp reviews) and freshened up the name, but otherwise the lesson was the same. The students absolutely loved it - again.
I started on two more art museum lessons for my Asia and Middle East units. Those didn't come together quite as easily and thus, didn't get done, but I'm guessing you may see them pop up on next year's list!
6. The Crusades Redux
Presentation File I Printables
Continuing the theme of freshening up old lesson is my new take on the Crusades. For over a decade I've done my Crusades lab where I took students on a "pilgrimage" around the school. We stopped at various locations and completed tasks related to the journey. This year though my new classroom no longer has easy access to the outside, our school is under heavy construction, and my knees are 5 years older than the last time I did it. So, as memorable as it was, I wanted to eliminate the walking portion of the lab.
It would take a lot to make a lesson with the same impact that did not involve that outside walk. Most importantly, I'd still dress up and perform my over-the-top call to Crusade speech. I'd also punch up each of the tasks done outside. One benefit of moving inside is that those outside tasks had be kept very simple. Student only had a pencil and a basic worksheet. Now that we were inside, I could pull out all the stops. It became a stations activity where, after much brainstorming with a colleague, would be a series of memories a Crusader had while on the journey. This meant it could still end with the memorable "Fate Letters" that students previously received after their adventure outside. It would still be a pilgrimage - just the memory of one.
The students, thankfully, still enjoyed the activity. They still got to experience the letdown of the battle already being over when they reached Jerusalem and still got some sense of "pilgrimage" as they moved from station to station. They still really loved the opening speech and my monk costume and still walked out the door talking about their particular fate. While it wasn't as memorable as leading them around the school, it still worked - and I wasn't exhausted at the end of the day. I call that a win for my old bones!
(It also helped that one of my younger colleagues still did the outdoor portion of the lab. He had his group of crusaders stop by to visit mine. He teaches dual immersion so he came to us speaking Spanish, helping show students that Christians from all over Europe had to learn to work with one another!)
5. Resistance: Christians in Rome
Keeping with the theme of upgraded lessons is this new lesson. Our textbook, History Alive by TCI, is pretty good as far as textbooks go. I was looking for a new lesson for Rome, particularly the rise of Christianity, and it has one on interpreting parables. I liked the idea, but it didn't look like my students would given that involved quite a bit of reading. So, I needed a story hook to help me hide their broccoli in some chocolate.
I came up with the idea that the parables would lead to a secret code used to help some Christians escape Roman persecution. Instead of having a worksheet filled with text, the students would encounter the parables more naturally as they traveled through Rome. The added "danger" of trying to save someone lent more motivation. The students ended up getting way into it. (On that note, I've found that my students this year are far more interested in religious topics than they have been in the past.) They excitedly "decoded" the meaning of the parables and had fun trying to solve the final puzzle.
The one thing I wanted that I couldn't quite pull off was creating AI video transitions for each step. AI video just wasn't quite ready yet back in August. I bet it will be next year though!
4. A Day in The Inca Empire
Presentation File (Use PowerPoint!) I Teacher Script
My Conquest unit has always been a massive beast. There is just so much material I can teach and it's all so interesting. In my last couple runs, this resulted in the activities involving the Inca getting smaller and smaller. This year, I wanted to change that. I wanted something for the Inca that could stand out from those of the Maya and Aztec (which I also changed quite a bit, see: Chronology above.) I saw an episode of a random history mystery show about the purpose of Machu Picchu. So, that seemed like a good place to start. That led me to the modern Inca Trail. I thought of stations that would occur at points along the trail, ultimately revealing the purpose. That didn't quite get me where I wanted to be.
I went back to the drawing board and noticed that this unit, huge as it was, did not have a "Day in the Life" lesson.
What if I took the ideas and images I had gathered a turned them into a time-travel story? With my ideas and my good friend ChatGPT, I put together a series of vignettes that would highlight aspects of Inca culture from food, to communication, to religion. The whole Machu Picchu idea faded way into the background. It would still be the final stop on the journey, but the lesson become more about the journey itself. I used it as an introduction to the Inca and it was great. The students were way more interested in them this time around. Instead of just being another random native culture conquered by the Spanish, they were now their own unique thing.
It was so useful that I realized I should be doing one for every unit, if not for every culture, which then led to...
3. All of Japan
Culture Shock (Presentation) I Culture Shock (Student version)
A Day in Feudal Japan (Use PowerPoint) I Script
When I opened my Japan PowerPoint which I had last taught in 2019 I was greeted with this note I had left to myself:
"THIS IS ALL TERRIBLE. FIX IT! WHAT IS MY STORY?!"
Well, okay past self. Present self didn't think it looked so bad, but if you say so. I started redoing the lecture notes which ultimately led to me redoing basically the entire unit. I was already interested in making changes thanks to all I had learned from the excellent show Shogun. So, I was open to it. (Plus, I would be teaching this during our month of state testing meaning shorted classes and burned out kids, so change was needed anyway.) The lectures were shifted and changed. The old lessons were rearranged or completely tossed and a few new lessons were made, including a new "Day in the Life" for feudal Japan which would closely mirror the one we did for feudal Europe and another Chronology lesson.
The main change though was the expansion and deeper integration of the culture shock. Given that it was during testing, I really wanted this unit to be fun and interactive. So, I shortened the notes (as seen above) by taking out pretty much anything dealing with society and culture. I turned those topics into interactive lessons for a culture shock. I put together activities on Japanese writing, beauty, entertainment and more. The first set were all based on influences from China, with the remaining ones being more and more uniquely Japanese as the unit went on.
Most of them went very well. Students enjoyed them and actively participated. I didn't experience the "my students are completely done from testing" apathy that many of my colleagues seemed to. We kept working, kept playing and kept learning.
I feel far better about the unit than I ever have. It still isn't perfect in terms of timing (and never will be if it continues to fall during testing) but at least I have a clearer story to tell now.
2. Encanto
Part 1 I Part 2 I Part 3 I Part 4
We have an SEL curriculum that we're supposed to do with our advisory classes throughout the year. Like with most pre-packaged curricula, it has a few hits and a whole bunch of misses. The topics are valuable, but many of the lessons are just boring. One unit in particular interested me greatly. It is built around the idea of self-concept - or, how and why we see ourselves as we do. With a group of kids who are among the least reflective and self-aware that I've ever taught, I knew this topic had to be explored. I wanted to make sure that it was done in a way that would engage them.
I started by theming the lessons around Pixar's Soul. At some point, I realized Encanto would work even better. I got way into it and the lessons just kept growing. By the time I was done, I had nearly a full semester's worth of lessons using the movie, its songs and its characters.
It wasn't perfect (no lesson every is and certainly not huge unit is the first time) but the lessons worked extremely well overall. I learned a ton about my students and they learned a ton about themselves.
Plus, I think many of them realized that movies actually have a message!
I'll be writing up a full unit plan for this at some point.
I did a full write up on this lesson late last year that you can read about (and which has the links to the files as well.) In short, this lesson ruled. It's an investigation into a medieval town fallen into chaos. Students follow the clues to determine what happened. Some figured out that it had been ravaged by a disease - later found to be the Black Death. I couldn't have made this without plenty of help from my colleagues making it all the better. I'm very proud of what we put together - and our students loved it!
This is a perfect example of what I mean when I say a "story-driven lesson" and why I think this is such an important way to design our lessons today. Allowing students to imagine themselves in another situation truly motivates them to think deeper than they would otherwise. My students desperately wanted to be right about the mystery. They were hooked. Tell and story and let the learning take care of itself!
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