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Articles from
January 2009
Black History Month—Engaging Educational Choices
Here is a good Website that will help teachers to highlight February, which is Black History month. There are many possibilities here for higher level thinking skills. While the activities are designed for the regular classroom, they are also open-ended. With proper guidance, groups of gifted students could take the concepts to a much deeper level.
AT&T’s Patchwork of African-American Life contains Websites that integrate the Internet into classroom learning around the subject of African-American life. In addition to learnign about Black History, students are asked to draw their own conclusions about specific situations and defend them. Each bulleted item below presents Black history in a different way. Some activities are inidividal, some are group activities, and some suggest working with other schools.
- Black History Hotlist—These links can be used as a jumping off point for independent research or to support an area of focus that the teacher chooses to emphasize.
- Black History Past to Present—Here you will find an interactive treasure hunt and quiz. Web sites that provide appropriate ways to find answers to the quiz are included. At the end of the exercise, students are asked to compose a thesis and essay stating what they feel are the most important aspects of African-American history.
- Sampling African America—This section engages students by helping them to feel personally connected to African-American history. It attempts to connect the student emotionally, thereby enabling him to feel that the subject is personally important.
- Little Rock 9, Integration 0—Through this WebQuest, students learn about nine African-American students who, back in 1957, chose to attend an all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas.
- Tuskegee Tragedy—In this WebQuest, students explore the issues of the Tuskegee Study and question the comparisons some people make to the study and such topics as abortion, gun control, and concentration camp experiments. By the time the study was exposed in 1972, a number of men had died of syphilis, others were dead of related complications, wives had been infected, and children had contracted the disease at birth.
Using Universal Themes to Promote Higher Level Thinking
The use of universal themes has been discussed in this blog on a couple of occasions:
The topic is so important for gifted students and so sought after by parents and teachers that I want to visit it again.
In education, we are often accused of delivering a curriculum that is not relevant to today’s students. If we teach (or have discussions at home) using universal themes, the material presented does become relevant.
A universal theme is a timeless, broad, abstract idea that can be used to tie together literary works or understand broad concepts in history. It is one to which all people can relate. It transcends race, gender, and creed.
In good literature, themes are implied rather than directly stated. By looking carefully at a universal theme, students are able to explore what that theme reveals about people, about their relationships, and about life in general. What motivates people to action? What causes a person to change? What human weaknesses and strengths do we see in others? Powerful universal themes explore concepts in depth. For example, rather than just study the facts of war/conflict, it is more interesting and meaningful to figure out how conflict changes the lives of all people involved.
If you visit the previous blogs mentioned above, you will find many ideas for using universal themes as well as many potential concepts that can be used as universal themes. Below are additional possibilities.
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Conformity/Nonconformity
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Free will vs. fate
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Growing up
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Hate
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Hypocrisy
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Martyrdom
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Restrictions of society
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Temptation
By using universal themes, you will make learning relevant, provide umbrellas under which details become easier to remember, and give students a framework of understanding that they can carry with them the rest of their lives.
Cartooning and Animation for Gifted Kids Revisited
Cartooning and animation are great outlets for those who have visual-spatial strengths. They also involve problem-solving skills, especially once one enters the realm of political cartoons or storyboards. There are many jobs available in this field for talented individuals, including film, advertising, video game design, print media, and instructional design.
My June 20, 2008 post on Cartooning and Animation for Gifted Kids has been very popular. Because of this interest, I am writing another blog on the topic with more resources. Here are some good Web sites, arranged in alphabetical order.
Contains all kinds of information on careers in the fields of animation and cartooning.
Offers information and advice on careers in animation.
Created for older, more mature students, this site offers lessons in political cartooning.
The best part of this Web site is the section on free classroom handouts.
Includes almost 300 quick tips for drawing cartoon characters and objects.
Written by Chris Browne, who creates the comic strip Hagar the Horrible. He offers advice on how to become a cartoonist.
Offers regularly updated cartoon drawing lessons.
Lists numerous drawing lessons, arranged alphabetically.
Teaching Gifted Students to Analyze Literature
Whether you are a parent or a teacher, there are some great resources to help you encourage students to think analytically about the books they read.
From University of Connecticut’s Schoolwide Enrichment Model Reading program, comes Using the SEM-R Bookmarks. I like the suggestions provided at this Web site because they explain how adults can model the thinking they want to develop in children. For example:
“How would the problem change if the story took place elsewhere?
The teacher could say, ‘I’ll show you how I might answer that question. First I would think of a different place or setting—maybe here in Willimantic. Then I would think about what is different between Willimantic and the setting in the book. (She could talk about some of these differences.) Now I would think about how these differences might change the problem.”
By modeling all behavior, we help students to better understand.
Be sure and download the “Bookmarks” provided at the beginning of the article. These bookmarks provide 28 pages of good higher level questions to pose when discussing books of all types. Even if you haven’t read the book that the child is discussing, you can elicit a conversation with these questions.
Inauguration—January 20, 2009
Don’t miss the opportunity to introduce your students to the historical significance and excitement of the upcoming presidential inauguration. The following Web sites can be relied on for accurate, in-depth information.
Offers extensive information about all things having to do with the presidential inauguration. The history section is especially detailed and interesting.
Contains the schedule for the days leading up to, through the days following the inauguration. There is a link to the committee’s Flickr page, with lots of related photos.
Information on security at the upcoming inauguration and the role of the Secret Service in protecting government officials.
Where you can read the inaugural address from 54 inaugurations.
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