Start Spreading the News

The planning has already started for the next APUSH Institute here at UNC. Tell a friend: June 19-23, 2006

Colorful half Centuries

One more idea... stolen from a Quantum Learning Conference this summer

Color code your eras... this helps kids to picture what they are learning better. Maybe they can't remember the dates of the Jacksonian Era, but They can remember that they took thier notes in a certain color and then remember the 1/2 century.

Mine go like this...

PS- hang with me on gross overgeneralizations

1600-1649- Red (Bloody takeover)
1650-1699- Orange (Mixing of cultures)
1700-1749- Yellow (Proceed with caution- learning to be different)
1750-1799- Green (GO! Revolution)
1800-1849- Blue (A fresh country)
1850-1899-Violet (The Civil War... red and blue mixed)
1900-1949-Black (Depression and War)
1950-2000-Brown (The age of multiculturalism)

I used the rainbow because most kids remember rainbow order... and we put themes with each one. I think this is really helping to keep things straight. I see it on tests!

Good Luck
Kel

Presidential time frame.

Wanted to throw an idea out, see if anyone had suggestions or comments.

I decided to do this year's timeline... one day per president. Not that we are covering the president... but "Washington" day is his era, "Adams" day is his era etc. I have liked it so far. It attaches a president to a time period, we get a bit more indepth on each person and we have a good chronology.

Some modifications are... ofcourse we have to start out colonial.
I am spending part of the end of the year as review only (about a month... We are on a block).
Some get more days (Lincoln= 3, Jackson= 2)

Some presidents get combined (Fillmore and Taylor share etc)

This has been cool for the kids. I feel like they understand the ideas better... and are able to keep the chronology straight.

Tell me what you think

Kel

1861

Thought this Whiman Poem might be fun when you start the Civil War...
Hope all is Well
Kelly

1861 ARM'D year! year of the struggle! No dainty rhymes or sentimental love verses for you, terrible year! Not you as some pale poetling, seated at a desk, lisping cadenzas piano; But as a strong man, erect, clothed in blue clothes, advancing, carrying a rifle on your shoulder, With well-gristled body and sunburnt face and hands--with a knife in the belt at your side, As I heard you shouting loud--your sonorous voice ringing across the continent; Your masculine voice, O year, as rising amid the great cities, Amid the men of Manhattan I saw you, as one of the workmen, the dwellers in Manhattan; Or with large steps crossing the prairies out of Illinois and Indiana, Rapidly crossing the West with springy gait, and descending the Alleghanies; 10 Or down from the great lakes, or in Pennsylvania, or on deck along the Ohio river; Or southward along the Tennessee or Cumberland rivers, or at Chattanooga on the mountain top, Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs, clothed in blue, bearing weapons, robust year; Heard your determin'd voice, launch'd forth again and again; Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp'd cannon, I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year.


Walt Whitman