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The Great Depression is an important part of US history and from a policy point of view telling of the future.  We almost had one again in 2008.  So, when we take on the Great Depression we look at how we got there and how we got out.  

 We also spend significant time on the effects on individual Americans.  One approach is through primary source analysis (what we do here) and a student-designed gallery walk (how to on student-designed gallery walks here).  I also like to use the vehicle that was popular of the era for sharing information.  In the case of the Great Depression, this is the newspaper.

 How to:

Analytic geometry (a.k.a. conic sections) used to be my least favorite unit to teach.  The formulas are dry and easy to mix up, it's hard to find real world applications where my students might need these equations (or how to find the directrix, vertex, etc.), and they almost seem like a side topic from all the other work we have been doing in PreCalculus.  When I find a topic dull, I take it as a personal challenge to make it interesting to my students.  Over the past two years, I have fallen in love with conic sections.  Here's what I do to keep it interesting:

It's easy to teach the castles and knights of the Middle Ages.  Students love creating their own heraldry crests and embarking on simulations of the feudal system.  But there is more to the Middle Ages in Europe than the tales of King Arthur (although, I definitely included them).  The engaging activities we jump into in our class are anchored by interactive notebooks.

The key idea here is interactive. 

While we do many creative projects and assessments, there are also several essays each year which require students either to do an essay on research they conducted or to write an argumentative (a.k.a. persuasive) essay.  Students learn how to write essays in English class.   This is how are system is set up.  Yet, I find that the essay writing skills that my students have learned elsewhere often don't get applied to papers in my class.  I haven't quite yet figured out why the organizational skills students develop in their English classes don't show up in Social Studies papers, but they often are absent.  Therefore, I have all my students complete an argumentative essay activity. 


The next unit in our U.S. history curriculum is World War II, which I have written about  many times. It is weirdly one of my favorite periods to teach.  So, as I sat down to write this post, I thought what could I tell you that is new.  I've written about books for World War II, student-centered projects, using maps, and more.  There are so many great parts for World War II that I often choose from a long list of activities, role plays and more.  

 I think perhaps one of the most valuable lessons I do is a one day touch on the experience of foreign-born citizens in the United States during the war.  The study focuses primarily on the experience of Japanese-Americans but also  Italian-Americans.  

Trigonometry is covered over three units in my Precalculus class. In the first unit we work on graphing trigonometry and trigonometric functions.  The second trigonometry unit includes such topics of angles of depression and elevation, identities and the law of sines and cosines. The final trigonometry unit works with vectors.  

Some students come from Algebra 2 familiar with the basic trigonometric functions; others have not yet seen trigonometry.  This unit is a mix of review and basic trigonometry.  It is a great place for an open-ended project that taps into students’ creativity. 
Ancient Rome is an era rich with lasting legacies in architecture, government and more.  One often overlooked legacy of Ancient Rome is the technological advances that occurred even as the empire expanded.  
There are lots of ways to approach the science and technology.  If you are short on time, you can grab a video (this is one from study.com).   But if you have time, it is a worth while investment to have students engage in one or more activities.  I set up 5 stations for students to investigate.  Typically, students will complete 2 - 3 of the stations.  

The stations are:

Wouldn’t it be great if every topic could be highly engaging?  Or if you had time and creativity to “play” with topics?  It would. In reality, time is scarce.  Furthermore, and I hope it's not just me, some topics are just not that inspiring.  

 Graphing exponential functions is one of those, somewhat uninspiring.  It’s in the curriculum, so we learn it but I have yet to find a truly creative approach to them.  After completing our notes, students need to practice. To make it just a little more fun than a problem set, students use digital task cards. 

 Benefits of digital task cards: 

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I am a research policy advocate, educator, curriculum developer, author, PhD, amateur chef and of course, ultra marathon runner. I am deeply passionate about helping every student have the best opportunity to find their passions and develop their skills.

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