History Teacher Summer Activities
Summer schools and workshops are a valuable way for students with a particular interest or strength in a subject to deepen their knowledge of it outside of the classroom. Summer school provides opportunities for field trips, special interest projects, and for students to establish links with local museums, art galleries, and other venues of historical interest. The role of the history teacher running these programs is to hand over more of the inquiry to the students, but also to facilitate creative thinking and exploration.
Other People Are Reading
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Organise an Archiving Day
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Ask the students to identify the area of history that they are most interested in and why. Break them into groups depending on their interests, and encourage them to look for primary material relating to this subject. Sources of primary material would be libraries, museums, newspaper archives, photography archives and audio interviews. Organize trips to local venues, and arrange interviews with people who can provide primary information. When the students have collected this primary material, ask them to write their own narratives on this period in history, and to see if it is the same as or different from "textbook" narratives.
Create a Forum
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Support the students to create an online forum on their chosen area of history, and to use it to develop discussions and debates with other history enthusiasts. The challenge for them is to research their debate topics so that they are learning to back up their opinions with fact. Forums on Egyptian history and ancient Greek or Roman history are particularly popular. Use history plays such as Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" to recreate infamous key events such as battles and betrayals.
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Pre-Colonial History
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Encourage the students to examine Native American history, starting in their local area and spreading beyond, depending on the time and resources that you have. Explore any findings of Native American artifacts, and study the evidence of how they used to live their daily lives. Look for stories with an unusual or interesting angle. Examine the roles and daily habits of Native American men, women and children. Compare how they existed as a social community before America was colonized by white settlers. Organize field trips to areas with a rich Native American heritage, so that the students can experience an earlier sense of American history.
History of Imprisonment in America
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Support the students to research the penal colonies, where America was used as a dumping ground for criminals who were exported there by other countries. Trace the history of America's prisons --- where was the first one built? When did the idea of prison become the most popular form of punishment? What states still practice capital punishment? Have them read and stage a performance of Kafka's "In the Penal Colony" to think about the roles of prisoner and warden.
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References
Resources
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