TAH+Grant


 * This is essentially a suggestion site for the Teaching American History Grant proposal. Please add your comments in the appropriate sections.**


 * What would we like to learn about? **
 * How to interpret primary sources
 * Where to find primary sources
 * Elementary pedagogy - how to teach history to 5th graders
 * The Women's Rights movement's early years
 * The political maneuvering behind the Monroe Doctrine
 * Henry Clay's "American System"
 * Details and stories about Civil War battles at the source
 * Why the border states chose to join the Confederacy.
 * How geography effected the outcome of Civil War battles
 * Specific real life short stories of average people in events from American history.
 * Sources that we can access online that connect students with the myriad historical interpretive actors/actresses from famous historical sites.

**How would we like to learn it?** New York would also be a wonderful place concerning the first colonists there to the Revolutionary War sites.
 * Travel
 * Boston
 * Philadelphia
 * Washington DC
 * Jamestown
 * Blacksburg
 * Gettysburg, and a couple other Civil War battleground locations
 * Over the 3 year period of the grant, focus on a different aspect of history or time period each year.
 * Have expert guides for summer group trips
 * Summer workshops, either with local experts brought in or visits to local things like special collections at a museum or university
 * Assigned Readings of documents, some books, etc.
 * Are there specific collections of resources or specific experts that you think we should partner with?
 * The Metropolitan State College in Denver has an excellent, growing collection of annotated primary sources.
 * Experts brought in to the district for evening or Saturday workshops for all social studies teachers to attend
 * I thought David McCullough's speech last year in Salt Lake was excellent for showing teachers and students how to look at historical research in a motivating way. We could show that video if it is still available.


 * What will we do with our learning? **
 * Build a repository of resources, lesson plans, ideas, for best practices
 * Collaboratively build an alternative to a textbook for each of the three grades (5th, 8th, 11th?)
 * Some kind of online resource that teachers and/or students could access
 * Moodle courses is an option
 * We would have to get many more computers or netbooks at the schools, especially elementary, if things were online.
 * An ongoing, district-wide PLC at each grade level that functions even if they don't meet face-to-face except once a year


 * What are the big questions to be answered soon? **
 * Should we just include a basic group of 50 or so teachers and they do the program for all three years, or do we have a different group each year, or do we just let teachers choose which years they want to participate with?
 * The assessment question (below) may also have an impact on this decision.
 * How should we handle the selection process if there are more teachers that want to participate for the whole thing, or for a particular year?
 * We have to have some kind of a pre/post assessment constructed/administrated by an external organization. Should we use this as an opportunity to write common assessments for the history classes, or should we focus more on the teachers than the students with the grant's assessment?
 * If another End-of-Year assessment is added to the elementary list, it may deter enthusiasm/support for the proposal
 * [|Article encouraging the] use of self-defined assessment questions rather than nationally validated ones.
 * Should we invite other districts to the south of us to join with us?
 * Our application would benefit from their numbers (students, schools not meeting AYP, etc.)
 * We would have to give up a few slots for teachers if they do participate.
 * Teachers will be paid for all of the workshops and other activities and will get credit or points, but what happens when a teacher signs up, then does the travel part and decides they don't want to follow through with the lesson plans or whatever we decide to do after the trip?