Shake Up Learning: Ch. 18: What Does Dynamic Learning Look Like?

I liked the learning experience examples because they showed what a wide variety of activities we can do in our classes, regardless of grade or subject.

I like the #goaltime project in Chapter 18. Because we do National History Day and that takes up a lot of time, I don’t think that we would be able to dedicate much class time to a project like this, but even a few minutes here or there would be very beneficial to students. I want to start the school year with having students create vision boards like the ones that Kasey shows in Chapter 15, and that would tie in nicely as an introduction to a #goaltime project.

For me, the hardest part of planning a lesson is deciding what the priorities are. As a Social Studies teacher I know that we can’t cover everything, but I have to choose which content will reach my students and teach that within the context of teaching historical thinking skills. Focusing on the skills and allowing students choice over the topics (within the context of a unit) seems to work well, but it's hard to decide which parts of history are more "important" than others.