Lesson Plan Topics

Here is the list of people who have sent me the topic of their papers as I requested in our last meeting last week this time:

Kelli Archuletta – Declaration of Independence (Middle)

Ryan Christenson – Declaration of Independence (High School)

Lawrence DeHerrera – Captivity Narratives (Middle)

Lauren Gonzales – Sons of Liberty (Middle)

Duane Grasmick – Salem Witch Trials (Unspecified)

Delphine Grayson – Declaration of Indepedendence (HS)

David Hazlett – French and Indian War (Unspecified)

John Hutchins – Declaration of Independence (Middle)

Curt Lukassen – Lowell (HS)

Kris Jones – Boston Massacre (Middle)

Nancy Oswald – Lexington and Concord (Elementary)

Connie Prewitt – Boston Massacre (Unspecified)

Marie Schwager – Homelife in Colonial America (Unspecified)

Amanda Trujillo – Salem Witch Trials (Middle)

John Ward – Paul Revere’s Ride (HS)

Sherri Ward – Boston Tea Party (Elementary)

The word in paretheses is the grade level you teach if you specified it in your e-mail.

Looking at the list, I am immediately struck by the number of you who want to do the same topic and the number of you who didn’t follow the instructions and haven’t sent me anything. I have the same solution for both these problems: blogging. [I can hear Linda wrenching in pain as she reads this right now.] It’s very simple. If you haven’t sent me an e-mail, you have to pick a topic not up there and post it, along with the documents you plan to use. Your deadline for this is July 15th or you will fail the assignmenbt.

If your topic is up there and you want to keep it, do the same. In fact, if you want a new one do the same thing too. I will cut you two breaks: 1. Two people can do the same topic if they teach different grade levels (although ideally all the lessons will be adaptable to all grade levels) and 2. Two people can do the same topic if they use completely different documents (and I’ll make an exception for the Second Continental Congress version of the Declaration of Independence).

By posting your intentions on your blogs, you can work out your similarities amongst yourselves. And don’t try to bring me in on it either. I am fleeing the country until after said July 4th holiday and Matt is in seclusion until even longer. [I'd tell you where he is, but then I'd have to kill you.]

Remember, if you don’t know someone’s e-mail, they’ll get an e-mail notification if you post on their blog. Technology can solve all our problems!

You can’t do that Matt!

He’s not from the 17th or 18th centuries.

The key to Flickr.

If you can’t follow the instructions in Brian’s e-mail, try these.

1. First go to the site: http://www.flickr.com/groups/triptoboston2007.

2. Sign in with a Yahoo ID. [Go to http://www.yahoo.com and register if you don't have one].

3. Download photos from your camera to your computer. Move those photos to an easy place to find them, like your desktop.

4. Hit the upload button on your Flickr site and upload them to your account.

5. Here’s what I’ve been missing all these past few days: Once they are in your account, click on a photo. The press the tiny button in small gray print that says “Send to Group” immediately over the picture. Unless you are a Flickr maniac you only have one group, “Trip to Boston.” Click there and you’re done.

Once the photos are posted, anyone in the group can use them.  If we all post our best photos, this can become quite a resource.

Thanks Brian for setting this up.

The Freedom Trail

The Freedom Trail was established in the 1950s as a way to attract tourists to some of Boston’s most cherished historical sites.  However, in recent years there has been clamoring by some folk to clean it up — to make it more historically accurate.  By that I mean to include the forgotten voices of the revolution — the cordwainers, longshoremen (remember them?) and other working-class people.  Well, we witnessed it yesterday at Old South Church.  In the back there was a marble bust of none other than George Twelve Hewes, a shoemaker who was at the Boston Massacre and also who participated in the Boston Tea Party.  I don’t know about you, but I find history more compelling when it’s a story about “common” people — or the “middling sort,” as 18th people were wont to say.

I really enjoyed the presentations yesterday, especially the meeting in the church before all the “fun” began in the Boston harbor.  Divided as we were between loyalists and patriots, it reconfirmed to me something I already knew: how intensely personal the revolution was.  We like to think as the Civil War dividing families and communities, but, of course, this happened first during the revolutionary era.  A wonderful film showing how the war shattered one family in a small Connecituct town is Mary Silliman’s War.  I purchased a copy for the grant; let me know if you’d like to borrow it.

I thought I posted this on the blog earlier.

Go here:

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/36.4/drake.html

to see the Drake article to read for Friday night. If you have time, try again to join the Flickr even if you can’t upload photos yet. We’ll go over the process at the meeting.

Miscellaneous Items

Again, the address for the Flickr group is:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/triptoboston2007

I know this needs repeating as as I write this it only has seven members. If you don’t have Brian’s e-mail (or didn’t get it), don’t worry. All you have to do is go to the site and join there by clicking on the link that says “Do you want to join this group?” or something to that effect. It’s public, anyone who cares can do that. From there you can see the pictures that others have uploaded and upload pictures yourself. I’m uploading our group photo as we speak. The process is practially self-explanatory, but I’ll try to review it at our Friday meeting if need be. In the meantime, why don’t the technologically proficient among you give it a shot so you can help me explain?

With regard to our activities at Mass Historical today, I thought I’d post this one here:

I’m looking forward to Pauline Maier on Thursday. We’re lucky to have her join us.

The other assignment.

Just a reminder, we will be meeting at 7:30PM on Thursday to discuss the lesson plan portion of the assignment. The model we will be using for those plans is this article, so please be sure to have it read by then. If you haven’t touched it, you should note that it requires the use of multiple similar primary sources. You have the links on the Blackboard page to start you on that quest, or you can use the material you’ve found on the trip so far. For example, I’ve heard a number of teachers are interested in that chair Tad talked about in the Peabody-Essex Museum. That’s awesome, but to have that work you are going to need a number of pictures of chairs for the comparison aspect to make sense. If you don’t have a lot of chair pictures, don’t dispair. There are probably pictures of many Seventeenth or Eighteenth Century chairs on the Web. Try a Google Image search to find more.

The Group Picture

There are two group pictures:  One with Jeff half in the picture and one with Jeff totally out of it.  I picked the former:

The Road Not Taken

Yesterday afternoon Nancy Oswald and I took a long walk along the beautiful [something] River.  I enjoyed learning about her family, school, and community.  Most of all, I enjoyed learning about the books she’s written.  Yes, books!  We have an accomplished children’s author among us!  Buy her stuff!  Okay, I digress.  The walk was very beautiful.  I enjoyed seeing the full, lush trees, as well as the sites and sounds of the foliage.  On the way back we took a fork in the road, which led us to an off-beaten path.  Frost would have been proud.  Rather than finding the trail again, we trekked through a Salem neighborhood, which was very beautiful.  The yards and landcapes were neatly kept, and the homes seemed to be in pristine condition.  It would be too much to say we planned it this way — in fact we got lost! — but we enjoyed taking an alternative route.  Instead of returning at 5:30 like I had planned, we got back at 6:00.  The hike was great — I recommend.
Well, I’d better get ready for our trip to Maine today.  I’ll writer later…

Test Picture No. 2

I had intended to put up our group picture as I figure out how to describe the posting of photographs for you, but our camera battery finally died. Therefore, I bring you my son Everett: