Re:Weaving History

So this post was prompted by the awesome #sschat on Monday, May 8th, 2017 on Ending the Year with a Bang! And it brought up this activity that I did with my world history class ( CHW3M - World to 1500 CE ) a few years ago. Lots of teachers asked me for pictures of the activity, but, for some crazy reason, I didn't take any! So, as promised, here's a description of the activity and some of the insights that my students had because of the activity. What I love about this activity is that it can be adapted to any topic in history, students use their numeracy skills and must apply the historical significance criteria and really think big-picture about continuity and change . (see my Numeracy and Historical Thinking pos t for more details about this) Materials Needed I started with a roll of newsprint end - one of the tech teachers was going to the Ottawa Citizen office to pick some up, and asked if I wanted any. I didn't yet know what I would use it for, but timelines see...

With much of the professional development focus on numeracy in Ontario this year, I've been contemplating the connections between numeracy and historical thinking. There are the obvious statistics and graphs that we all use to unpack historical content, such as this graph from    Canadian Sources Investigated: The enlistments (green) and the casualties (purple) for the months of 1917 is a great example of how we often think of "numeracy." Students need to interpret and understand the "content" and implications of it. This is great! While these types of activities are a necessary and excellent part of understanding the events of the past, alone, they are not yet really historical thinking.  What I've really been wondering is how do numeracy skills and concepts overlap or converge with the historical thinking concepts ? Earlier this year, one of my more numerate colleagues shared some of her realizations from a lesson study observation, whe...