Reflection of Revolutionary War Project
How has this project helped you understand the subject matter?
-This project has really ignited a passion for wanting to know more about the Revolutionary War. I have never learned well from strictly reading a book because most of the time I read to basically complete an assignment. The subject matter is more understandable because everything is shown either in a story or showing actual historical artifacts from someone's life. In this instance of learning more about my ancestor of Charles Norcross it helped me feel like I was back in the time that America was claiming their independence. I have never been a war buff and would always view items from history as boring and tedious in the idea of memorizing dates and facts. By collecting many different items of information through websites, historical narratives of fiction and nonfiction as well as collecting primary sources from the time really created a new sense. Although this project has been going on over the course of the semester I still feel like that I could keep on working on it.
How might you use historical narratives with your students?
-I feel that historical narratives that the students create as well as ones that are already published from well-known authors give a different and interesting take on history. I feel that by allowing the students to have something that ties in with either their interests or has a connection that they can relate to in their lives that it makes for a more powerful lesson. While I really like the idea of these I feel that it couldn't be done with each unit that had to be covered during the fifth grade year. Since there was so much involved with this war and how it helped create what our country is today I see how each student could expand on different aspects of the war. For instance to cover the Patriot side opposed to the Loyalists that come from the New England, Middle, and Southern colonies. Units on economics for example, I don't see an idea of an historical narrative working to the advantage as it does with this project.
What would you do differently?
-I would obviously give more time so that students would have the chance to read through all the great resources that they found. For myself I kept finding great resources and had to justfiy to not use some because the time was just too limited to go too far into detail. I would also with students not at our higher order thinking level to routinely have check-ins or updates of the project where they had to turn in the summary or the parts they will use out of each resource. I really do like the idea of creating something through technology such as this weebly opposed to the term papers that everyone is so used to. I feel that the idea of checking to find pictures that weren't protected by copyright might be a little extensive to fifth graders. They need to understand the importance but as much investigative work that it took to find suitable pictures, I feel they wouldn't do very well with that. As the world becomes more technology based we need to find ways to integrate it into the classroom more so that students can share their work with eachother just by the click of the mouse with places like Google Docs.
What are some drawbacks for using historical narratives for understanding your topic?
-I think initially the hardest part is that you have all these wild ideas for a story that you are creating through collecting information from all of your resources but the concern is that the story you are thinking up could not be historically accurate. For instance, I had to contact my brother who is a secondary education history major here and forever interested in the Revolutionary War, facts like could I relate these two events even though they took place in different areas. The idea comes that we have to think what is possible today has not always been that way. Families during this time lived closer to eachother since there weren't advances in communication such as the phone so the idea of families being across state lines would be documented in one way of having the ability to writer letters. I really wanted to provide dialogue but it was really hard to make sure that all of the historical aspects were as factual as the actual historical aspects and then having to research how people spoke in Revolutionary War times would be another unit of study. The history could get misinterpreted and reported in a non-factual representation but could be skewed as a very powerful historical narrative.
-This project has really ignited a passion for wanting to know more about the Revolutionary War. I have never learned well from strictly reading a book because most of the time I read to basically complete an assignment. The subject matter is more understandable because everything is shown either in a story or showing actual historical artifacts from someone's life. In this instance of learning more about my ancestor of Charles Norcross it helped me feel like I was back in the time that America was claiming their independence. I have never been a war buff and would always view items from history as boring and tedious in the idea of memorizing dates and facts. By collecting many different items of information through websites, historical narratives of fiction and nonfiction as well as collecting primary sources from the time really created a new sense. Although this project has been going on over the course of the semester I still feel like that I could keep on working on it.
How might you use historical narratives with your students?
-I feel that historical narratives that the students create as well as ones that are already published from well-known authors give a different and interesting take on history. I feel that by allowing the students to have something that ties in with either their interests or has a connection that they can relate to in their lives that it makes for a more powerful lesson. While I really like the idea of these I feel that it couldn't be done with each unit that had to be covered during the fifth grade year. Since there was so much involved with this war and how it helped create what our country is today I see how each student could expand on different aspects of the war. For instance to cover the Patriot side opposed to the Loyalists that come from the New England, Middle, and Southern colonies. Units on economics for example, I don't see an idea of an historical narrative working to the advantage as it does with this project.
What would you do differently?
-I would obviously give more time so that students would have the chance to read through all the great resources that they found. For myself I kept finding great resources and had to justfiy to not use some because the time was just too limited to go too far into detail. I would also with students not at our higher order thinking level to routinely have check-ins or updates of the project where they had to turn in the summary or the parts they will use out of each resource. I really do like the idea of creating something through technology such as this weebly opposed to the term papers that everyone is so used to. I feel that the idea of checking to find pictures that weren't protected by copyright might be a little extensive to fifth graders. They need to understand the importance but as much investigative work that it took to find suitable pictures, I feel they wouldn't do very well with that. As the world becomes more technology based we need to find ways to integrate it into the classroom more so that students can share their work with eachother just by the click of the mouse with places like Google Docs.
What are some drawbacks for using historical narratives for understanding your topic?
-I think initially the hardest part is that you have all these wild ideas for a story that you are creating through collecting information from all of your resources but the concern is that the story you are thinking up could not be historically accurate. For instance, I had to contact my brother who is a secondary education history major here and forever interested in the Revolutionary War, facts like could I relate these two events even though they took place in different areas. The idea comes that we have to think what is possible today has not always been that way. Families during this time lived closer to eachother since there weren't advances in communication such as the phone so the idea of families being across state lines would be documented in one way of having the ability to writer letters. I really wanted to provide dialogue but it was really hard to make sure that all of the historical aspects were as factual as the actual historical aspects and then having to research how people spoke in Revolutionary War times would be another unit of study. The history could get misinterpreted and reported in a non-factual representation but could be skewed as a very powerful historical narrative.