Engaging in our History

One of the drawbacks of a small micro-school with multiple grades in one classroom is that it is impossible to cover an entire history curriculum for each learner’s grade level. Instead, this winter, we decided to dive into a history unit that would give us an overview of history while also allowing the learners to become experts on a specific person in history they were interested in, and teach others what they learned.

We started this unit in January by beginning to discuss change over time. We asked broad, thought-provoking questions like “What in our world changes?” “What does not change?” “How has the land where we live changed?”  “What are you happy about that has changed over time?” “What do you wish was still the same as it was long ago?” 

These conversations led us to look into what causes change, what does not change, and what life was like long ago compared to how it is now. Then, our learners were asked to choose a person from history they would like to know more about. We set the parameters as a person who died before 2014 (taking Taylor Swift out of the running much to many learners’ disappointments). Once they chose a person to study, they were asked to learn about their life, and culture, and to specifically learn about their person’s resiliency. What challenges did their person face in their life? Who helped them with these challenges? In what ways did their person not give up when things were hard? We learned fascinating facts about our historical figures through these questions. Audrey Hepburn’s childhood was significantly impacted by World War II. Leif Erickson’s family was banished from Iceland when he was a boy. Alexander Hamilton was an orphan (well, anyone who's watched Hamilton already knew that…) The conversations around these similarities in resilience were striking. Both Laura Ingalls Wilder and Marie Curie supported their family by going to school before pursuing their own paths. 

One of my favorite parts of this unit was playing the “What is this?” object game. Each learner got into character and lined up along a timeline - with Cleopatra being at one end of the timeline and Audrey Hepburn and Princess Margaret at the other end. I would hand the learners an object - maybe a book, a ceramic bowl, a Rubik's cube - and they had to react to the object like their character might have. While Cleopatra and Leif Erickson were confused by the book, Laura Ingalls Wilder exclaimed “It’s like Pa’s Bible!”. Everyone recognized a bowl as a bowl, but there was curiosity around the printing of “dishwasher safe” on the bottom and how the bowl was mass-produced. This game led us to look up when plastic was mass-produced, when the printing press was invented, when cars were produced, etc. We added these milestones to our timeline as a way to help us reference the changes that occurred throughout the world. 

A large aspect of the assignment was for our learners to investigate what their person’s time period was like. What was the clothing like? What did people eat? How did they travel? Then, in February, our learners were to bring food from their person’s time period to a historical-person meal. My own daughter (who was Hamilton), spent an evening making Johnny Cakes with her dad. We all came together, in character, to share foods from across history and to learn about one another’s achievements.

Learners each wrote a paragraph to include in our encyclopedia of famous people, as well as prepared a speech or added an object to our museum. Laura Ingalls Wilder made a replica of the Little House in the Big Woods. Princess Margaret crafted replicas of the crown jewels and made an interactive map of her flying from England to Jamaica to celebrate Jamaica’s independence. Marie Curie presented a poster of her achievements and her life. Hamilton gave an energetic speech. 

My favorite part of the day was driving Hamilton and Ingalls to school and listening to them exclaim over the modern world. “Why! What is that thing with wheels? What are those glowing bulbs!”  They stayed in character the. Whole. Time.

Our timeline continues to grow. Whenever our learners find out something new in history they tend to want to add it to our timeline. I came in one day to see “Lawnchair Larry” added. 

From the beginning of this unit, I loved the conversations our learners had around everything from change, to the environment, ecosystems, resilience, food, and community.