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|  | | | History Alive!
In the upper grades at Expo, students apply skills in a interesting, project-based approach to content. We have adopted the History Alive social studies curriculum, created by history teachers based in California, because its philosophy matches our beliefs about children as active, engaged learners. Topics from the series are expanded with reading, writing and arts connections.
Theory-Based Active Instruction
Lessons and activities are based on three well-established theories:
- Multiple Intelligences - According to Howard Gardner's revolutionary theory, every student is intelligent - just not in the same way. Because everyone learns in a different way, the best activities tap more than one kind of intelligence.
- Cooperative Interaction - Elizabeth Cohen's research has found that if students are trained in cooperative behaviors, placed in mixed-ability groups, and assigned roles to complete during a multiple-ability task, they tend to interact more equally. This increased student interaction leads to more learning and great content retention.
- Spiral Curriculum - Educational theorist Jerome Bruner championed the idea of the spiral curriculum, in which students learn progressively more difficult concepts through a process of step-by-step discovery. With this approach, all students an learn once a teacher has shown them how to think and discover knowledge for themselves.
Multiple Intelligence Teaching Strategies
- Visual Discovery - Students view, touch, interpret, and bring to life compelling images, turning what is a passive, teacher-centered activity - lecturing - into a dynamic, participative experience.
- Social Studies Skill Builder - This strategy turns the traditional, role tasks usually associated with skill-based worksheets into more dynamic, interactive activities.
- Experiential Exercises - These short memorable activities make abstract ideas or remote events accessible and meaningful by tapping into intrapersonal and body-kinesthetic intelligences.
- Writing for Understanding - Writing for understanding activities give all learners, even those with lesser linguistic skills, something memorable to write about.
- Response Group - This strategy helps students grapple with the ambiguities of issues in social sciences, recognize the complexity of historical events, and discuss the consequences of public policies.
- Problem Solving Groupwork - This strategy teaches students the skills necessary to work together successfully in small groups, both in the classroom and later in life.
History Alive: America's Past
Analyze artifacts to determine differences among Native American regions. Stage a panel discussion to debate Loyalist and Patriot positions on independence. Create a timeline of twentieth-century happenings. Intense interaction with the personalities, places, and events that structured our nation leads students to be both keen observers and informed participants in their own history.
History Alive: The Ancient World
Develop a diorama hat illustrates four empires of Mesopotamia. Board a felucca and tour ancient Egyptian monuments, then act out the work of different levels of society. Become an archeologist and excavate the ancient secrets of Mohenjodaro. Compare and contrast the ancient cultures of Egypt, China, India, Greece, and Rome. Inspiring today's students to get excited about ancient history is no longer a challenge with innovative, interactive hands-on lessons aimed at compelling students to tap into Ancient civilizations' wealth of adventures.
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