For now I’m thinking that the best format would be in teams of three or four in a kind of Reach for the Top format. The students could, in theory, help each other study for the actual event.

Naturally, you’d need to narrow down, just a bit, the area of history that you cover. Since I do Canadian Social Studies, I would cover Canada, possibly even limiting it to a subfield like prime ministers, or immigration.

I’m not sure where I’d come up with all the questions. I’m picturing doing this with two Social Studies class (52 kids) which would likely mean I’d have 8 teams per class. I could re-use questions between classes, but I’d need more questions still if I had a playoff between the classes.

Motivation is also one question that leaves me wondering. If you could get the kids enthused, this would be fantastic, but in a day of student-centered education, can we get the kids working really hard studying bits of historical trivia just because it’s fun.

I’m not sure how a history bee would work out, but I’m sure going to think about it.

However, it did leave me wondering. Why is it that when we, as teachers, are away, we tend to leave fairly dry lessons for the sub to work through?  (I’m as guilty of this as anybody, so I’m asking the question to help myself improve). Partly we do this, I suppose, because we don’t know who our sub will be. Will he be knowledgeable in our content area or will he be a glorified baby sitter? We prepare our plans for the lowest common denominator.

Would it be possible to set up a plan that could explore new content in some sort of discovery manner? Could a sub without the knowledge background help students analyze characters in a novel by drawing links as they read material? In a history class could you research important dates and then draw links between them?

I know these are bad ideas as I’m laying them out, but I guess I’m wondering if a day with a sub can be a really productive day rather than a day where the kids are often left in a holding pattern until the regular teacher returns. Can a sub be brought in and explore and learn things with the kids in an area that’s not his specialty?

I understand the difficulty here that the class might become too disorganized or unruly with a sub if the activity wasn’t structured enough. But with our present way of doing things (and I include myself in that present way) I’m not sure how much learning occurs when we bring in a sub. If learning stops in a school, that kind of defeats the purpose of having kids there, doesn’t it?

To add to the fun, I’ve been spreading all the maple leaf flags that I can, as well as giving out red and white candy (cinnamon hearts and scotch mints) to whoever is willing to take them. I’ve been wishing everyone a Happy Flag Day! (or should that be Merry Flag Day?) and telling anyone who doesn’t know that the flag turns 46 today.

I have a feeling the kids may remember Flag Day this way far better than if I’d spent a week of class on lessons about the 1964 flag debates, Lester Pearson, John Diefenbaker and all the other personalities involved in supporting or opposing a new flag.

A little personal enthusiasm and some candy can go a long ways.

Twitter posts like this would seem to create a pretty disjointed discussion, but from what I could see it was fairly cohesive. It was also pretty neat, because the participants came from a whole lot of different places it allowed a lot of people who would never otherwise meet to have an intelligent and thoughtful discussion. Because each comment was 140 characters or less, there was no excess verbiage, just the bare essentials.

Very cool, and full of possibilities.

1. If you’re going to alter people’s voices to make girls sound like guys and guys sound like girls, subtle changes are best. If the changes are too dramatic, they just sound silly. Don’t change the pitch of the voice too much.
2. Subtle changes in the speed someone talks at change how you perceive their voice. A slighter faster voice sounds higher (and more feminine) and a slightly slower one sounds lower (and more masculine).
3. Audacity is limited in how many different tracks you can have in use at once. It seems to handle ten to 20 just fine, but some kids had more and we had to trim that down. If we didn’t the program would crash repeatedly. That was quite frustrating until I figured it out. None the less, considering the software is free and pretty easy to learn (and also comes in a portable version you can take with you) it’s pretty hard to complain.
4. This assignment was fun. Though it took a few weeks from beginning to end, the kids were usually pretty motivated. Even the kids who are often unmotivated didn’t complain. I either have an unusually eager bunch of kids this year, or researching and “interviewing” famous late, great Canadians is actually something that Grade 9 students enjoy.

Overall it was a great project and it will be repeated next year.

The last part is proving the hardest. Prior to my class, citations haven’t been emphasized so the students thought they only needed a bibliography or works cited and that was good enough. I’ve been pushing that to give credit for all direct quotes, borrowed ideas, or obscure facts by citing specific sources for specific facts.

Maybe we history teachers are a little more picky than language arts teachers, I don’t know, but I feel very uncomfortable if the kids don’t use citations. Is Grade 9 too early to teach them that?

Other than that, the project is proceding well. A few students are starting to record and are quite enthusiastic about everything. This is really great.