I’ve always admired Lea Hansen’s Instagram stream. When she started posting about hexagonal thinking in middle school, it got me thinking about all the ways this process incorporated critical thinking. Read on to see how she utilizes this thinking strategy in her Social Studies classroom. I’m a little addicted to hexagonal thinking activities. After attending […]
A Critical Thinking One Pager Assessment
If you exist on the internet at all as a teacher, you know that one-pagers are all the rage right now. It makes sense. They’re easy to differentiate, they’re fairly easy for students to understand, and they’re fairly easy for the teacher to grade also. I’ve see many examples online, and I’ve used them on […]
Hey Middle School Teachers – It’s Okay to Skip Some Standards
One of the most daunting tasks presented to teachers is for them to cover all the standards. This is particularly problematic for Social Studies teachers, as we often have both content and skills standards built into our frameworks. In recent years, the number of “skill standards” have grown, as teachers are now expected to teach students […]
How to Create Assessments that Evaluate Historical Thinking Skills
I previously wrote about how I came to conceptualize how I would assess historical thinking in my classroom, now I thought I would show you how these tests come together. As always, I start with the skills and content knowledge that have been practiced in that Unit. At the beginning of the year, I […]
Assessing Historical Thinking Skills with Middle School Students
When I first realized that the new New York State assessments would require knowledge of historical thinking skills four years ago, I was honestly excited. Rote memorization had never made me fulfilled as a history teacher. I’ve always preferred to teach my students to think, and I was happy that I would now be teaching them to […]