Critical Thinking History Activities
In today's current educational situation, gifted and talented students are often overlooked and the programs are underfunded, understaffed, or cut entirely. Too often, it has fallen on the overworked teacher to provide activities for their gifted students on their own. Few publishers have provided materials for this student population group. This book will help teachers to provide interesting and stimulating activities to help keep gifted students more engaged and successful. Traditional methods of lecture, textbook reading, and notes, followed by objective examinations are not very challenging or rewarding for gifted students. The traditional memorization of names and dates approach is not rigorous enough or interesting to gifted students either. They may like essays, debates, or other forms of authentic assessments better. The activities in this book provide a break from the usual classroom routine and challenge students to think outside of the box a bit. These activities will stimulate them to do the kinds of critical thinking that ordinary activities may not provide. Skilled instructors of gifted students also take time to answer their more in-depth and insightful questions. Tips are also provided in the teacher's instructions for the activities in this book for tailoring the lecture to the needs of gifted students. Gifted students do not want to merely be told history. They want to participate in history. They often bring a lot of prior knowledge of history with them and are not afraid to challenge what the teacher or a textbook says.This book is designed to provide activities for gifted and talented students. However, with slight modifications and a bit more instruction time, they could easily be used with regular classes any time you want to provide an activity that requires a bit more critical thinking and in-depth analysis than an average assignment.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Social Studies Careers
2. Rethinking the Lecture for Gifted Students
3. The Incorrect Use of Historical Evidence
4. Discrediting Famous Historical Figures
5. Historical Controversies in Popular Entertainment
6. Distinguishing Between Fact and Opinion
7. The Misuse of Quotes
8. Comparing Historians’ Differing Interpretations of the Same Event
9. Recognizing Propaganda
10. Historical Conspiracy Theories
11. Evaluating News Sources
12. Evaluating YouTube and Other Online Videos
13. Evaluating History Websites
14. Textbook Analysis
15. Anachronisms in Film
16. Bias in Film
17. Documentary Film Review
18. Dramatic Film Review
19. Filmmaker Assignment
20. Forgotten Historical Origins of Names and Words
21. Collective Forgetting and the Oversimplification of History
22. Oral History Project
23. Writing a Children’s Book
24. Covering Topics That Are Usually Not Covered in History Classes
25. Fun Ideas for Enrichment and Extension for History Classes
26. How to Do a Fun and Educational Historical Site Field Trip