Historical Fiction Makes Learning Fun! Enjoy #HistoricalFiction #MGLit novels and get #LessonPlans for #teachers and #homeschool on these #KidLit #history novels

Student projects based on The Well of Sacrifice

Teachers and librarians know the way to get kids excited about reading and learning is to make reading and learning fun. When teaching history, this means telling exciting stories, not merely teaching boring lists of names and dates.

One teacher used my Egyptian mystery, The Eyes of Pharaoh, in a gifted class of fourth and fifth graders in New Mexico. She said, “Using this historical fiction has been a window into Ancient Egypt – its people, culture, and beliefs. My class enjoyed doing research on Egyptian gods and goddesses, and hieroglyphs. Projects extended their knowledge of this fascinating time and place.”

I often get e-mails from teachers who are using one of my historical novels in the classroom, and they report enthusiasms from the students. A teacher at a middle school in Washington state once told me, “We have been using your book, The Well of Sacrifice, as one of our lit circle books this year. Your book has been a very popular one for the kids … all levels of reading ability, and strongly supports our social studies theme.”

Social Studies and More

Using historical fiction in the classroom can have many educational benefits. First, and most important, many historical novels are a lot of fun. This makes learning easier! In addition, historical fiction can lead to great discussions about fact versus fiction, cause and effect, and viewing history through different perspectives (modern ideals versus the standards of the time, winners versus losers of a conflict, etc.).

These discussions go beyond social studies and can actually contribute to preparing for standardized testing. One positive to the Common Core is that the standards do, in theory, ask students to understand the why and how of events, and not just the factual what. They also ask students to judge between facts and opinions, and to know whether statements are backed by evidence. Historical fiction, perhaps paired with nonfiction, can help introduce these concepts.

Enthusiastic teachers get students involved with the text through a wide variety of projects, some clearly academic and some that appear to be mainly for fun. Students enjoy drawing cartoons or developing skits of scenes in the book. Persuasive letters or group discussions get a playful boost by having the students write or speak from the point of view of one of the book’s characters. Some teachers plan a party (perhaps with accompanying author visit) to wrap up use of the book. Parents may send in appropriate snacks, and the kids give presentations, using posters or dioramas to illustrate their areas of research.

Something for Every Student

To some, this may not look as educational as reading textbooks and memorizing information. However, people learn in a wide variety of ways. Some are more visual, benefiting from seeing lots of images. Others are verbal, learning well from words in speech and writing. Yet others need physical activity to help lock in information. Some students may learn better in social groups, while others work better on their own. Using a variety of projects in the classroom offers something to all of the students.

Historical novels can be used to teach almost any concept you can find in the classroom. Another teacher who used The Well of Sacrifice in her fourth/fifth grade classroom said, “This book is not only a great adventure for middle grade readers, but it is a useful tool for classroom teachers…. We used the book as the backbone of several language arts exercises such as: written and oral reports about the Maya; literary criticism of characters, plot, and sequence; persuasive essays on human sacrifice vs. murder and Mayan culture vs. our own culture; and art projects from wood burning to mapping. We studied geography and the rainforest. The students’ enthusiasm for this book pushed our curriculum into other disciplines including math.”

Wow, what lucky students!

A New Semester

If you are a teacher or librarian (or a parent), I hope you had a fun and relaxing summer. 

Did you also use your “time off” to prepare lesson plans, or at least read books that might work in the classroom? If so, did you have any historical fiction on your reading list?

Lesson plans

For lesson plans for The Eyes of Pharaoh and The Well of Sacrifice, visit my website’s “for teachers” page. 

Chris Eboch’s novels for ages nine and up include The Eyes of Pharaoh, a mystery in ancient Egypt; The Well of Sacrifice, a Mayan adventure; and The Genie’s Gift, a middle eastern fantasy. Her writing craft books include You Can Write for Children: How to Write Great Stories, Articles, and Books for Kids and Teenagers, and Advanced Plotting. Learn more at www.chriseboch.com or her Amazon page.

Mary Louise Sanchez: Historical Fiction Museum

One of my favorite PBS shows is Antiques Road Show. It's interesting to see what people bring to the show to be appraised and the fascinating historical stories behind the objects. I know what I would take to the show. I have an heirloom Rio Grande wool blanket that my paternal great-grandmother wove in New Mexico.

About ten years ago I had a small hole in the blanket repaired. It cost me $300 but I did have an award winning New Mexican weaver (her works are at the Smithsonian) repair the hole. My husband painted this pastel of a weaving loom and put part of the design of our family's blanket in the picture.

I don't know what the blanket is worth monetarily, but to me it's priceless. Ever since I inherited the blanket, I have taken it to many family weddings. Usually after the marriage ceremony, the newly married couple kneels on the blanket and receives blessings from the guests, which are often the sign of the cross on their foreheads, while someone sings the Entriega de los Novios. This is a ballad for the newlyweds commemorating the day. The Spanish verses to the Entriega have been passed down for generations in New Mexico Hispanic families.

In many historical fiction books there are often objects or implied objects which play a part in the story. In the 2018 pending publication of my middle grade historical fiction book, The Wind Called My Name, one object I would associate with the story is a pine cone from a piñon tree. The main character, Margaríta, believes that the fragrance of the pine cone will help her remember her ancestral home, New Mexico, and the nuts in the pine cone could be shared with a possible new friend in Wyoming.

We recently attending our fourth grade grandson's celebration of learning at an event called "Blast from the Past." To partially meet the Colorado history standards, he wrote a research article and made a timeline of a Colorado personality. Since he studied John Denver, the (pretend artifact) he chose to display was a guitar.

Our grandson was dressed as John Denver in a western shirt and wore round glasses as he manned his display area with his information posted on his tri-board.

One student displayed traps as he portrayed a mountain man. There were four classes of fourth graders so I wasn't able to see all the displays, but I can imagine the learning that occurred as the students created/gathered and wrote about their artifacts. Students put the parts they learned together into a whole to create a new meaning or structure. A Common Core Language Arts standard states that students need to "refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text."

If I were in a Colorado fourth grade class today and needed to bring an item for display in a Colorado History Museum, I might bring the elbow length gloves Molly Brown put aside when she was helping people disembark from the Titanic. (You can see that I'm making a logical inference about what Molly Brown might have worn after dining aboard the Titanic.)

When I was a teacher/librarian, the teachers and I collaborated on various curriculum museums. In our storybook museum, one student displayed shaved whiskers for the "hairs on my chinny, chin chin."  In our Night of the Notables celebrations, students met many requirements and one of them was to bring a food that would reflect the person they studied. One student studied Harry Houdini and creatively constructed a black top hat out of paper and filled it with pink Peeps bunnies.

The possibilities are endless in creating curricular museums and of course they could be extended to historical fiction. What historical periods are your students studying that could  extend to a museum culminating activity? What are some real and implied objects in historical fiction books students could uncover that could tell even more of the story?

What objects would your students display with these books? They might need to stretch their minds and imply an object based on what they read in the text.

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School Daze: Jennifer Bohnhoff Looks at Schools Then and Now

In America during the 19th and early 20th centuries, most students attended one-room schoolhouses. In these schools, a single teacher taught reading, writing, arithmetic, history, music, art, and geography to students in the first through eighth grades. The number of students varied from four to 40 or more. The little children, sometimes as young as five years old, sat in the front, while bigger students, who could be as old as eighteen, sat in the back. Students memorized and recited their lessons. In order to proceed to the next grade, students had to pass a written examination, often given by a county examiner or the superintendent of the school district. The eighth grade exam was so rigorous that most students' education stopped at the eighth grade. Only a small percentage of students progressed to high school, and an even smaller percentage graduated. In 1900, for instance, only about 6 percent of students graduated from high school.


Avi's The Secret School is an historical novel that tells the story of one such student, and while fictitious, Avi based the story on solid research into the period. It is 1925 and fourteen year old Ida Bidson is an eighth grader in a remote farming community in Colorado's Rocky Mountains. In order to fulfill her dream to become a teacher, she must attend high school. When her teacher leaves mid-term, the school board decides to suspend classes to save money, jeopardizing her chances to take - and pass - the eighth grade exam. Ida decides to keep the school running by teaching school herself, but she does so without telling the school board. Poor Ida must balance her duty to teach the other students with her need to study her own lessons, all without slacking off on the chores at home. She is often exhausted to the point of defeat, but she manages to keep going in spite of the rigor. At the end of the school year she must face the biggest challenge of all: the final exam.

The year-end eighth grade exam that Ida must pass in order to continue to high school is rigorous by any standard. I doubt that any of my students (I teach 7th grade Social Studies) could pass it. Consider the question for the reading portion of the test: Choose a poem you have learned this year from your reader. Provide the title, the author, the date of his or her birth, and if such is the case, his or her death. Write out all the stanzas of the poem. Then write a brief essay as to why the poem is important to you. I seriously doubt that any of my students have ever memorized a poem, let alone the birth and death dates of any important American.

To see an actual copy of an Eighth Grade Exam from 1912, click here.

 

This kind of rigor in elementary education began to change in the 1930, when education journals, textbooks, and courses for administrators and teachers began to advocate Progressivism. Under this educational theory, school curriculum would be determined by the needs and interests of children instead of by academic subjects. Instead of separate instruction in reading and mathematics, these were integrated into other disciplines, especially in elementary school. It was common for Progressive educators to say, "We teach children, not subject matter." High schools, where teachers were trained in specific subject areas were less willing to change.

 The invention of the automobile also led to changes in education. The first school buses were horse-drawn. Gas powered ones let states consolidate schools into larger districts with common procedures. In 1940 there were over 117,000 school districts in the United States. By 1990, the number had decreased to just over 15,000. Funding for schools also changed. In 1940 local property taxes financed 68 percent of public school expenses. By 1990, 63 percent of school funding came from the federal government. As government funding increased, so did government control of curriculum.

Progressivism came under question during World War II, when the Army found that recruits knew too little math to accomplish basic bookkeeping or compute gunnery projections. This led to the Life Adjustment Movement, which assumed that most students would never go to college or enter a skilled occupation. Instead, students needed school programs that focused on practical problems such as consumer buying, insurance, taxation, and home budgeting. However, the huge technological, scientific and engineering advances made during the war in areas such as radar, cryptography, navigation, atomic energy, and medicine, made mathematics and science education appear imperative. America realized that it needed engineers!

Memorization, which had been the lynch-pin of the One Room Schoolhouse, ceased to be a significant part of American education during the late 1960s and 1970s, a time when society questioned authority. During this period, the Open School Movement began to dominate educational philosophy. Like the Progessivism of the 1930s, this movement believed that students should determine for themselves what they would learn, and when. The Open School Movement got its start with Summerhill, published in 1960. Its author, S. Niell claimed that "Whether a school has or has not a special method for teaching long division is of no significance, for long division is of no importance except to those who want to learn it. And the child who wants to learn long division will learn it no matter how it is taught." By 1970, some 200,000 copies of Summerhill were being sold every year. It had become required reading in 600 university courses.

But by the late 1980's it had become clear that the Open Education Movement was not meeting the educational needs of all students, especially children whose parents could not afford outside tutoring and lacked enough education to support homework. Professor Lisa Delpit, an African American educator who taught in an inner city school in Philadelphia explained, "White kids learn how to write a decent sentence. Even if they don't teach them in school, their parents make sure they get what they need. But what about our kids? They don't get it at home..." The pendulum was set to swing back towards a more rigorous, standardized curriculum, which is what No Child Left Behind and then the Common Core were intended to create.

Anyone paying attention to education knows that the Common Core State Standards, often shortened to CCSS, are a touchstone of controversy. The CCSS claim to be a clear set of expectations for what knowledge and skills a student needs in language arts and math at each grade level in order to be prepared for success in college, career, and life. Supporters say that CCSS allows students across the nation to have access to the same level of education. Detractors say that CCSS forces all students to learn the same information, regardless of whether that information is pertinent to that individual. There is no accounting for different learning styles or disabilities: all children are expected to pass the same test.

In the novel The Teacher's Funeral, A Comedy in Three Parts, Richard Peck draws a humorous picture of what school was like for Russell Culver, a fifteen year old boy living in a tiny Indiana farm town in 1904. When the teacher of his one-room school dies, the local school board hires Russell's older sister, Tansy. There is plenty of memorization in Tansy's lesson plans, and quite a bit of rigor. But that doesn't mean that they are subjected to the standardized, one-size-fits-all assessments that are common today. Witness this excerpt from when T. Bernard Whipple, the Superintendent visits:

     "And do you know your letters yet?" T. Bernard Whipple hung over (Beulah Bradley, the six year old, littlest student).
     "G is for the gopher, digging in its burrow. H is for the patient horse, plowing in its furrow."
     "You are a regular scholar, Beulah. In two or three years you'll be learning your multiplication tables."
     "Six eights are forty-eight," (she) mentioned.
     Mr. Owen stared down at her. "You know your multiplication tables already? Miss Culver, the child is only in first grade. The multiplication tables don't come until - "
     "I am here to help her learn, "Tansy said, "not to keep her from it. She is the brightest button in the box, and what the others learn, she picks up." The superintendent looked out upon us for another victim. His eye . . . jumped to Glenn.
     Glenn. The superintendent had gone from the youngest of us to the oldest, from the smartest to the -  . . . .What schooling Glenn had mastered wasn't going to detain us long.
     "This here's science." Glenn swiped at the ceiling and the mud dauber's nest broke loose from the rafter and fell into his hands.  "See these here cells like a comb of honey? The mother mud dauber lays and egg or two in ever' one of them cells. Then she goes to work and stings a spider with her pizen. She don't kill that spider, but she stuns it. Then she sticks that spider in the cell with the egg and shuts it up tight. As the eggs hatch, they've got plenty of spider meat to feed them on."
     We were all silenced by this knowledge. It wasn't school-learning from Tansy, of course. But Glenn was a country boy. Few of nature's ways were mysteries to him. On the other hand, the superintendent was a town man.
     "You learned that at school?" the superintendent inquired.
     Glen shrugged. "Where else?"
     "Well, I am glad to see that the study of natural science is not neglected," Mr. Whipped admitted. ...(and) his gaze fell on Flopears.
     "Boy," Superintendent Whipple barked, "what's your long suit?"
     "Who, me?" Flopears pointed to himself. "My what?"
     "Well son, tell us.  What are you best at, numbers or letters?"
     Flopears tried to think. "Is them my only choices? I reckon I like pictures best." He flipped open his notepad. You could have knocked us over with feathers. Flopears had captured us all in his notebook. We'd gotten him wrong. He wasn't a dunce. He was an artist.
     T. Bernard Whipple cleared his throat. "I am glad to know that the study of art has not been neglected. With that, the superintendent reached for his overcoat. It was done with, and Tansy had 
passed her trial.

Times change, and the educational pendulum swings, but some things remain true: the best education involves a bit of humor and a lot of flexibility.

Jennifer Bohnhoff is a seventh grade social studies teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico and the author of three works of middle grade historical fiction. Her most recent book, Tweet Sarts, is a contemporary middle grade novel with a Valentine's day theme. You can read more about all her books on her website.

For more information on the history of American education, go here.
For stories from men and women who taught in one room schoolhouses, go here.

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Oldies But Goodies-The Early United States, 1783-1814

The early years of the United States from around 1784-1814 were spent carving a new nation.

Prominent leaders like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington gambled that this new republic could be independent—and it was. The leaders helped these thirteen states unify into a new republic, despite the states' constant bickering. Then they formed a new government where the leaders were elected by the people—a radical idea.

Later the leaders wrote The Articles of Confederation, which was the first constitution for the United States, but it was too weak to control powerful state governments. Thus, a new constitution
was written and eleven of the thirteen states ratified it in 1787 and 1788.

This new country was able to expand its boundaries after signing a peace treaty in 1783. Some people lived in relatively large cities then, but not as large as cities in Europe, as is shown in the first U.S. census of 1790.

According to Alan Taylor a Professor of History at the University of California, Davis, in his essay published in the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, more than 90 percent of the people lived in the countryside on scattered farms and plantations.

Students I taught researched what life was like for these citizens of the new United States of America. Some of the things they researched were how people earned a living; what they ate and wore for clothing; how they celebrated holidays; and what school was like. Some of the best books for this kind of research were written by Bobby Kalman. Her books have detailed illustrations showing what life was like; and the books use the vocabulary of those times, which is often unfamiliar to today's students. I believe these books would still be applicable for today's students whose learning is being shaped by Common Core and State Standards.

One standard in the History/Social Studies strand for Grades 6-12 asks that students, "Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies." 

We know that a class of students has a wide range of reading levels and abilities, thus introductory text as an image, as in Bobby Kalman's books, is invaluable to help build understanding and background knowledge in all students before reading complex, printed text. In other words, "A picture is worth a thousand words."

One prepared graduate competency that the Colorado History Standards stresses is that students be able to "analyze key historical periods and patterns of change over time withing and across nations and cultures." I'm confident that other states have this general standard too.

 I believe Bobby Kalman's books can be used to help students achieve history standards because the books are rich in vocabulary and illustrations, which are sources of information on their own.

Hopefully, these books are still used in the curriculum and are on the school library shelves. But, if a teacher/librarian is weeding non-fiction books, be sure to ask to see the cart and search for these wonderful books by Bobby Kalman to keep and use in your classroom.

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