Sick

Mr. W was sick today. He was supposed to teach the 7-8th grade social studies lesson today, but since he wasn't here I had to do it. He's going to be gone on Thursday, so thankfully I had a lesson prepped that I could do with them today. After emailing him, we decided that I'm going to teach about the Ottomans on Thursday (what he was supposed to do today) so we can stay on track.

He sent his lesson to me ahead of time and some of the notes he made caused me to think about what I'm teaching in social studies and why. He had made the comment that the lesson on Ottomans didn't meet any standards, not MN or the common core. Well, that's kind of a problem... Even though we don't have to follow standards at private schools, it's still good to try to do so; if the lesson isn't meeting any standards, what's the point of teaching it?

I took a look at the social studies standards and realized that the 7-8th grade books are so old they no longer align with them. In MN, 5th graders are supposed to do American History up to the 1800s (which is about all we can get through in a year), 6th grade does MN history, 7th is supposed to do American history from the 1800s-present, and 8th grade does geography. So, I do all that, except the 7th grade curriculum is ancient world history and the 1800s-present gets crammed in to MN history. It works, but it would be nice to stretch out American history to 7-8th grade.

But... when will they learn about ancient world history? That stuff is important too. And what about non-MN students? What do they learn in 6th grade? A lot of states don't have a year of state history. (I think the answer is ancient world history). I had a nice talk with my teacher friend L about standards and how to lesson plan with them, the benefits of background knowledge, etc. and now my brain is buzzing with thoughts.

So. What to do now? The answer (for the time being) is to keep doing what we're doing with the 7-8th graders, but this summer I'm going to look for a new history book for the 7-8th graders! I need time to do research before I change everything up.