Charter School Newsletter May 2015

10 Virtual Field Trips for Your Social Studies Classroom

If you can’t get away to explore and discover, then inspire curiosity in your students with any of these great virtual field trips! Visit the Smithsonian Museum for self-guided tours, or take a trip to Mars via Google Earth–the only limit is your imagination!

1. Smithsonian Museum: A comprehensive virtual tour offers a self-guided, room-by-room walking tour of the whole museum.
2. Mars: See the Red Planet like never before, either by satellite or by rover!
3. Eternal Egypt: Explore over 5,000 years of history with a virtual guided tour.
4. Jefferson Lab Virtual Field Trip: Watch and learn from experiments at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, commonly called Jefferson Lab or JLab.
5. White House: Tour the West Wing, Residence, East Wing, and South Lawn in this interactive tour of the White House.
6. Le Louvre Museum: Gaze upon history and art in one location with this online tour of the exhibition rooms and galleries.
7. North America: Discover the wonders of North America.
8. NASA Virtual Field Trip: Geological exploration throughout the world.
9. American History: Narrated panoramic tours of historical United States locations from Valley Forge to Thomas Edison’s birthplace.
10. Mount Vernon: Take a virtual tour of the historic home of President George Washington.

The How and Why of Historical Literacy
by Anne Goudvis and Stephanie Harvey

At this very moment, calls for increased rigor and content-rich curriculum reverberate from coast to coast. Yet too many schools and districts—particularly in the elementary and even middle grades—have put history and social studies on the back burner. The laser focus on high-stakes testing in math and reading has pushed social studies and history into an ever-smaller corner of the school day or, astonishingly, they’ve been abandoned all together.

How will our students ever participate fully and thoughtfully in the democratic process if they have little time to learn how that process has worked in the past? To build knowledge and understanding—to become literate in the discipline of history—students should be reading and learning about the stories, mysteries, questions, controversies, issues, discoveries, and drama that are the real substance of history.

Unfortunately, the default history curriculum is often reduced to a passive slog through the textbook that focuses on kids’ answering the questions at the end of the each chapter. In states with high-stakes history tests, teachers are responsible for “covering” a long list of facts, a curriculum that’s a mile wide and an inch deep.

The study of history and social studies should not be optional in a democracy!

What to do? We merge foundational literacy practices with engaging, authentic, relevant resources. As kids read, listen, and view, we encourage them to ask lots of questions; these are the best entry points for beginning to think like historians! Most important, we create a “minds on” classroom environment by focusing on big ideas and compelling issues. As kids discuss, agree, disagree, and take a stand, they are actively thinking and building their store of knowledge.

We flood the room with rich resources that kids can sink their teeth into: artifacts, images and visuals, primary sources, videos, historical fiction, journals and letters, even plays depicting historical events. As Diane Ravitch says, history is all about “stirring events, colorful personalities, and riveting controversies.” In this series of blogs, we’ll answer the question, What does teaching for historical literacy look like? We’ll share several instructional practices that immerse kids in historical ideas and information and spark their curiosity about the past so they can more fully understand the present. Wary of history taught as a dull recitation of dates and facts, we keep this mantra in mind: Curiosity and thoughtfulness are at the center of engaged teaching and learning.

Anne Goudvis and Stephanie Harvey have enjoyed a fifteen-year collaboration in education as authors and staff developers. They are co-authors of the Heinemann title Comprehension Going Forward and of Strategies That Work. They have also created a family of bestselling classroom materials under Heinemann’s firsthand imprint: The Comprehension Toolkit, The Primary Comprehension Toolkit, Toolkit Texts, Comprehension Intervention, Scaffolding for ELLs, and Connecting Comprehension and Technology. Their newest resource, Short Nonfiction for American History, is discussed in this blog post.

Regional Education Summits—Don’t Miss Out!

There’s still time to register for our summer Education Leadership Summit event series “Connect. Converse. Cultivate.”  
We recognize that your school isn’t like any other school and your student body isn’t one size fits all. There is no “uniform” methodology that works from desk to desk or school to school. There are however great ideas, useful anecdotes, and best practices amongst school leaders in your community. The Education Summits are designed to bring together education leaders in the Private, Parochial and Charter school communities to foster in-depth dialogue coupled with presentations and collaborative workshops that offer strategies and tools to better serve your students and faculty.
Further, we will be there with our industry expertise and powerful full-scale solutions to equip you with the confidence you need to face the challenges moving forward, and end-to-end offerings to effectively impact your school’s success and your students’ achievement.

To view cities and dates, visit our registration site today!

We look forward to seeing you this summer!

Product Spotlight

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt™ and HISTORY^® have formed an exclusive partnership to create social studies curriculum that connects students to history through virtual experiences that are energizing, inspiring, and memorable. Combining the exceptional scholarship of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt with the experiential multimedia assets of HISTORY, we’ve created a new arena in the classroom. Together, we invite you to be a part of history.

Learn more about the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt & HISTORY partnership here.

Professional Development Corner
This Month in History

The free This Month in History newsletter gives teachers high-quality social studies content to use in their classrooms. Each month Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and HISTORY present information on key holidays, topics, or events that social studies teachers are likely discussing with their students. We often highlight relevant HISTORY programming appropriate for student viewing and include a teacher’s guide. This Month in History subscribers are also the first to learn about new products from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and special contests and events.

Don’t Forget‒Submit Your Nominations for the 2015 Game-Changer Award

At Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, we’re proud to be longtime partners of the passionate game-changers who lead the Charter movement. The 2015 Game-Changer Award from HMH is designed to recognize outstanding educators in charter schools who go above and beyond every day to advance student achievement.

Click here to submit a nomination. Deadline is May 20.

Charter School of the Month
Now seeking submissions for our 2015–2016 school year editions!

We know sometimes the best way for Charter schools to grow is to learn from the best practices of other schools around the country.  That’s why each month we want to highlight the accomplishments of an individual school and share your success story with others.

Financial Resources to Help Your School Excel
Featured Grant–Esther B. Kahn Charitable Foundation

The Esther B. Kahn Charitable Foundation's purpose is to support and fund innovative approaches to education, the arts and medical research. The Foundation generally supports projects where the grant will make a significant difference and where the desired result will be tangible, lasting and can be accomplished within a reasonable period of time. Nevertheless, the Foundation seeks to encourage innovation and recognizes that this may involve risk.
Average Amount Awarded: $2,500–$25,000
Deadline to Apply: 6/30/2015

Apply online here.

Monthly Poll

Last month’s poll results: Which of the historical figures listed below would you most want to meet?

This month's question: How many weeks on average do you spend at the beginning of a new school year re-teaching skills lost over the summer break?

• Less than 1 week
• 1 to 2 weeks
• 3 to 4 weeks
• 5 weeks or more

See how you compare next month when we reveal the poll results!

Our Vision: From the Desk of HMH Leadership

“For an annual compendium to be going strong in its 100th year is astonishing—but it testifies to the enduring appeal and vigor of the short story in American writing. Styles and trends have changed and the reading public has expanded dramatically, yet short fiction has flourished in every decade of the past 100 years.”

Bruce Nichols, SVP and Publisher of General Interest at HMH, on the upcoming publication 100 Years of The Best American Short Stories, a centennial retrospective of HMH's celebrated anthology series. Read more