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The
Student's Friend: Using the Student's Friend
The Student's Friend may be freely downloaded from this website and copied for non-commercial use by teachers and students. It can serve as an alternative to standard textbooks. If copied on both sides of the paper, The Students Friend amounts to 13 or 14 sheets per student, not an unreasonable amount of paper to be copied. The copying job may be sent to an outside printer for reproduction at reasonable cost. Because each student may receive a fresh copy of the Student's Friend at the beginning of the course, students are free to mark on their copies, underlining key points, for example. Each year students can receive the latest version of the Student's Friend, so the Current Issues unit can stay current. About the two-year sequence 1. If your school offers separate world history and geography courses, as many schools do, discuss the curriculum with your colleagues in the social studies department and with your principal. See if you can generate enough support to approach the school board about modifying the high school curriculum to combine the teaching of world history and geography while retaining a two-course sequence. This change should not require additional resources or staff or even changes in the schedule. It merely requires a change in approach to benefit student learning. We made this change at my high school, and it is the optimal solution. 2. If a formal change in curriculum is not possible, approach your colleagues and principal about informally modifying the content of your separate world history and geography courses so that the Student's Friend Part 1 is taught during the first course in the world studies sequence and Part 2 is taught during the second course. The course labels would still maintain their integrity if the bulk of supplemental activities in each course were directed toward the nominal subject matter of that course. A geography focus is probably best suited to Part 1 of the Student's Friend. 3. If your only option is to teach all of world history during a one-year course, there are two possibilities. You could try to squeeze Parts 1 and 2 into that single year. It might work for you, but I suspect not enough time would be available for sufficient reinforcement of content through supplemental activities which would result in less than adequate absorption by student brains. The other possibility would be to selectively prune topics from the Student's Friend to reduce it to a more manageable size for a one-year course. Stand-alone geography topics could be eliminated under the assumption they will be covered in a separate geography course. Topics like the Spanish-American War could be cut assuming they will be covered in an American history class. Several topics relating to the Renaissance are covered in both Parts 1 and 2; these could be reduced for a one-year course. While topics in the Student's Friend are generally related to others, most are self-contained, so it should be possible to cut some topics without doing great injury to the meaning of the remaining topics. It might not be as feasible to prune the Student's Friend for use in a dedicated one-year geography course because much of the geography content is tightly integrated with the historical material. Covering
the material In my courses, the Student's Friend provides the framework which supports all other aspects of the curriculum. I try to reinforce the essential knowledge contained in the Student's Friend with a number of supplemental activities including writing assignments, projects, simulations, student presentations, analytical activities and video materials. Perhaps our school's new computer lab will permit the addition of Internet activities to this repertoire. Still, as I see it, my fundamental task is to effectively transmit the historical and geographical overview of history contained in the Student's Friend. This is how I go about it. Coverage of content always includes five basic elements: reading about it, thinking about it, writing about it, discussing it and testing for student knowledge. (See: a sample unit plan.) My school operates under the block system which means that classes meet for 90 minutes each day for one semester. I try to cover two pages in the Student's Friend per week. Teachers in traditional classrooms, which meet for approximately 45 minutes per day all year, should probably try to cover approximately one page per week. This schedule leaves some flex time to allow for special activities such as a week-long historical simulation or for the inevitable unexpected events such as school assemblies, class photos and snow days. (See: developing a course schedule.) I begin each unit with
an introductory discussion which solicits student input about
the upcoming material. This discussion serves as a preview and
overview for the students, and it helps me to gauge their existing
knowledge and level of sophistication regarding the material. Following are descriptions of the four strategies for covering Student's Friend content that I have used in my classroom plus three more possible options which may be considered.
Students write their key points in complete sentences. These assignments are submitted to the teacher following the exam and graded. This writing can be done in class or as homework. When done in class, students are permitted to quietly share ideas with one another as they attempt to identify the most important information under each topic. After the writing assignment has been completed, the class discussion phase begins. Students take turns reading aloud the Students Friend material on each topic and sharing their key points. Divergent findings are encouraged. It is during this discussion that I present visual material on the overhead projector, chalkboard, or from wall maps or posters. I check for student understandings and pronunciations, explain new vocabulary, answer questions and generally encourage discussion and speculation about the topic. After the class has reached consensus on the key points for each topic, the key points are underlined in each student's copy of the Student's Friend; these underlined passages become the study guide for the exam to follow. I generally begin the semester using the Key Points strategy. After students have become proficient in identifying key information, I move on to the following two strategies. After each of the three strategies have been introduced and used in the classroom, I alternate strategies throughout the remainder of the semester.
Again, this writing assignment can be completed in class or as homework, and student work will be turned in and graded by the teacher following the exam. The class discussion phase proceeds much as it does under the Key Points approach described above except that nothing is underlined in the Student's Friend. Notes & Quiz Written Narrative Other Strategies -Students work with partners to write down important facts and details about a topic and rank them in importance. Students should probably take turns writing to ensure that one student doesn't do all the work. During class discussion, students compare their rankings. -Students answer essay questions about topics. This would be an extension of the Study Questions strategy identified above. -The teacher asks a question about a topic and students write an answer. Students share answers and discuss. This strategy differs from from the Study Questions strategy above in that the writing assignment and the class discussion are interspersed, not separate activities. Some help please? |
...........© 2001 - 2007 michael g. maxwell - maxwell learning l.l.c.
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