Lessons 1-2
Yeyyyy, I am history teacher - a dream come true? Definitely.
It's perhaps the biggest challenge of the year - one that I was very enthusiastic to accept. I will have 3 periods a week talking history and helping students prepare for the 3 papers and the Historical Investigation. It's a lot to get my head round and I have been working on it ever since I found out about this opportunity.
The first couple of weeks will be a look at the students' preparation for their Historical Investigation (due in January-February - just like everything else in IB). This is a major challenge for the students whose attitude to history is less than favorable. They need to find a historical event, come up with a knowledge question and write a 2000-word essay, using extensive bibliography and research.
This paper will be written in German but I will be able to help the students to work on their research and ask them challenging questions to nudge them in the right direction.
The main body of work in the next few weeks is a revision of the two topics they covered last year: Peace making and peace keeping - International relations during the period between the two wolrd wars, and the causes and consequence of wars.
The four (!) new topics to be covered this year:
Topic 2
- The Cold War
Topic 3
- French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars
- German and Italian unification
- Imperial Russia and the rise of the Soviet Union
In today's lesson we are going to talk a little bit about wars and history in general as well as discuss the plans for the Historical Investigations.
I am excited and scared at the same time but it's a wonderful feeling to start doing something new.
Yeyyyy, I am history teacher - a dream come true? Definitely.
It's perhaps the biggest challenge of the year - one that I was very enthusiastic to accept. I will have 3 periods a week talking history and helping students prepare for the 3 papers and the Historical Investigation. It's a lot to get my head round and I have been working on it ever since I found out about this opportunity.
The first couple of weeks will be a look at the students' preparation for their Historical Investigation (due in January-February - just like everything else in IB). This is a major challenge for the students whose attitude to history is less than favorable. They need to find a historical event, come up with a knowledge question and write a 2000-word essay, using extensive bibliography and research.
This paper will be written in German but I will be able to help the students to work on their research and ask them challenging questions to nudge them in the right direction.
The main body of work in the next few weeks is a revision of the two topics they covered last year: Peace making and peace keeping - International relations during the period between the two wolrd wars, and the causes and consequence of wars.
The four (!) new topics to be covered this year:
Topic 2
- The Cold War
Topic 3
- French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars
- German and Italian unification
- Imperial Russia and the rise of the Soviet Union
In today's lesson we are going to talk a little bit about wars and history in general as well as discuss the plans for the Historical Investigations.
I am excited and scared at the same time but it's a wonderful feeling to start doing something new.
It was fantastic to see the topic emerge and the questions that came up. I feel that there is a lot to learn and a long way to go but it was a great first step and we'll see how we can develop our thinking about history. I think it will be a good idea to focus a little bit on the TOK History chapter and talk a bit more about the underlying issues of/with History.
ReplyDeleteThe students were keen, enthusiastic and very positive. I really enjoyed this lesson and I am a bit disappointed that I won't have a lesson tomorrow.
We left Europe divided, destroyed and desolate. In the next lesson we will look at the winners and the losers and see how they were thinking about the world after WWI.