Diaries can be an effective tool to connect readers/students to the emotions, motivations and thoughts of the people who were living in the historical events that we are studying. The author of this article discusses four topics that are valuable for us to study as history teachers. 1) importance of historical perspective taking as an aspect of historical thinking and the obligation of educators to assist learners in developing their capacity to engage; 2) outline why and how teachers could assist learners in using diaries as evidence for reconstructing historical perspectives; 3)layout excerpts from three published diaries to demonstrate how these provide evidence of classed, gendered, ethnic/religious points of view within the time periods they were written; 4)provide some specific suggestions as to how teachers can use examples from these diaries to spark deeper probing of ideas and time periods.

If you link to this site you will find many letters written during the War. The link provides you with many lesson plans on the war and use the letters to help show the students the real side of being a soldier. I think students will find this very interesting and it provides us as first year teachers a great resource to first hand accounts of the great war.

John Fielding a retired history professor from Queens University wrote this short article to encourage History teachers to be passionate and creative in their teaching. Teachers need to get students involved in History and show them how it is relevant today. According to Professor Fielding "the most important element for a strategy to be effective is, however, that it must activate the historical imagination of the student." So as teachers we need to find ways to start their imagination and let them enjoy the past without always having to write a two page essay. Fielding suggest that teachers allow students to be creative allowing them to use historical fiction to demonstrate their understanding of the people and their times. Teachers should incorporate drama, role playing and storytelling help develop a historical imagination of the student. When you can capture the imagination of the student you can then develop a passion in the student for the things of the past.

In this article it talks about the Canadian Government investing money into heritage projects to promote history throughout the country. While reading this article I discovered that only 4 out of 10 provinces require high school students to take history. It is difficult to understand why all provinces do not require students to take history.

http://www.ehow.com/how_7791434_incorporate-drama-classroom-social-studies.html

Drama in Social Studies is a really interesting idea. I think it could really work to help students have a greater understanding of Canadian History.

This article gives you the steps required to have students create a skit and then present it to the class. This process is cross curricular allowing you to incorporate language/dram with history. Students will become responsible for their own learning by having to study the topic in depth and then distilling that information into a historically accurate text.

Drama will help bring history to life for students and it will give those creative and kinesthetic learners an opportunity to express their learning styles in history.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb302/is_1_36/ai_n57319567/?tag=content;col1

I came across this article looking for something that might relate to remembrance day. It was about a professor at the University of Western and how he stumbled through his first lecture and pretty much bored everyone in the class. At the end of the class on World War I he mentioned to the class how he found a picture and a small story about a Western Student who died in the war.

He informed the class that he did not have much information on this soldier from their university other than he played on the school rugby team and that he died in battle not long after entering the war.

The article goes on to mention how the class connected to the story so much that many continued to research the details of this young mans life even after the assignment was due. Although the article was long the idea of the class intrigued me so much that it made me wonder?

What if we were able to find a story in our schools or communities that related to the war - would that really peak our students? So much so that they would do extra work just so they could try to find out the whole story even if it was not for marks?

The article might not be enlightening but the fact that students became so engaged was very interesting!

http://www.adprima.com/whysocial.htm

Dr. Kizlik a former education university professor felt that when most of his students started his program they had no real understanding of why social studies were important. It was his belief that many theories, texts and articles were released year after year to try and address why social studies was important and how to teach it. It appeared to him that many people even within the field were trying to find meaning for social studies.
Dr. Kizlik feels social studies is about "helping students understand human interactions that occurred in the past, are occurring now, and that are likely to occur in the future." As teachers we need to help the students understand that history is and will repeat itself in the future. Once they have that knowledge we need to build a sense of values in the next generation that will stand up to the current and future social injustices.

The fictional story (that Father Theo inserts into his blog)of an exchange between a student and a teacher shares Father Theo's real feelings about what is being taught in the Social Studies Classrooms in Canada. The teacher in the mythical classroom states "the winners write history the way they want to hear it, and most times they don't tell the whole truth." Are History Teachers in Canada Liars? The second part of the blog Father Theo references historian James W. Loewen book called Lies My Teacher Told Me which evaluates Almerican text books for accuracy, balance, and how inclusive the are of minorities and their role in North American History. He argues that history text books "avoid, de-emphasized or misled in respect to sensitive topics, topics like racism, the class system, slavery and the resettlement of America". Although I do not agree with all of the article, it really made me take notice of my bias to my culture and how maybe I need to reflect on the feelings of other cultures when I create my history lessons.

I must admit it took me a little bit of work to find a meaningful article and I am not sure how I even ended up finding this article. Michael Levine starts out addressing the difficulties many students struggle to understand our diverse cultural and sometimes perceived dull Canadian History. Levine mentions Canada has a vast amount of Canadian Literature that is rarely referred to. At first I almost discarded this article as I thought it became to literature oriented, as I read further I realized that this was a good strategy to integrate learning across multiple disciplines. Students love stories we as teachers could integrate some of these great Canadian stories into our reading we could tie real life stories to the dates and circumstances of the time. After all who doesn't like a good story?