Making History Come Alive

By Laurie Borst

Social studies teachers at Newtown Middle School are excited about the new textbook they are using this year. Andrew SanAngelo, social studies coordinator and seventh grade teacher, had only praise for the new book.

“The last textbook we were using was copyrighted in 1995, Mr SanAngelo said. “The new text is from the same company, but it’s light years different. It’s so much more than what we were used to. It’s improved that much.”

In the past, he explained, teachers had to search for supplements and enrichment material. The new book provides this and so much more.

The new textbook is published by McDougal Littell and is titled American History, Beginnings to 1914. The textbook has an online companion site that provides teacher resources, animated maps, practice quizzes, animated histories, and review games. Students can access the site from home.

And, the entire book is online. Students don’t need to carry their books home, helping address the overloaded backpack issue.

Anyone interested in seeing what this new text offers can visit McDougalLittell.com, click on the Social Studies tab, and then click on the book cover for American History to take a look inside.

Every chapter offers an animation screen, depicting life at that time. For example, Chapter 1 takes students inside Aztec life. Not only is there visual information, but a narrator provides information. Scrolling over different areas brings up links to topics on trade, the market place, farming, and life today.

The text asks thought-provoking questions and takes a more comprehensive approach to teaching social studies.

“We want kids to become historical thinkers,” Mr SanAngelo said. “Students can read primary sources, every chapter has one, and analyze what’s presented for themselves.”

Another area the text explores with the students is analyzing political cartoons. It also makes connections between events in history and modern day. For example, students explore a comparison of military communications between George Washington’s time and today.

“The kids seem to like it,” Mr SanAngelo said. “Most of them have accessed the online site and created accounts for themselves.”

Will Ryan, an eighth grade social studies teacher, felt his students “find it interesting. There is the online book with audio for those with reading issues. It is organized better than previous texts.”

At NMS, American history is divided over the two years. Topics have changed a little recently, reflecting changes in the state guidelines for curriculum.

Explorers, for instance, used to be studied in fifth grade but that piece has been moved to seventh grade. To accommodate the changes, study of the Presidents was moved to eighth grade. The seventh grade curriculum covers the explorers through the Constitution, eighth picks up with the Presidents and goes through 1900.

Phil Cruz, an eighth grade social studies teacher, went to National Social Studies Convention, where, he said, “the book jumped out at us.

“It fit our curriculum ideally through the way the units were set up. It uses a tremendous amount of primary sources — the documents, and questions based on those documents,” Mr Cruz continued. “Students read the documents, learn the historical content, and write about it. It integrates social studies and language arts.”

The teacher’s text offers events for comparison in history, such as Andrew Jackson and FDR comparing the Indian removal to the World War II Japanese internment.

The book also offers literature to use, so teachers don’t have to go searching for titles.