Kids’ backpacks weigh less in Crystal Lake’s elementary school district these days.
Fat history books at Crystal Lake Community Consolidated Elementary School District 47 are being phased out, replaced with thinner books with tighter texts and simpler story lines that put the pupils into the shoes of history makers, educators say.
History Alive! is the new curriculum that comes with thinner textbooks.
Recently 5th graders learning about the American Revolution at Husmann Elementary School met in the gymnasium for a tug-of-war.
The lesson aimed to impress upon them how overmatched upstarts in the American Colonies were able to oust British rule.
Lynn Casey and Debbie Glawe, 5th-grade teachers, officiated.
From the beginning, they said, it was a rigged contest.
Pupils who were physically bigger were chosen to represent the British, and there were more of them on the British side of the rope.
Physically smaller pupils were chosen to represent the colonists, who had fewer kids on their line.
A third group stood passively by: They represented colonists who were undecided when it came to independence as well as Britain’s European rivals that shortly would join the fight on the colonists’ side.
The teams waited, rope in hand and testing their footing, before the contest.
Casey explained the rules, then added that those on the British team couldn’t all pull at the same time—half had to wait off to the side. Later, the pupils surmised that these were British reinforcements, who would join the fight, but too late for the British to win the war.
The teams readied themselves again. But Casey interjected again, amid the moans of the members of the Redcoat team, that they would have to pull the rope farther than the Continental Army to win the contest.
And then another interjection: Casey said the colonists would be awarded candy if they won. And that she had only enough for the colonists. The British would get nothing whether they won or lost.
“The colonies are going to win because they don’t have as many rules,” said Joanna Reynoso, one of the bystanders at the start of the war.
The war’s result went according to the lesson plan—and the outcome of history. The British were defeated, and the Colonies gained their independence.
“We get candy,” said Megan O’Donnell, who was on the Colonial side.
“In real life, they got freedom.”
As part of the lesson, the pupils wrote “historical markers” chronicling the event in the class journals they were keeping.
Teddy Siegmeier: “The British wore red coats. They stood out like sore thumbs and made them easy to pick out. … The British had only been there a few times. … The Continentals knew where they were. … They knew shortcuts.”
Mallory Wright: “The British Army was far from home. It took them awhile to get supplies to America. We had better war strategies, like hit-and-run and guerilla tactics. … We won because we gained allies. The French lent our Congress money and supplied us with gunpowder.”
Mel Walter: “The colonists were being disloyal … but King George was making the colonists pay for all this stuff they didn’t use. Think, a small army versus the best army in the world at the time. Not so good. But soon after a cold winter we got allies such as France and Spain. They gave us money and blocked other British troops. That helped us a lot. British troops were forced to give up, and so that is how we won the war.”
Jeff Ramsey: “Even though the British Army was big and powerful, they still lost. The Continental Army had lots of motivation. Their rights pushed them forward and their families helped when in need. They wouldn’t have won the war without their allies, the French. They helped support the troops and their warships cut off British supplies.”
Teachers see better results with History Alive!
The biggest problem of teaching history was identified as the fat history book, with its timelines, boxes of ancillary information, charts, graphs, footnotes, obscure biographies, trivia and colorful art for the sake of colorful art, said Christine Harris, the district’s assistant superintendent for curriculum.
“It is said that history instruction is a mile wide and an inch deep,” Harris said.
Teachers find there is too much material, and they can never get through the chapters to contemporary times, she said, while others start with the here-and-now and go backward and present historical events as results of previous actions.
Plus, history textbooks are constantly being rewritten, even more so after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Harris said.
In a classroom where the fat history book is the focus, pupils who are poor readers or those whose second language is English don’t get all that they should from the old way of teaching history.
“Names and dates are fine,” Glawe said. “But there is a reason why things happen.
“So many images bombard kids all the time. Look what they see on television. They don’t get a lot of it. They forget.
“What better way to represent the Revolution than through a tug of war? Do you think kids in this class will remember this? The History Alive! textbooks were written to support classroom activities.
“In other history books, the teacher is the center of attention. The teacher gives a lecture; you tell a kid to read and answer the questions at the end of the chapter. Boring!”
“We have had very positive feedback,” Harris said. “Instead of just reading about history, you participate in it.
“We’ve had middle-school teachers tell us that kids that have had [History Alive!] in 5th grade remember more.”
History Alive! costs about $30 per book, while the fatter textbooks were going for about $45. But there is an expense for the materials used by the teachers. The overall savings is about $300 per classroom using the new curriculum.
“We don’t want to portray that we switched because of the cost savings,” Harris stressed. “But it is a perk.”
Three teachers taught the new curriculum at Husmann and Canterbury Elementary Schools in the 2000-01 school year.
It was taught to 19 classes, or half the 5th grade, in the district’s eight elementary schools in 2001-02. In 2002-03, it was taught in the 38 5th-grade classes and 19 4th-grade classes.
This fall, it will be taught in every 3rd-, 4th- and 5th-grade class in the district, Harris said. (There are 39 3rd-grade classes, 40 4th-grade and 39 5th-grade.)
The idea behind History Alive! is to provide “lean lessons” that reach all students in a diverse classroom, said Bert Bower, who, along with Jim Lobdell, founded the Teachers’ Curriculum Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., in 1989. The institute creates history curriculum for elementary, middle/junior high and high schools. The theory behind the curriculum is that kids take in information in many ways, Bower said.
“Multiple intelligence” is the term used to describe the ways young brains process information, such as verbally, using words for linguistic intelligence; using numbers (or logic) for mathematical intelligence; using visuals for spatial intelligence; using their bodies (a physical experience) for kinesthetic experience; rhythmically, through music, for musical intelligence; and inter- and intrapersonally, Bower said. Harris described interpersonal as relating to other people and intrapersonal is understanding oneself.
“We’ve been teaching in a medieval fashion, with having the kids read a textbook and then lecturing at them,” he said. The institute “is different from the typical schoolbook publisher. The books we use in History Alive! are about [30 to 40 percent] smaller. There are fewer pictures, and it is tightly written. The text is tied to classroom activities.
“I find that kids enjoy it more, are more interested, learn more and remember more of what they find in our books.”
With History Alive!, students act out historical images projected onto the screen in the classroom, for example. They write poetry about events or analyze political cartoons. Group discussions replace teacher-centered activity.
The institute’s textbooks are in about 10,000 schools across the nation, Bower said, adding that it has grown about 25 percent each year since it was founded.
His experience as a high-school history teacher inspired him to start the institute.
“What I’ve found about history is that it is universally considered the least favorite subject,” Bower said, “and it has to do with the textbooks.
“States set standards of what a kid should know. Textbook publishers try to squeeze everything in, all the minutiae that a graduate student would have a hard time remembering.
“Then we put it all into a encyclopedia-type book, throw it on a kid’s desk and the kid is bored to death with it.”
Casey and Glawe are ecstatic about the curriculum change.
“I wish we could teach this all-day long,” Glawe said.
