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Have you considered an escape room or lock box where they have to solve puzzles to get clues to escape or open locks off the box?  It could be Escape Clinton and they have to go through parts of Clinton to escape learning about a section at each stop.   Or it could be a mystery location locked in the box.

asinging is Angie Cooley

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Have you done a Classroom Transformation?  Teachers in my school and district are using this a lot.  The kids love it and are so engaged.  A neighboring school just did a Harry Potter one and we have one next week where 2 teachers are co teaching opinion writing.  They are doing a boot camp with competing platoons with competing opinions.
https://www.pinterest.com/YTCT/classroom-transformation-ideas/?lp=true

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Allow students to navigate the history of Clinton from the perspectives of various professionals. For example, how would a professional blogger react to an event? A videographer? An interior designer? Allow students to draw on their own interests and skills to create a presentation.

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What will your co-teaching look like?

Will it be:
1) Supportive (the other teacher leads and you support them along the way)
2) Parallel (you both teach two separate groups the same thing simultaneously)
3) Complementary (one teacher is responsible for one portion, the other builds on or is responsible for a separate portion)
4) Team (you both teach a lesson together to the whole class taking turns)

I found an interesting article about this on TeachHub. Check it out!

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Does your staff need Co-Teaching training ? The K-12 Teachers Alliance can help you plan your in-service professional development at no additional cost.

With inclusion on the rise, teachers are sharing classrooms more than ever and becoming an effective co-teaching partner is a teaching essential. With the onset of a new school year right around the corner, meanwhile, it's imperative to begin devising and building positive co-teaching strategies.

A co-teaching team typically includes a general and a special educator who teach the general education curriculum to all students as well as implement Individual Education Programs (IEPs) for students with disabilities. Both educators on the co-teaching team are responsible for differentiating the instructional planning and delivery, assessment of student achievement, and classroom management.

Several collaborative teaching approaches have proven to be successful to guide educators who work together in co-teaching partnerships to differentiate instruction. The approaches include:

1. Supportive Co-teaching - where the one member of the team takes the lead role and the other member rotates among students to provide support

2. Parallel Co-teaching - where support personnel and the classroom teacher instruct different heterogeneous groups of students

3. Complementary Co-teaching - where a member of the co-teaching team does something to supplement or complement the instruction provided by the other member of the team (e.g., models note taking on a transparency, paraphrases the other co-teacher's statements)

4. Team Teaching - where the members of the team co-teach along side one another and share responsibility for planning, teaching, and assessing the progress of all students in the class.

Some co-teaching approaches (e.g., complementary and team teaching) require greater commitment to, comfort with, and skill in collaborative planning and role release (i.e., transferring one's specialized instructional responsibilities over to someone else). It is recommended that collaborative teams select among the co-teaching approaches, as needed, based up the curriculum demands of a unit or lesson and student learning characteristics, needs, and interests.

When deciding which approach to use in a given lesson, the goal always is to improve the educational outcomes of students through the selected co-teaching strategies. Many beginning co-teachers start with supportive teaching and parallel teaching because these approaches involve less structured coordination among the co-teaching team members. As co-teaching skills and relationships strengthen, co-teachers then venture into the complementary teaching and team teaching approaches that require more time, coordination, and knowledge of and trust in one another's skills.

Co-Teaching Strategies Chart

Two or more co-teachers in the classroom.

Capitalizes on specific strengths & expertise of co-teachers.

Provides greater teacher/student ratio and brings additional 1-1 support for students in the classroom.

All approaches have benefits and cautions associated with their use.

Students are heterogeneously grouped by mixed abilities and interests.

Shared responsibilities.

Requires trust, communication, planning time, and coordination of effort.

(Note: The need for all of these elements increases as you move from supportive to parallel, parallel to complementary, and complementary to team teaching co-teaching.)

Co-teachers work with different groups of students in the same room. (There are numerous different options for arranging the groups.)

One co-teacher may pre-teach specific study or social skills and monitors students' use of them; the other co- teacher teaches the academic content.

Additional Co-Teaching References

Villa, R. Thousand, J., & Nevin, A. (in process). More students, More Resources: Unleashing the Power of Students in Instruction, Advocacy, & Decision-Making. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Pres.

Nevin, A., Villa, R., & Thousand, J. (2009). A Guide to Co-Teaching with Paraeducators Practical Tips for K-12 Educators. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Pres. (800) 818- 7243

Villa, R. Thousand, J., & Nevin, A. (2008). A Guide to Co-Teaching: Practical Tips for Facilitating Student Learning (2nd. Ed.). Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Pres. (800) 818- 7243

Villa, R. Thousand, J., & Nevin, A. (2008). Co-Teaching: A Multimedia Kit For Professional Development.? Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Pres. (800) 818- 7243

Villa, R., Thousand, J., & Nevin, A. (2008). Co-Teaching at a Glance. A laminated Tri-Fold Reference Guide. Port Chester, NY: National Professional Resources. (800) 453- 746

Thousand, J., & Villa, R., & Nevin, A. (2007). ?Differentiated Instruction: A Multimedia Kit for Differentiated Instruction. California: Corwin Press (800) 818- 7423

Thousand, J., & Villa, R., & Nevin, A. (2007). ?Differentiated Instruction: Collaborative Planning & Teaching for Universally Designed ?Lessons. California: Corwin Press (800) 818- 7423

Villa R., & Thousand. J., (Eds). (2005). Creating an Inclusive School. ?Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. (800) 933- 2723.

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Does your staff need Co-Teaching training ? The K-12 Teachers Alliance can help you plan your in-service professional development at no additional cost. With inclusion on the rise, teachers are sharing classrooms more than ever and becoming an effective co-teaching partner is a teaching essential.

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Explain to students that history is made every single day, as important events are happening in the present that will shape the future. Have students write an analysis of how they will positively change the future of the town of Clinton. Perhaps students could write breaking news stories about themselves or record a newscast video (with hosts, a meteorologist, sportscaster, etc.) about important current events in Clinton or a past event that occurred as if it were happening today.

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What materials will you be working with? What software/hardware do you have accessible? Which devices will you be using?

How often will you meet with the other teacher? How many other teachers will be involved?

This will help us generate more effective ideas.

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Walk around the town with students and their classroom teacher. What problems do they see? For example, is there litter all over the ground? Is there flooding in any part of town? Is there a bar that is too noisy to live next to?

Allow students to search for problems within the current town and pitch ideas for solutions. Later, the highest graded group can present their ideas to the principal or maybe even the mayor!

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After students go through the research portion of the project to learn about the history of Clinton, have them extend their learning and plan a new version of Clinton as architects. Where would they place important landmarks like the city hall, elementary school, grocery store, etc.? They can plan using a template or grid you create. You could also have them complete the plan on Google Sheets or Google Drawings and share their work with you and the classroom teacher. You can also incorporate math skills (perimeter/area requirements for buildings, geometrical shapes to include, and more!).

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Use a collaborative platform like Google Classroom to post assignments and updates. Make sure both you and the classroom teacher have access to the platform so you can both post updates and grade assignments. I have had success using Google Classroom for students as young as 3rd grade.

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Maybe you could have students write, plan, and act out a documentary of the History of Clinton (as a final project). You could split it up into parts and have students work collaboratively on the final video.

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When you are planning for the unit, could you create a system that equally shares the workload? Would it work better to collaborate together or split things up to plan individually and share later?

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Could you and your colleague trade off on teaching a lesson while the other is helping with management and working with kids one on one or in small groups? That way you're not both trying to teach at the same time if that seems like a potential challenge.

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I think you had mentioned that you wanted to try problem based learning, and I am wondering if you could have students learn about the history of the town and have them think of a problem that they want to solve within it.

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Since you are co-teaching, perhaps you could run a few stations that each of you are in charge of.

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Do you and your co-teacher have clear strengths that you could play off of?