1) The class will generate a digitally accessible list of the major ‘players' in the American revolution. Students will use digital note-taking templates to  collect crowd-sourced information about each historical figure, and their role in the events leading to the American Revolution as a class. One assignment will be to complete a “text a character” template as if they are interviewing the historical figure or as a discussion between two major ‘players’ of the American Revolution to be turned in as an assignment in Google Classroom. Students will read at least 3 of their classmates’ submissions as an extension to the assignment.

2)  At some point throughout the unit, students will either choose or be assigned a role from the era, (rebel militiaman, daughter of liberty, loyalist business owner, etc.). Each role group will share a frame in Google Jamboard to collect ideas and new learning from their daily lessons to culminate in a presentation of their perspective on the war. The final project presentation could be selected from a choice board of options including completed in the face-to-face classroom, or created virtually in Flipgrid, as a slideshow, or Screencast, etc. 

Activity 2 (Upper High School Civics): This one takes a lot of moving pieces all coming together, but it is a lesson I would LOVE to try. Students will identify and research local areas of concern to them personally that would connect to local government (environmental protection, development, etc.). Once students have done research and developed a position, they will record a video of themselves presenting their findings and taking a position on what the city should do about this. Students will have the option to work in groups to encourage confidence and peer support. Students will present this assignment to other students and interested staff. Arguments deemed by peers to be the strongest will be encouraged to attend a City Council meeting (virtually or in person) or deliver their video to the City Council. While this is a larger assignment when taken in full, it could be cut down in any number of places to create a ‘small’ assignment. 

Text with a Character could have application during any 5^th grade social studies unit such as Westward Expansion or the Civil War, too. It could be used as a running dialogue between characters along the Oregon Trail or as a role play vehicle to understand multiple character perspectives in the Civil War on both sides of the conflict that concludes in a fully developed journal entry as a final assignment.

2.)    I love the idea of using virtual field trips to explore points along the Boston Freedom Trail, to visit historical museums, or to explore historical monuments of Washington, DC. Students would be responsible for posting three (3) to five (5) facts gleaned from the trip on Padlet. Each student would have been assigned a specific location, topic, or monument prior to the field trip. Sharing could take place at the beginning of  class to get things started. Students would also be encouraged to share thoughts and ideas with each other via comments on Padlet.

All of these ideas are in a rough draft form and would require some fine-tuning and tweaking in the context of the bigger picture but all sound fascinating and are sure to engage tech-savvy students.

 Activity 2: GIF battle. Students could find a GIF on how they feel about any topic. The author’s assignment was “use a gif to describe your remote learning experience” however I could use it for a unit in US History. After listening to music from the Vietnam War era, students could use a GIF to describe how they might feel about a song if they were a soldier in the Vietnam War. 

Students will use Google Maps satellite layer to explore the Nile River Valley. Once they have explored, they will go to Jamboard and, using the sticky notes, comment on interesting things they found. On a second Jamboard slide they can post questions based on what they found. 

Activity 2 - For a physical geography lesson, students will get a list of various landforms in a powerpoint presentation or Google Slides, students will curate pictures of satellite images of each landform. For extensions, students can find landforms that are not included, or additional landform examples from other parts of the world. 

When studying black civil rights in the twentieth century, they can use the Sutori timeline tool to visualize the order of certain events from Brown v. Board of Educartion to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The timeline tool allows for pictures, multiple choice quizzes, and other means of interactivity that the class could return to as we study the era. Students could even share their timelines with one another and plug in other events that they remember from the Vietnam War unit, giving a full picture of the decades between 1950 and 1970. 

Activity 2

In order for students to understand the difficult and often contradictory decisions the United States made during the Vietnam War, I have used a Peardeck in the past to give students the “options” presented to LBJ during his presidency. Going forward, I may switch to a “One Story, Many Endings” Google Slide template that functions as a build-your-own-adventure. I can give students the path that LBJ actually took (reaction to the Gulf of Tonkin, escalation of troops, decision not to run for reelection), and they can create alternate branching paths that LBJ could have taken. By doing so, they will see that the president faced conflicting advice and a quagmire inherited from previous administrations. 

Activity 1: Image Annotation

While teaching about the Boston Massacre and the concept of propaganda, supplies students with two different images of the Boston Massacre (maybe the Paul Revere engraving and Alonzo Chappel’s painting)  and have them use arrows and text boxes to annotate or dissect the images as a pre-class activity.

Activity 2: Series of Pictures 

As a review activity, give students a series of pictures out of order and ask them to number them from 1 to whatever in chronological order using text boxes. For example, when teaching about events leading up to the Revolutionary War, you might give students images representing: the Boston Tea Party, the Stamp Act, the First Shots Fired at Lexington & Concord, the Intolerable Act, etc. 

I would create a Google Slide deck providing information about the events leading up to the Revolutionary War.  The slides will be linked to Google Earth so students can visit each location.  There will also be links to different information and videos that students can explore.  After going through the slides, students will use a Google Template to put the events on a timeline and write 2-3 facts about each event.  They can do this in groups, pairs, or independently.  

Activity 2

In order to work on map skills, I will create a virtual scavenger hunt around the community.  Students will have to use Google Maps to find various locations and answer questions about each.  An example would be find the town common.  What direction would you have to travel to reach the post office.  This can be done synchronously with students posting their answers in a chat or asynchronously with answer recoded on a Google Doc or Slide.