Help students make connections by teaching thematically
When I first started teaching history, I quickly became overwhelmed by the curriculum that I was “supposed” to cover in a 180 day school year. In my 7th grade United States history course, which was supposed to cover Pre-Columbian America to Reconstruction, I spent so much time on the American Revolution and the creation of the Constitution in the fall that my units about the Civil War and Reconstruction in the spring were unceremoniously rushed. My 8th grade U.S. history course was supposed to cover the Gilded Age to the Present Day, but I barely made it past World War II. I wasn’t teaching an AP US history course. There wasn’t any pressure to teach all of American history before a high stakes test in May, but I still found it so difficult to decide what to spend time on, what to rush through, and what to leave out all together.
The kids in my class learned about the American Revolution in great depth, but they never got a deep dive into Reconstruction, which is a time period that shaped so much of race relations and politics in this country today. My students knew everything there was to know about the battles of World War II, but didn’t learn a single fact about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which happened in their lifetime.
I often never made it to the Civil Rights Movement, which is too important an era in our history to leave out. If I did make it that far, the unit was rushed and I wasn’t able to really spend time letting students explore the threads that tie the Civil Rights movement to Reconstruction, which happened 100 years earlier on the timeline, and 8 months earlier in my scope and sequence.
In my world history course, I taught six different ancient civilizations in somewhat chronological order. In April, when I taught students about the Twelve Tables in ancient Rome, I wanted them to make connections to the Code of Hammurabi that I had taught as a part of my Ancient Mesopotamia unit back in September. As you might imagine, my 6th graders didn’t remember all of the ins and outs of an ancient law code that they had learned about months earlier and struggled to make the connections.
I began to rethink how I could teach history in a way that was meaningful to students. I started to research how to teach my classes based on themes, rather than trudging through a textbook chronologically. I’m sure there are plenty of amazing teachers and schools out there doing just that, but I couldn’t find much about it online. I read a few blog posts (Let’s Cultivate Greatness, Diana Laufenberg) and read a few books (Teaching U.S. History Thematically by Rosalie Metro) and was inspired to try it out for myself.
It took a long time of brainstorming, researching, and trial and error to settle on the themes that I wanted to focus on and the order in which I wanted to teach them. I worried constantly about what I was leaving out, because even with a thematic approach, there is still not nearly enough time to cover everything in one short school year.
Once I switched to teaching my history classes thematically, I have never looked back. I find that students are so much more likely to make strong connections between events and notice common themes in different places and times around the world.
After spending an entire year learning about the United States government thematically, my class is so much more likely to understand the implications of the United States Constitution on history and the country we live in today.
My U.S. history course is taught using themes like equality, movement, crisis, and innovation. Students aren't learning about time periods in a vacuum without context. They see the same ideas and theses pop up over and over throughout history.
Students in my world history class can point out the similarities and differences in why ancient civilizations rise and fall and the differences between golden ages and dark ages from civilizations all over the world.
Are there downsides to teaching history thematically? Of course. There are times where I wish students had more context that they might have had if my course was taught thematically. There are parts of history that I have to choose to spend more time on than others. However, I firmly believe that my students are getting more of the “big picture” of history by learning it thematically.
Check out my thematic units below:
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