I follow your work regularly so thanks! I wonder if you ever saw Dr. Doug Carnine’s 2 part textbooks entitled Understanding US History. I’m sure it would need to be revised now but sadly—and understably—it didn’t sell well. It organized history thru a “big ideas” focus, where history was driven by 3 problems (resources, human rights, combo of both) and one had to ADMIT there were 5 possible solutions. Accommodate-Dominate-Migrate-Invent-Tolerate. Very robust and easy for students to become engaged. The text(s) also had great graphic organizers. I got my copies for examination on Amazon for very cheap! You can clearly see Doug’s expertise in Direct Instruction and instructional design. Good content is essential, but as you note, there has to be an instructional “hook” so history doesn’t turn into just names and dates—at best—with little retention nor generalization.
I follow your work regularly so thanks! I wonder if you ever saw Dr. Doug Carnine’s 2 part textbooks entitled Understanding US History. I’m sure it would need to be revised now but sadly—and understably—it didn’t sell well. It organized history thru a “big ideas” focus, where history was driven by 3 problems (resources, human rights, combo of both) and one had to ADMIT there were 5 possible solutions. Accommodate-Dominate-Migrate-Invent-Tolerate. Very robust and easy for students to become engaged. The text(s) also had great graphic organizers. I got my copies for examination on Amazon for very cheap! You can clearly see Doug’s expertise in Direct Instruction and instructional design. Good content is essential, but as you note, there has to be an instructional “hook” so history doesn’t turn into just names and dates—at best—with little retention nor generalization.