Are you curious about what's included with a Student of History subscription?

Well, let's take a look!

Here's a sneak peek of what your subscription will look like after you login. First, you'll be brought to your dashboard where you'll see the curriculum that you have. It could be Civics, World, or US History.  

After clicking on your curriculum, you’ll see all the units that are included. You get immediate access to all of them immediately after signing up. So, no matter where in the curriculum your course begins, you can get started right away. 

From there, just click on any unit you want to start with and you’ll see it is broken down by day. Most units are between 7-10 days long. That is based on longer block-scheduled classes. So, if you teach daily 45-minute classes, you might need to break up each day’s lesson over two periods.

The lessons are designed to be easy to understand quickly, so you don’t need to slog through a bunch of pages...

With the move to Hybrid and Distance Learning last year, digital learning activities became more important than ever.

Thankfully, I had been using digital notebooks in my classes for a few years. It started with occasional trips to the computer lab. I designed the digital pages I created to look like traditional notebooks - vertically aligned and in the style of the "cut-and-paste" activities we were already doing.

These worked great and students enjoyed them. With the move to fully-digital, however, a few things started to pop up that inspired me to redesign the notebooks. This redesign turned into a complete overhaul of all my digital notebook sets this summer.

You can preview and download any of them through the links below, but here are the major updates and changes:

1. New Horizontal Format - Laptops and Chromebooks obviously have horizontal screens. While the Zoom feature on Google Slides was helpful on the old style notebooks, I wanted students to easily be able to...

Reviewing with games is always more fun for students than review packets or worksheets. Games get kids excited and build upon their competitive instincts to make reviewing material more engaging and impactful.

Traditional classroom review games like Pictionary, Jeopardy, and Kahoot/Gimkit/Quizizz are great. Kids know how to play, love them, and they're easy to implement. My curricula has these review games already made for each unit. 

However, it's good to change things up every so often to keep kids excited and engaged. That's why every so often, we'll play my favorite review game - Review Clue! 

Clue has always been one of my all-time favorite movies ("Two corpses. Everything's fine."). Sadly no students have seen it, so my wealth of quotes is lost on them. BUT it's super easy to play in any subject! 

It's played similarly to the famous board game (which is apparently known as Cluedo is some parts of the word). 

No matter what your subject or unit is, you...

If you're teaching social studies through the COVID-19 pandemic, you've likely tried to connect this moment in history with events in the past from your curriculum. 

Since I have both World History and US History, I wanted separate lessons that would allow students to see connections to history from what they have lived through.

To do this, I developed these two lessons. The first one is for US History and allows kids to analyze primary sources from the 1918 "Spanish Flu" pandemic. The second one for World History has students analyzing a primary source from the plague.

US History - The Spanish Flu of 1918 and Coronavirus

The 1918 Spanish Flu was one of the deadliest pandemics of all time. It affected nearly 1/3 of the entire world and killed millions. 

It didn't develop in Spain, but earned the name because other nations censored any news of widespread sickness because of World War 1. Spain was neutral in the war and one of the few countries that accurately reported how...

You may have begun the year fully virtual or just now switching to Distance Learning due to the rising cases of covid-19. Either way, many teachers are looking at ways to engage their students through online learning during this unprecedented time in education. 

I recently met with a diverse group of high school and middle school social studies teachers (on Zoom, of course) to talk about what's working and what's not as far as virtual learning. 

Included here is a list of our best advice to those of you who are teaching virtually. There's obviously various learning platforms and forms this can take (synchronous or asynchronous). However, these tips should be helpful no matter how your school is conducting things. 

1) Over explain everything!

No matter how simple or obvious you think a topic or assignment might be, explain it as simply as you can and then explain it again. 

Provide written instructions that students can see on screen while you explain things and...

Before the scourge of COVID-19 thrust schools across the world headlong into Distance Learning, digital resources were already gaining use in classrooms. For a good reason also. When technology is used effectively, it’s an amazing tool for teaching World History.

If your Distance Learning experience was stressful or just mildly exhausting, there’s still many exceptional digital activities you can (and should) still be using with Google Classroom in a traditional school setting, through distance learning, or in a blended learning format. 

I never ran a paperless classroom and don’t think I would ever go fully paperless. There’s too many assignments that lend themselves better to printable PDFs done by hand. I think Distance Learning taught us all the limits of teaching through technology.  

However, I do incorporate Google Docs, Slides, and digital interactive activities in every unit of World History throughout the year. There are just so many...

Selecting a scholarship winner is difficult every year.  This year was even more so. Each essay served as a tangible reminder of another student who, after working hard through years of schooling, would miss graduation, prom, senior awards, etc.

 One scholarship for a single student just didn't seem like enough.  

So, this year I'm proud to honor seven graduating seniors with scholarship awards.  Each of these students wrote a wonderful reflection on the most important lesson they learned from their social studies classes and also received a glowing recommendation from a teacher. 

Thank you to all the teachers who nominated students and to everyone who applied. I wish I could have awarded more of you. I wish all of you the best of luck and good health in the coming year. 

So, without further ado, here are the ...

2020 Students of History Scholarship Recipients 

Daniel Cummins, Jr. - $1,000 Scholarship Winner

"Although I may not be...

Going digital was already one of the biggest trends in education when COVID-19 hit and schools across the world were forced to move to Distance Learning. Suddenly, all teachers were thrust into digital resources, Google Docs, Zoom, and all the headaches that came with them.

No matter if your experience with Distance Learning was brutal or just a small struggle, there are many excellent resources you can use with Google Classroom now and in the future. 

I never ran a paperless classroom and don’t think I'd ever go fully paperless. There’s too many activities that lend themselves better to doing by hand. Distance Learning taught the limits of teaching through technology.  

However, I do integrate many Google Docs, Slides, and digital interactive assignments into every unit of US History. When technology is used effectively, it’s an amazing resource. There are many digital learning tools available that enhance student learning. 

Digital Interactive...

If you're a World History teacher looking for engaging assignments and worksheets for your high school or middle school classroom, I have tons to share, including this 30+ page packet of free assignments. 

While they're sometimes maligned, worksheets can be great for helping students analyze primary sources, understand an event through a secondary source, or assess their skill in an area of social studies.  

Our World History worksheets come in PDF format for easy printing and with Google Docs versions as well for easy implementation into Google Classroom. 

They're also easy to differentiate across grades, ability levels, and for special education students with accommodations. The lesson plans our subscription provides help you to differentiate and select the best worksheets and activities for your students. 

This could mean kids working together in pairs, cooperative learning groups, or mixed-ability pairings to help give you more time to provide support to...

If you've been forced to move to Distance Learning, have recently gone 1:1 in your school,  or just want to use more Digital activities with your students, my Google Drive notebook sets are an amazing resource for your social studies students.

Each digital interactive notebook set covers an entire unit in US History and include 8 to 15 pages of activities. Each page features short directions and links to online sources for kids to learn about the topics covered. There's over 150 pages on US History in all! 

The activities on each page vary to ensure students are learning in various ways.  Some pages have students drag-and-drop events along timelines of important events. Other pages require students to insert images or respond to prompts. The variety is perfect for keeping students engaged. 

There's also pages on vocabulary, geography, primary sources, and all the important information students need to know about each unit in US History.

Students type...