History Stories

A Cross-Age, Project Based Learning History & Arts Project Anderson Valley Junior & Senior High School 2018-2019

The History Stories—A Cross-Age, Project Based Learning History & Arts Project brought artist and arts educator Cathleen Micheaels together with Anderson Valley Junior & Senior High School (AVJ&SHS) social studies and history teacher Nat Corey-Moran to collaborate on planning and delivering a project based learning, integrated history and arts project with the two 7th grade World History classes during the 2018-2019 school year. The project built on the highly successful History Stories project carried out during the 2017-2018 school year and focused on the wide range of historical eras and periods students investigate and learn about in their 7th Grade World.

History classes including the classical Maya, Aztec and Inca civilizations, the rise and fall of Rome and Byzantium, the rise and spread of Islam, classical West African civilizations, ancient China and Japan and medieval, renaissance and enlightenment Europe.

The History Stories project engaged students in researching, writing and creating children’s books about historical figures and events to then share with younger students at Anderson Valley Elementary School (AVES) through a Reading Buddy exchange. Students worked in teams to research a historical figure or event they were investigating and learning about in 7th grade World History classes and then wrote, designed, created and illustrated age-appropriate children’s books.

Topics included how ancient twin Mayan brothers discover cocoa and then how their mother accidently mixes the chocolate into her famous atole recipe; a young boy born in a West African family of griots or jalis (musician storytellers) who grows up to be a famous drummer; a poor girl working in a castle in Medieval Spain who steals the king’s treasured round of manchego cheese to help her hungry family; a young orphaned boy in feudal Japan who is adopted by a monk and becomes a samurai; a French pastry chef who needs to impress King Louis XVI in Paris so he creates the famous macaron while he is teaching the king’s son young Louis Joseph to bake; an Incan princess who refuses to marry as her father the king of Cuzco wishes so she runs away into the high Andean mountains and becomes an ice maiden.

AVJ&SHS History Stories Project Making Learning Visible 2018-2019
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