Curriculum Overlapping or interdisplinary Units-Incorporate the "Big Ideas" for the semester in all academic areas (music, math, reading,science, etc.) so all subjects areas can be addressed across all courses.
Determine Readability level: Do a readability study on the textbook to help determine when the book might be too challenging for some students (Wood,1995)
Alternative Textbook: Choose a textbook that contains the same "Big Ideas"but at an easier reading level
CD-ROM: Choose textbooks that have CD_ROM editions to provide motivation and multi-sensory instruction (Anderson,1998)
Teach students how to use the textbook: help students use visual aids, find definitions to vocabulary and identifying the organization and important points of the reading selection (Vaca et,1987) and to use supplemental questions at the beginning and end of the book. (Archer,1988)
Metacognative skills: Use prediction,paraphrasing, drawing a chart to understand the text (Wood,1995)graphic organizers (Griffin & Tulbert,1995), and advance/post organizers (Lenz,1983) semantic webs (Scanlon et al, 1992)
Self-Talk Teacher explains what the students are doing as they do it
Parallel Talk:Teacher explains what the students are doing as they are doing it (Vaughn, Bos &Schumm, 1997)
Small steps: Break material into smaller parts. Allow some students to only complete one or two parts
Visualization and visual rehearsal: Have students visualize different aspects of life during the depression -What do you think their house looked like? Picture the streets of our city during this time- What do you see?
The National Council on Economic Education: http://nationalcouncil.org/ sponsors a network of 275 university -base Centers for Economic Education across 48 states. The Centers offer workshops and materials fro supporting dynamic approaches to economic education K-12. Phone 800-338-1192
Junior Achievement: http://www.ja.org sponcers programs to help young people value free enterprise, business, and economics to improve their quality of life. A new program, Building Achievement through Sports and Entertainment, provides youth a reality check on careers in such fields while opening the doors to realistic careers opportunities in entertainment and sports: Phone 719 540-8000
Flight to Freedom- an educational role-playing game that stimulates the experience of fugitive slaves in the American South before the Civil War http://academic.bowdoin.edu/flighttofreedom/intro.shtml Users assume the persona of a historical figure, such as Fredrick Douglas or Harriet Tubman, and move about a map of the 19th-century United States as they confronted with events taken from fugitive-slave narratives.
African American History Quiz (http://www.brightmoments.com/balckhistory/) An interactive quiz that helps sharpen knowledge of African American History. It's an "open book" test. So you're not sure of an answer, you can check our reference material for help.
Artistic Expression: have students represent "Big Ideas" fro chapters through art.
Primary Source Documents: Primary source document fro U.S. History. Library of Congress (http://memory.loc.gov) and U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Web site (http://www.nara.gov)
Other Web Sources to consider:
National Council for History Education http://www.history.org/nche
National Center fro History in the Schools http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/nche
National Council fro the Social Studies http://www.ncss.org
The American Historical Association http://www.theaha.org
Organization of American Historians (Publishes the OAH magazine of History fro teachers http://www.oah.org
History Alive! Teacher's Curriculum Institute http://www.teachtci.com/default.asp