Critical Thinking History Activities

In today's current educational situation, gifted and talented students are often overlooked and the programs are underfunded, understaffed, or cut entirely. Too often, it has fallen on the overworked teacher to provide activities for their gifted students on their own. Few publishers have provided materials for this student population group. This book will help teachers to provide interesting and stimulating activities to help keep gifted students more engaged and successful. Traditional methods of lecture, textbook reading, and notes, followed by objective examinations are not very challenging or rewarding for gifted students. The traditional memorization of names and dates approach is not rigorous enough or interesting to gifted students either. They may like essays, debates, or other forms of authentic assessments better. The activities in this book provide a break from the usual classroom routine and challenge students to think outside of the box a bit. These activities will stimulate them to do the kinds of critical thinking that ordinary activities may not provide. Skilled instructors of gifted students also take time to answer their more in-depth and insightful questions. Tips are also provided in the teacher's instructions for the activities in this book for tailoring the lecture to the needs of gifted students. Gifted students do not want to merely be told history. They want to participate in history. They often bring a lot of prior knowledge of history with them and are not afraid to challenge what the teacher or a textbook says.This book is designed to provide activities for gifted and talented students. However, with slight modifications and a bit more instruction time, they could easily be used with regular classes any time you want to provide an activity that requires a bit more critical thinking and in-depth analysis than an average assignment.

Richard Di Giacomo graduated from San Jose State University with a B.A. in Ancient and Medieval history, a B.A. in Social Science and an M.A. in American History. He has been a teacher for over 20 years and has taught in a variety of schools from private and continuation schools to public high schools. He has taught everything from at risk and limited English students to honors and college preparatory classes. The subjects he has taught include U.S. and World History, Government, Economics, Bible and Ethics, History of the Cold War, and Contemporary World History.
He has been a reviewer and contributor to textbooks, and a frequent presenter at social studies conferences on the use of simulations, videos, and computers in education. Rich's love for role-playing and strategy games led him to develop his role-playing simulations. He has also written books on renaissance explorers, California Indians, history movies, humor, and ELL instruction. Teachers enjoy his books because they are written by a teacher for other teachers. Students like the activities contained in them because they are interesting, challenging, fun, and very different from traditional instructional methods.