Teaching the French Revolution in Emoji

Napoleon's invasion of Russia in Emoji

Confession: Yes, my sophomores are using emojis in the classroom. Last week, I put up a study guide with the events of the French Revolution, and I had them respond to the terms with emoticons.

Naturally, students were excited about this assignment, but not as excited as I was! This exercise forced students to develop critical thinking skills and exercise creativity. Inevitably, they had to think outside the box and make some tough choices about how to portray a topic with a limited vocabulary in a way their classmates would understand. The assignment required students to think critically about the event, but also how people would perceive the symbols they provided in order to explain it.

When students shared their artwork, other students were able to see how classmates tackled the same challenge in different ways. Students used space differently to portray their event, and sometimes even used different symbols to portray the same things. 

It is my hope that this greatly stimulated the creative region of the brain, while at the same time helping students to contend with the more a traditional approach of memorizing events in order to apply them come test time

It was a new and intriguing way to have students teach each other the syllabus in 10th grade history. For some, I’m sure these visuals helped them recall information. For others, they just found it a fun homework assignment that invigorated their approach to a tough topic--the French Revolution.

Here are some of the different ways my students chose to portray these events:

The Coronation of Napoleon (1804)

 

The Women's March on Versailles (1789)

Screen-casting means more room for activities

Screencasting 101

For teachers who feel they never have enough class time to discuss/create/evaluate/dig/challenge/innovate/etc., there’s nothing better than flipping the classroom to cover content outside class to create space for another transformative activity in class. While I have flipped the classroom in the past with a lecture format, I recently found another way to diversify my flipped repertoire--screencasting.

I wrote an article a few weeks back about how I used Prezi to teach the Revolutionary War. But then I thought, while that’s good, I can do even better. I went back to the drawing board and created a few screencasts to better explain how the Americans pulled out the ultimate upset to become an independent nation.

One key motivator for the diversification of the flipped classroom stemmed from student complaints that my flipped lessons were more boring than my classroom lessons--which makes sense, because I’m teaching to an empty room.

I used an app called educreations where I placed maps, and drew on top of them with different colors in an effort to show troop movements while I talked about the battles. I broke it down into five parts -- Boston, New York, New Jersey, the Campaign of 1777 and the southern sphere. I found this to be a much better way to teach the battles than I had in the past, which--I’m embarrassed to admit--was with powerpoint.

Next time I teach the Revolutionary War, I’m assigning these for homework and using my classroom time for those valuable activities that often take a back seat to content in the history classroom. I’m showing more of the John Adams documentary, I’m having a discussion about wealth and/or mutinies in the continental army, I’m having my students read some Zinn, and I’m having them live tweet one of the armies’ movements. The possibilities are endless, and that makes me happy.

I’ve since used this tool again to to teach the Gilded Age. I taught Robber Barons with screencasts--specifically John D. Rockefeller. Then I taught the labor strikes--screencast coming soon. The students seem to enjoy the videos more, and this allowed me to spend class time on discussion. I’ve noticed high school students love to talk about wealth and income inequality. So, I rolled the ball out and let them have at it! I asked if we’re living in a second gilded age Gilded Age, then just sat back and steered as the discussion engulfed their attention.