Christian Homeschooling » jackson http://www.christianhomeschoolinghelp.com Resources and information about Christian Homeschooling Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:18:52 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 Teaching History: Don’t Forget the Narrative http://www.christianhomeschoolinghelp.com/teaching-history-dont-forget-the-narrative/ http://www.christianhomeschoolinghelp.com/teaching-history-dont-forget-the-narrative/#comments Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:45:32 +0000 Home school mom http://www.christianhomeschoolinghelp.com/?p=42 Teaching history in your Christian homeschool setting can be difficult.  Some of the best activities in history class necessitate group learning.  The sheer amount of facts that come into play, especially with the advanced curriculum in history (high school, AP), can be daunting to teacher and student alike.  One of the ways that I have overcome this problem is through the use of narrative.  Historical narrative, or stories, can be extremely instrutive when teaching concepts.  Moreover, it provides a depth of knowledge that purely analytical learning cannot.  This does not necessarily take away from learning dates, facts, and figures, but can help improve your student’s cognition of these more rote items.  Coming into a unit with a good basis of knowledge, using a story to underscore a concept, can be incredibly impactful.  I suggest you give it a try.

I will give one example here.  There was a great story in the Wall Street Journal about the inauguration of President Andrew Jackson.  One of the main themes of this presidency was the ‘Jacksonian democracy’ and the emergence of new people into the democratic process.  This is best expemplified in a narrative format by discussing Jackson’s racous inauguration party that included all members of society, even those rough a tumble type who had stayed away from politics previously.

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