Note to Students and Parents

In the spring I will be offering a new class for the students at Deer Park Home Link. This post augments information in the course description.

Home Link Historians is a writing class designed for students that read history as part of their curriculum. Students will keep a journal of their reading in the form of a blog (short for web log). Instead of writing for an imagined audience, as in most writing classes, students will write for readers that will be able to leave comments.

I will use several writing prompts to offer structure and stimulate thought about issues central to the study of history. It does not matter what era, nation, culture, or special topic the student is studying: the writing prompts will be flexible.

The first prompt: What are you reading? Why are you reading it? What do you expect to learn?

The student blog will be located at Home Link Historians. It will be single blog with many authors writing under pseudonyms to protect their individual privacy.


Sample entries in Patriots and Peoples

For students and parents coming here to get a sense of how keeping a blog as a history reading journal might work, these samples might be of interest. For regular readers of this blog, this listing highlights some of my better entries over the past year.

“Thinking Historically”

On keeping a journal: “Spiral Notebooks”

Primary Source focus: “Lee Resolution”

A topical blog entry concerning a common myth: “Columbus and the Flat Earth”

Another popular myth: “The Burning of the Boats”

Investigating a text’s footnotes: “Depopulation: Ubelaker’s Low Estimate”

Comparison of two texts on a limited subordinate topic: “Sixteenth Century Spain: Contrasting Images”

Current events connection: “Booker T Washington’s White House Dinner”

Now that you're already looking at my online writing, you might also find my Chess Skills blog of interest.