Writing a Family Thanksgiving Day Proclamation for 2020 Modeled after Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Proclamation

 Abraham Lincoln was a famous Kentucky Christian who became the sixteenth president of these United States. On October 3, 1863, the country was divided and engaged in “a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity”[1]. That was the year he called all Americans to a national day of Thanksgiving and Praise. He was not the first president to have done this. George Washington was the first to proclaim a national Thanksgiving Day. Lincoln’s proclamation named the last Thursday of November and this day has continued as the American Thanksgiving Day. His proclamation is particularly applicable to our country this year with its months of the COVID-19 pandemic and with the unrest following a new wave of racial strife. Perhaps families will find in Lincoln’s proclamation a model that can be followed to generate their own 2020 Thanksgiving Day Proclamation.

In his proclamation, President Lincoln acknowledged that 1863 had been filled with many blessings even as it had been a year of war where many Americans had died and many others still mourned their deaths. He gave God credit for keeping the nation from becoming involved in foreign wars; for keeping the nation running according to its laws, with order, except on the battlefield; for prospering the work of farmers, seamen, construction workers and miners; and for allowing the population of the country to increase. Lincoln’s proclamation stated that: “No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things”[2]. Instead, Lincoln affirmed that: “They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God”[3]. Lincoln went on to confess the national sin of the people, writing: “The Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy”[4]. While praising and thanking God for all of His blessings, the presidential proclamation called the nation to also: “with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union…”[5]

In writing a family Thanksgiving Day Proclamation for 2020, start by asking and answering these questions using no more than one or two sentences for each. How can you characterize the year, 2020? In spite of the difficulties of 2020 for your family and extended community, what blessings have been experienced that can be credited to the hand of God? Are there particular short-comings that might need to be confessed or acknowledged? Whom do you know who have suffered loss this year or who are mourning on Thanksgiving Day that you can appeal to God for His mercy and healing?

Before enjoying your turkey dinner, read the Family Thanksgiving Proclamation for 2020. You could print it in a fancy font and roll it up as though it is a parchment. If you are doing this activity as part of a homeschool lesson, bill the hours as reading, history, creative writing and oral communications.

As President Lincoln said, “The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies…”[6]  with all its troubles and uncertainties. When he wrote this, perhaps Lincoln may have been reading Robert Browning’s 1841 poem, Pippa’s Song which says, “God’s in His heaven; All’s right with the world…”[7]

 By Lesley Barker. c. 2020.

 

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[1] Lincoln, Abraham. “A Proclamation. October 3, 1863”. Abraham Lincoln Online Speeches and Writings. ONLINE at http://abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/thanks.htm. ACCESSED 11/24, 2020.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Browning, Robert. “Pippa’s Song”. in Arthur Quiller-Couch, editor. The Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900. 1919. ONLINE at https://www.bartleby.com/101/718.html. ACCESSED 11/24/2020.

Using a Poem by Effie Waller Smith in the Multi-age/grade Homeschool

Effie Waller Smith was a Kentucky teacher and poet whose poetry is about current events from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Cumberland’s beauty and its people, and her Christian faith. She wrote about the Spanish American War, the San Francisco Earthquake and what it was like to be a single woman suffragette. She wrote about her personal griefs: the death of her baby and of a student. She wrote about her childhood and about holidays and pastors’ wives. Her poems are largely forgotten despite having published three volumes. She was from Pike County, Kentucky, the educated daughter of formerly enslaved parents. The Kentucky Faith and Public History Education Project is proud to feature her story in the fourth FKCC book, Picked Last, by Lesley Barker, available for sale here as a paperback or as a kindle e-book. This blog post models how to use one of Smith’s shorter poems, “Benefaction”[1] in a multi-age/grade homeschool context. The poem is as follows:

Benefaction, by Effie Waller Smith

If thou the lives of men wouldst bless,

live thine own life in faithfulness;

Thine own hard task, if made complete,

Shall render others’ toil more sweet;

Thy grief, if bravely thou endure,

Shall give men’s sorrow solace sure;

Thy peril, if met undismayed,

Shall make the fearful less afraid.

Each step in right paths firmly trod

Shall break some thorn or crush some clod,

Making the way more smooth and free

For him who treads it after thee.

Suppose your homeschool has an elementary student, a middle school student and a high school student. A lesson about this poem can be used to advance grade/age appropriate learning activities for each. Here’s how.

• Introduce the poet. Show the students a picture of Effie Waller Smith. Tell them when she lived and discuss what her life may have been like as a single woman and then as a widow.
• Read "Benefaction" aloud to the students. Ask what they understood on this first experience with the poem. Explain that poetry often is packed with meaning but that the meaning must be mined. Say that that is why we learn to analyze a poem.
• Introduce the vocabulary that relates to the poem’s structure. It is one verse made up of how many lines? Ask the youngest student to count the lines in the poem. There are twelve. Explain that many poems use rhyme. Read the poem again. This time ask the students to stop you whenever they hear a rhyme. Ask them to figure out the rhyme scheme. Show them that each new rhyme can be assigned a letter which makes this poem’s rhyme scheme: AA, BB, CC, DD, EE, FF. Because each pair of lines rhyme, they can be called rhyming couplets. Ask the students if there is another pattern in the poem. See if they can discover that each line contains a total of eight syllables. Elementary students should be able to divide words into syllables and middle school students should be proficient at this task.
• Discuss the words that are no longer commonly used in English: thy, thou and thee and the verb ending on would’st. Write the vocabulary words that the students must be able to define before they can really understand the poem: benefaction, bless, faithfulness, render, grief, endure, solace, peril, undismayed, fearful, trod, clod, treads. The students can race looking up the definitions of these words online or in a dictionary. Using the definitions of these words, ask the students to work together to paraphrase the poem. One student should be assigned to write the paraphrase.
• Now that the students can paraphrase the poem, ask them to each write a one sentence summary of what the poem says. Let them each share what they wrote with the group.
• The last analytic activity deals with the students’ reaction to the poem. Do they agree with its message? Is it something they are going to think about after the lesson is over? Does anyone feel that the poem is important enough to memorize? How would they illustrate the poem if they were hired to do so? Do they like the poem? Why or why not?
• End the lesson by reading the poem aloud again. Ask if the poem is more meaningful because they have spent time really thinking about its structure and meaning.
• Make other poems by this famous Kentucky Christian available for the students to read and think about.

By Lesley Barker

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[1]Smith, Effie Waller. “Benefaction” on Poetry Explorer. ONLINE at https://www.poetryexplorer.net/poem.php?id=10128234 ACCESSED 11/18/2020

Using Kentucky's Historical Marker Program to Teach History in the Homeschool

Homeschooling allows amazing freedom for on-site learning. Have you considered using the green metal historical markers that are scattered throughout Kentucky as an instructional resource for your homeschool? There is even a free online historical marker database that identifies and helps to locate these quick glimpses of our history. The searchable database is maintained by the Kentucky Historical Society[1]. Some of the markers remember people and their accomplishments; some commemorate past events; some explain the significance of the place. The Kentucky historical marker program is an initiative whereby individuals propose a topic and location for a new marker.  If the Kentucky Historical Society determines that the proposal is important to serve the public history of the state, a marker will be produced and unveiled in a ceremony. Afterwards, the hope is that passersby will stop, read the information on the marker and become better informed about our history. Sometimes the information on a historical marker may be surprising.

For example, Marker #2298 is located in Jefferson County at the intersection of Kenwood Drive and Kenwood Hill Road by the Little Loomhouse. On the back side of the sign this is written: “Happy Birthday to You- Mildred Jane Hill and Patty Smith Hill, noted kindergarten & music teachers, had a summer residence on Kenwood Hill, known as Hill House. In 1893, the sisters published the song, 'Good Morning to All.' During a birthday party held in the Little Loomhouse, Patty suggested that the words be changed to 'Happy Birthday to You.' It’s one of the three most popular songs in English”[2]. The Hill sisters were both kindergarten teachers, the daughters of a Presbyterian minister. They taught school and Sunday School. Patty Hill made a significant impact on early childhood education. She taught this at Columbia University in New York.

How can you use a stop at this historical marker to expand your homeschooling experience? Start by having the students read the information on the marker. Ask them to paraphrase what they read. Are there any words they do not already know on the sign? These become new vocabulary words for the week. Do a simple math problem to discover how many years it has been since the song was first written. There is a riddle in the sign: “Happy Birthday” is ‘one of the three most popular songs in English’. Can your students guess what the other two songs are? This becomes an internet research project. Can your students sing “Happy Birthday”? Can they write the rhythm of the song using simple musical notation? Can they play it on a recorder or another instrument? This is a music lesson. Perhaps one of your students wants to become a teacher. Patty Hill would be a great person to research. She even designed some huge blocks for kindergartners to use to learn cooperative play etiquette. So, if one of your students likes building with Legos, for example, this may be of interest (even though it is not on the marker). Finally there is the potential for developing map-skills. Can your students find the location of the marker using a street map of Louisville? Take a picture of your students standing next to the sign. Start a homeschool journal in which you record the markers you visit. Note their location, the marker number, and a summary of the information on the sign. Paste in a print of the photo you took. Count the hours for history, reading, math, music and geography.

By Lesley Barker PhD.

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[1] https://secure.kentucky.gov/kyhs/hmdb/MarkerSearch.aspx?mode=All

[2] Ibid.

A Homeschool Lesson Plan for the book, New Boots: the Story of Elisha Green

 

By Lesley Barker

New Boots: The Story of Elisha Green is a high-interest easy-reader written at the second to fourth grade reading level. It is a high-interest book so it engages readers who may struggle with reading. It works to introduce the "Rosa Parks of Kentucky" to anyone. There are four short chapters and a total of 32 pages. This lesson plan is written with the special dynamics of homeschoolers in mind. It starts the week before you plan to read the book with a series of assignments that will build background information for your students. Some assignments are designed for older students, others for younger students, and some assignments work for students of every grade and ability. The next week, this plan suggests that you read the book as a group at a rate of one chapter per day for four days. On the fifth day, the students will reflect and receive a follow up assignment. 

Here is a list of pre-reading assignments to prepare your students to respond to the book at their various developmental levels.

•       Using a map of the United States, assist each student to locate Kentucky. Ask them to identify the capitol of Kentucky. Point out the Ohio River. Help the students discover how many and which states border Kentucky? Provide a blank map of the United States with the borders of the individual states indicated. Assign the students to outline and color in Kentucky. Ask them to put a star where Frankfort is and to put dots on the map to show where Maysville and Paris are. Ask a high school student to find the distance between Maysville and Paris. Log these hours to geography.
•          Assign high school students to research the dates of the Civil War and to find out what role Kentucky played in that conflict. Log these hours as history.
•          Assign middle school students to look up President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. Ask them to write a paraphrase of that speech. Log these hours as literacy, reading and writing.
•          Ask the group what they know about the history of slavery in the United States. Talk about what they think a child’s experience of being enslaved was like. Tell them that when they read New Boots: Elisha Green’s Story they will learn, from Elisha Green’s own words, about his childhood experience as a slave and about how slavery impacted his family. Log these hours as history.
•          Ask a fourth or fifth grader to figure out how someone could travel from Maysville to Paris in 1883. Ask them to look online to find pictures of passenger trains that would have been used at that time. Log these hours as technology.
•          Purchase small swatches of linen, wool and cotton fabric. Show pictures of sheep, flax and cotton plants. Help the students to feel the difference between the fabrics and to match the fabrics to their sources. Give each student a cotton ball. Demonstrate how to pull the fibers out and spin them between your fingers. Show pictures of a spinning wheel and of a hand-held spindle. Log these hours as science.

Take four days to read New Boots: Elisha Green’s Story out loud at one chapter per day. Each student who is able to read at a second to fourth grade level will have no trouble with the text. Each student can read one or two sentences. The other students should listen. If you have just one copy of the book, pass it from student to student. Every few paragraphs, stop. Ask the students to paraphrase or summarize what they have read. Ask them to make predictions about what will happen next. When the story touches one of the topics you assigned as preparation, ask the students to share what they learned and how the book connects to what they think about the topic. For example, the book discusses that Elisha Green’s owner was a pastor. How do your students respond to the idea that a pastor owned slaves? Ask them to trace what happened to change the way our culture considers slavery since the early nineteenth century. This should produce a review and an introduction to the issues of the Civil War and could connect to current events and the lingering contradictions around race in America today. When there is an opportunity to do a math problem as in how many rats Elisha Green would have had to catch to earn $1.00, stop reading and do the calculations. This should also lead the students to express other interesting ideas. Log these hours as reading, history, current events and math as appropriate.

On the fifth day, ask the students to reflect on what they have read. They should be able to give a good summary of the book. Ask them to talk about what they learned from the book. Ask them to reflect on what new questions the book triggered. Assign each student to produce a response to the book. For high school students the response could be an essay that requires more research and includes citations and footnotes. For middle school and older elementary students, the response could be a book report. For younger students, the response could be a drawing or a home-made puppet show. Once the responses are prepared, the students should share what they did. Finally, ask the group how they would present the life of Elisha Green if they had been selected as the team to go to the FKCC meet. What would they add or subtract to the presentation in the book? Take a vote. Do your students think that the kids in the book should win first prize? Log these hours as reading, writing, art or performing art as appropriate.

There are four books in the FKCC series of easy-readers available for sale now on Amazon. These are resources for K-12 Kentucky students to help them explore the Christian history of Kentucky and to help us all develop an objective, secular and non-devotional vocabulary to use when talking about the Christian religion in schools. Each book presents a different Kentucky Christian and can be used effectively in the homeschool. There is also a “club” that your students can join by providing their email address on the form here. Members of the Famous Kentucky Christian Club receive four fun emails each year. Each email will include information about how the Christian religion has impacted the history of Kentucky as well as games, riddles and puzzles.

Please help us introduce the Kentucky Faith & Public History Education Project to other homeschoolers by sharing this blog with your friends.

 

Using the Book "Big Bully: the Story of Simon Kenton" to Teach the Inquiry Process Through Active Learning

 

By Lesley Barker

The FKCC books produced by the Kentucky Faith and Public History Education Project model the inquiry process for social studies for elementary and middle school students. Homeschoolers can use them for the same instructional goals as well. The first step in the inquiry process, as we discussed last week, is to ask good questions. Next, students are challenged to engage in independent research to hunt for the answers to those questions. Then, students must prove what they have learned by citing the evidence they have found. Finally, they should create a presentation that demonstrates what they have learned. These four steps are consistent with the objectives of a learning strategy known as “active learning”. It makes students responsible for their own learning while the teacher serves as a coach and a mentor along the way.

Here is how to use the first book of the Famous Kentucky Christian Club Series to model the inquiry process. Assign your student to read the first chapter of Big Bully: The Story of Simon Kenton by Lesley Barker (available as a paperback or a Kindle edition here). This book illustrates how a team of four fourth graders researched the life of this Kentucky pioneer and then created a presentation for a Show N Tell competition. Stop after your student has finished reading the first chapter, “Ask Important Questions”. Discuss the questions that the children posed in the chapter. Ask the student what made the question useful for researching  the life of this famous man. Get the student to predict what tools the children in the story may use to find the answers to the questions. Assign the student to read the second chapter, “Hunt for Facts”.  When the student finishes reading this chapter, talk with them about whether their predictions were accurate. Ask if they were surprised by any of the strategies the children used in the book. Next assign them to read the third chapter, “Use Proof”. After they are done, discuss why it is important to cite evidence for what they claim. Before you assign them to read the last chapter, “Show N Tell”, ask your student to predict what the children in the story will create to try to win the competition. Read the last chapter. Then assign the student to draw a picture of the display that the children in the book created. Ask what your student likes about it; what they would change to make it better and if they think the display should win the prize.

This series of four discussions can be spread over one week. The discussions work to introduce your student to the inquiry process. They also serve as social studies lessons about frontier Kentucky. They can also be a series of reading comprehension lessons. Once your student has read and critically considered the inquiry process the children in the book used to make their presentation, you can challenge your student to research the life of another famous Kentucky Christian. The Kentucky Faith and Public History Education Project posts a “trading card” for a different person each Monday on our Facebook Page. You can print these cards and use them to assign a research project to your student.

Questions Lead to Learning

 By Lesley Barker

Marble head of Socrates on display at the Louvre Museum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates)

You have probably heard of the Socratic Method. But you may not have heard of the term “essential question” when applied to a unit plan of study in the classroom. Sometime, you certainly have been told that “there is no bad question”. Questions are strategic tools to promote active learning, independent critical thinking and problem solving skills in students.

Socrates lived in Athens, Greece in the fifth century BC. A philosopher and educator, he remains required reading in college philosophy classes today. He made a huge impact on western thought. He used questions to teach his disciples. This instructional approach has become known as the Socratic Method. It does not lecture nor provide the students with the right answers. It uses questions to lead them to express and then to discover whether their initial assumptions and opinions are flawed and, if so, to come up with better positions that can be logically defended[1]. This requires active learning on the part of the students. They cannot study the lecture notes to pass the test. Instead, they become engaged in a dialogue that results in new and deeper understanding.

Posing an essential question is another way that good teachers assist their students to become independent critical thinkers. An essential question frames a big idea that underlies all the lessons in a unit of study. Its goal is to provoke the students’ curiosity so that they will participate fully in the instructional process. There are three core criteria inherent in a well-stated essential question according to veteran teacher, Jeffrey Wilhelm[2]. The question has to be “interesting and compelling” to the students. It has to stimulate debates and conversations that result in enhanced understanding. It implies that the students must employ the methods of professionals in the field. Wilhelm states that “the secret to teaching may be as simple as asking students good questions and then giving them the opportunity to find the answers.”[3]

There is no bad question. Even when a student asks a question that seems rooted in their frustration, skepticism or negativity, a good teacher learns to receive such questions with respect, returning a meaningful question to flip the conversation to a more productive one that lures the student to a better starting point for learning.

We at the Kentucky Faith and Public History Education Project are guided by this essential question: What impact has Christianity and individual Christians had on the history and culture of Kentucky? This question is framed for K-12 public school students who may otherwise be unfamiliar with Christian beliefs and practices. Everything we are working to produce: the easy-reader chapter books about famous Kentucky Christians, the participatory website, and the walking trail that leads to a re-imagined early 19^th century camp meeting, is meant to trigger increasingly more complex objective questions in the students. If we were producing a spiritual experience we might lead with a statement like “You must be born again” but we are producing an educational experience that exposes students to what “born again” people have achieved since the 1790’s in Kentucky.

As you homeschool or expand the education your children are receiving, may this post challenge you to experiment with asking good questions that lead your children to discover truth for themselves.

 

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[1] Elizabeth Garrett. “The Green Bag”. 1998 in The Socratic Method. University of Chicago Law School. ONLINE. law.uchicago.edu/socratic-method. ACCESSED 10/10/2020

[2] Jeffrey Wilhelm. “Essential Questions”. Scholastic Teacher. ONLINE. https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/essential-questions/ ACCESSED 10/10/2020.

[3] Ibid.

Using History to Teach Children Critical Thinking Skills

By Lesley Barker PhD

There are too many people, too many cultures and too many events in the earth’s past ever to do justice to teaching history. Even just to document the three years of Jesus’ ministry in Palestine would, in the words of the Apostle John, “if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written”[1]. Of course, it is important to give our children a foundation that includes a basic overview of the past and a more detailed timeline of the history of the United States. This provides building blocks for them to become competent adults who take their civic responsibilities seriously and who understand the ideas that repeat as tropes and metaphors in our arts and literature.  Besides building this general knowledge base, teaching history or social studies is one of the most powerful ways to introduce children to critical thinking skills.

Critical thinking skills allow us to discern between ideas that have merit and those that are manipulative or shallow. They are the tools we need to evaluate what is being used to persuade us to adopt a certain position, vote for a certain candidate or buy a certain product. They give us the ability to test our own ideas and conclusions against objective facts or time-tested convictions. They help us defend our own positions using logic, facts and without becoming judgmental or emotionally over-wrought.

Here are four steps that model using critical thinking skills in the teaching of history which can be used at any grade level: 1) ask important questions; 2) look for facts to answer the questions; 3) show proof; and 4) communicate what you learned or concluded. Set up a new topic with a brief introduction or by showing a picture. Then ask the student what they already know, or think they know about the topic. Make a list of these statements. Follow up by asking the student what new things they want to learn about it. Keep prodding until the student has been stimulated to generate a list of three or four questions that are essential to understanding the topic or the person being covered. Next, help the student to brainstorm what age-appropriate resources they can use to find the answers to their own questions. These may include their textbooks, the internet, subject-matter experts, visiting a museum or historic site, looking at pictures or going to a library. Require the student to keep notes on what they discover in these resources. They should be able to cite where they learned any one fact or opinion. Revisit the original questions in the light of the research done and assist the student to produce their own written, oral or creative statement to communicate what they have learned.

The Kentucky Faith & Public History Education Project models this inquiry process, (which, by the way, is at the core of the Kentucky State Academic Standards for Social Studies), in our FKCC Book Series. Each 32-page easy-reader introduces one famous Kentucky Christian. Each book portrays a team of fourth graders who must prepare a show and tell presentation about this famous person. The team also must overcome a problem that typifies a childhood relationship challenge which connects to the famous Kentuckian’s biography. These high-interest books, coming soon on Amazon.com, are written at the second to fourth grade reading level. Homeschooling parents will find these helpful to communicate basic facts about American history while also modeling the teaching of critical thinking skills.

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[1] John 21:25, King James Version