Rise of Dictators Pop Up Notes

This wonderfully creative lesson has students creating pop up figures of 5 dictators who came to power in the 1920's and 30's before World War II.

Included is a sheet with 5 people to cut out: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco, Benito Mussolini, and Hideki Tojo. Students then place these onto an included world map that covers 2 pages of their notebooks with spaces for notes about each person.

A powerpoint comes with this download as well that covers everything students need to know based on Common Core Standards. The powerpoint has a warm up, quotes, pictures, and all relevant information for each dictator. This lesson is amazing for your visual and kinesthetic learners as they are creating a fantastic visual representation of dictators literally rising up out of their notebooks.

A free Preview file is available as well with the pop ups, notes pages, answer key, and 1 sample powerpoint slide. The full download includes the full 14 slide powerpoint with incredible images and quotes like below:

The Effects of the Industrial Revolution & Communism

Our latest interactive lesson for World History covers the lasting effects of the Industrial Revolution. I've always had an easy time teaching how it starts and the major inventions, but the effects of the revolution are what probably most important for students to learn because they changed so much about the world.

This lesson available for download features a visually striking powerpoint that covers the major effects of the Industrial Revolution. Rather than simply copying the notes, students must analyze whether each effect was positive or negative and list it in the correct category:

While some such as "improved education" are simple, others like "population increase" lead to excellent class discussions as students weigh the pros and cons. Each slide features a captivating visual representation of the category that will surely benefit your visual learners:

The second half of the powerpoint compares capitalism & communism as a response to the effects. Similarly, students place characteristics such as "redistribution of wealth" under the matching philosophy.

The lesson includes a graphic organizer on which students complete the notes as well as a culminating worksheet. The worksheet is based off of the notes and can be completes without any textbook. Both Word and PDF files of the worksheets are included for your convenience along with the powerpoint from here.

Hope you can find this lesson useful in your class!

100 Warm Ups from US History

One of the best classroom management strategies I have found is to have a warm up activity ready for students immediately upon entering the classroom. Over the past several years, I put together this 100 slide powerpoint of daily warm ups. One is up on the projector every day for my US History classes and usually connects to a lesson we covered the previous day. Each slide is visually engaging, with pictures, cartoons, charts, or quotes from history and connects to state and Common Core Standards.

Here is a video preview of the entire year's worth of warm up questions:

The full powerpoint is available to download here. Since using these warm ups I have found my students are immediately more engaged and are demonstrating greater comprehension of the material.

Martin Luther Protestant Reformation Pop Up Notes

This visually inventive graphic organizer is like a pop-up book for students to organize essential information on Martin Luther, his 95 Theses and the  beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

To reinforce the problems within the Catholic Church, students cut open the church doors and write the problems of the church underneath the doors. So the problems are literally inside the church!

Here is a completed version from a student's notebook:

Included in the download is a simple powerpoint that guides students through the esential information. Here are some sample slides:

    

    

This is a fantastic, creative activity that works especially well with my English language learners, special education students, and visual or kinesthetic learners. You can download the entire bundled lesson plan here!

Hope you find the lesson useful!

Louis XVI "Harry Potter Magic Portrait

Want to really get your students attention during a typical powerpoint presentation? How about if the old portraits look around the room, smile, laugh, wink, and sneeze! I got bored adding the same old portraits to my slides and tried to think of a way to make them more engaging.

I thought back to the magic portraits in the Harry Potter movies and then found a way to make them! The program CrazyTalk allows you to edit any portrait into a moving "magic" video. It takes a lot of work to make them perfect, but I started on a few and got addicted.

A free sample of an animated King Louis XVI embedded into a powerpoint slide is available for download here.

You can see the complete French Revolution powerpoint with many of these moving magic powerpoints in this video: