Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Who Run The World?
Women, and specifically women of color, have faced their fair share of challenges in America. Women have made incredible contributions to our country, and yet, the contributions of many of these women still go unnoticed. Recently, one of these stories has been unearthed. Let’s watch this trailer together: In the trailer for Hidden Figures, the…
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Ms. Green at NCSS!
I have been out of school Thursday and Friday, and am presenting at the NCSS conference in Washington DC. Yes, that’s right, our Little Longhorns get to do the coolest projects, and teachers from around the country want to hear about what we’re up to! This post is mainly for teachers looking for direction and…
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WWII, America, and the Dominant Narrative
What do you know about WWII? You probably know that the United States fought other countries. (Remember that a civil war is a war within one country, and a world war involves multiple countries?) This week we’re going to focus on many groups of American people during World War II, many of whom have been…
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The 2016 Civil Rights Movement Timeline Exhibition
I am just blown away by the work our fifth graders did for their civil rights timeline presentations! We have spent the past six weeks researching both the African American civil rights movement and the Chicano movement, all of which led up to this amazing timeline exhibition. We started out by talking about the dominant narrative…
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Newsela Vote 2016 & our feature on NBC!
Our fifth grade Little Longhorns have been actively engaged in this year’s presidential election! We have been diving into deep, critical conversations revolving around both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Our fifth graders have had astounding debates and conversations, deliberating questions such as: “Would a candidate’s moral character affect their ability to be president?,” as well as discussing…
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Outdoor School 2016
A few photos from our trip to Outdoor School Camp Champions! Scroll down for our official 2016 ODS video. Cheers to nature, classroom community, leadership, and grit. Great job Little Longhorns! Love, Mrs. Calvin
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Historical Thinking in the 5th Grade
What do our historical knowledge do our fifth graders bring into the classroom with them? How do our kids make sense of the worlds around them? These are the questions we set out to answer last week in our historical thinking unit. Part I: Timelines At the beginning of the year, I recreated our…
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Challenging the Dominant Narrative
This year in Ms. Green’s class, we’ve started a conversation that will last the whole year. We’re talking about what it means to challenge the dominant narrative. The dominant narrative is the story that’s usually told, and that most people are comfortable hearing. In a US history context, this dominant narrative says that rich white…
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Newsela & The Primary Election
As many of our readers know, we had the privilege of being filmed by our very own cameraman, the one and only Joe Salinas, during our exploration of the primary election via Newsela Vote. (If you’re interested in exactly what we did, here’s the blog post we used for our research.) Newsela is one of…
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Why Kwame Alexander Belongs in Every Classroom
This past week, UT Elementary 5th grade had the privilege of hearing Kwame Alexander, Newberry and Coretta Scott-King Award winning author of The Crossover, speak at O Henry Middle School. On Monday afternoon, a parent informed me that Kwame would be speaking at O Henry, and by 2pm Tuesday, I had sent enough emails and made…
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Ms. Green's Class 