Teacher Tips | Presidents, Poems, a

Teacher Tips and Help

Is it really necessary to have students memorize the president poems?

Although you are obviously free to eliminate poem memorization from your class, your students will not benefit as much. I strongly recommend that you set poem memorization as a goal, because, by doing so, students will be learning and memorizing history. I have had American history high school teachers tell me that my previous presidents class students knew things about topics, which their peers didn't know, simply from having memorized the president poems! In addition, multiple parents over the years have expressed their amazement at how much their 10-12 year-olds were learning in my class, and it was the poem memorization that cemented the info in their minds. As you can see, student poem memorization is WELL worth the extra work it takes!

Can I teach this class to younger students, older students, or mixed age groups?

Absolutely! I have taught this class three times to classes of same-age peers. The first time, my class consisted of eighteen 11-12 year-olds; students of this age enjoy the teaching and poem memorization challenge immensely but are still young enough to appreciate the games. The third time I taught, it was to a large group of 9-10 year-olds; I omitted a bullet point of lesser importance for each president and went into less detail on a few things. What I have found is this: Students younger than the suggested age range of 10-12 year-olds need more activities and less time sitting at a table. (We did a lot of musical chairs, simple games, and stood frequently to jog in place!) That is why the “sweet spot” in terms of the best age for the content seems to be 10-12 year-olds.

That said, I once taught this class to a multi-aged group of kids from homeschooling families. I wasn’t at all sure how it would go. I forewarned their parents that, since I was teaching to my target age, some content would go over the heads of the younger ones while the older students would at times be bored. It was extremely well-received by both the 8-year-olds and the high schoolers! The teenagers enjoyed the games, read-aloud books, and snacks every bit as much as the younger students, although they were less enthusiastic about cutting and pasting!

If teaching this curriculum to students older than 12, you could easily make it more challenging by requiring them to take notes in a separate notebook in addition to or in place of the traditional Student Workbook. Also, when something comes up that you don’t know the answer to, assign an older student to research the topic and report back to the next class with the answer.

Can I teach this to a smaller group of kids?

Sure! Just keep in mind that some games may be more difficult to play with fewer students.

How can I adapt this curriculum to teach it over 2 semesters instead of 1 semester?

An excellent question! I will try to develop lesson plans for a 2-semester class and share them on this website under the tab “Teacher Tips & Helps” for you as soon as I can. In the meantime, here are a few ideas to stretch out the content:

Cover fewer presidents in each class
Take time to let the kids pair up and practice reciting the day’s poems to each other
Listen to students say the poems and check them off in class
Don’t use snack time to teach or read books aloud but do it separately instead
Find other read-aloud books relating to the content of the day and read them
Let kids play games twice instead of once