Good morning! Time flies when you are having fun and we are getting done with 2023. Soon we will be onto 2024 and a whole new series of documentaries for the classroom. Next week, the blog is enjoying a well-earned vacation. Now for a quick little year-end review of 2023.
The first major change that was obvious is that in January I started posting blogs daily. This was done because there are a ton of documentaries that are available on YouTube and posted daily on YouTube and there was no way I could continue with the three-day-a-week blogging and keep up with what is new. I still have a list of older documentaries that I would like to do that I have not yet done yet. With all the channels I follow those blogs keep getting pushed down the list. So I decided to do five days a week during the school year and then drop down the blogs to three days a week for the summer. The summer blogs are blogs I will try to keep lighthearted. Another change I made was increasing the reviews to 700 words instead of the usual 600. There were documentaries I reviewed where 600 words were too few and so I decided to increase the length of the blogs. Only blogs that are review time and suggestion blogs will have a longer word count. The biggest change you should see it in the blog list. It was something I started in 2022: I added times to the documentaries! I felt like including times would help the teacher determine whether or not to show that documentary over one class setting or two class settings. It may have taken me a couple of months, but I finally completed including the times on my documentary list. During the adding time process, I also made sure the blogs I suggested were still listed on YouTube and if they were not I removed the links from the blog. I kept the blogs on the list in the hope they will get added back in the future, but if not I wanted to have a record of what I was suggesting. This record will help teachers find documentaries beyond YouTube. I also included the time length in the blog reviews too. Speaking of the documentary lists, I added a few categories such as royals, Ancient Rome, Ancient China, and Ancient America. I tried to avoid going overboard on the royal documentaries but in light of the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, I decided it was okay to share a royal documentary once in a while. After all, royal families are part of history too. I ended up starting the year with a History Meets Geography section but decided to put the documentaries I had on there in the Royal section. I also decided to share YouTube Channels that can be shared as part of a discussion or a writing prompt in history class. I also tried to take the time and look at pacing guides for schools when it comes to historical topics that are taught in the classroom. It has been a while since I have sat in a history classroom in middle school or high school so I had to do my best to remember what I was taught. So far this blog has been a reflection of what I remember. The pacing guides I have found have been an interesting read. I will have to keep those guides in mind when I do my 2024 suggestions. What will 2024 bring? There will be plenty of new documentaries and old documentaries to review. I hope that I can knock down my documentary to-do list. I want to find more documentaries on the Renaissance and the Reformation because that is one area I am lacking. I may also expand my blog to include more documentaries on America. I have done a few and that is not enough. I guess you can say that it is easier to do more documentaries featuring topics in world history because there are more high-quality documentaries in comparison. It has been great watching these documentaries for all you teachers and I am glad that I could help you select documentaries for the classroom.
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The reviews I do are my opinion and my opinion only. My opinions should always be taken with a grain of salt. I just want to help teachers out selecting documentaries. Worksheets
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The purpose of this blog is to share information on what can be used in a classroom, private school, or home school setting as well as serve as a portfolio of my personal and professional work. The reviews are my opinions and should be treated as such. I just want to provide a tool for teachers to select documentaries for their classrooms. |