Sidewalk Chalk Art Review

By Jeff Burns

It’s the end of the year, and teachers are always searching for fun and meaningful ways to review material and prepare for those end of course tests, finals, and AP exams.  Why not take it outside and engage your students’ creativity in the process.

For a couple of years now, I have taken my AP US history classes outside to do sidewalk chalk review.  It’s simple and takes just a couple of periods.  First, I assigned each group one of the APUSH time periods. Their instructions were simple: design and create a sidewalk square that illustrates the most important themes, concepts, events, ideas, and people of the assigned period. They had one period to plan, and one period to draw. 

It doesn’t require much:  administrator’s permission and sidewalk chalk.  Dollar stores have cheap sidewalk chalk.  I got it for $1 a box at Dollar general.  Some students even brought their own.  Other useful tools that students brought included stiff dust brooms for erasing and spray water bottles. To get their best effort, I offered a replacement grade to the groups with the best squares, judged by the other US history teachers in my department.  

 

APUSH Hand Turkeys

Are you looking for a simple review lesson as the holiday approaches? Try the APUSH Hand Turkey task. It is written for an AP US History class but could be easily modified for other grade levels.

A photo posted by @histocrats on Nov 15, 2016 at 10:55am PST

An APUSH Hand Turkey

November is time for APUSH Hand turkeys.

Task: You will create TWO Hand Turkeys that review and highlight the periods that you have studied thus far:

Period 1: 1491-1607. ...

Period 2: 1607-1754. ...

Period 3: 1754-1800. ...

Period 4: 1800-1848. ...

Turkey 1

1.   Draw a turkey on 8 ½ X 11 unlined paper of any color.

2.   Decorate each of the five digits as one of the periods above.  Be creative.  Think themes, important events, and ideas, etc.

3.   The palm is open for decorating in any subject or theme of American History up to 1877.

Turkey 2

1.   Draw a turkey on 8 ½ X 11 unlined paper of any color.

2.   Choose, in your opinion, the person in American history from 1491-1877 who is the biggest turkey in history.

3.   Find a picture of that person’s head to become the head of your turkey (thumb).

4.   Decorate the turkey to show who that person was and why he/she is the biggest turkey of the age.