Parents of 9th grade American History Students,

Hello, I am Griffin Molino and I will be student teaching with Mr. Zalonis this fall. I am a former graduate of

South Williamsport and currently completing my student teaching through Saint Francis University. I am writing you

this letter today to talk about some strategies I will be incorporating in class and that can help your sons/daughters

learn easier and understand how they learn as well, which can help in future courses. As we all know no one is the

same and we all learn at different speeds and prefer different methods of learning, with that in mind I have structured

my course to use a whole bunch of different teaching methods and ways of getting the material across to the students.

The aim of this is to try and find something that works well for the entire class so the entire class can be successful. We

want the students to understand how they learn the best, so in the future they can help themselves. For my course

specifically we will try different methods to learn the materials, this will help the students stay engaged as they won’t

be doing the same thing every week and help the students learn in different ways, which should help keep the material

fresh and fun. Some of the different things that I try to do along with the traditional lectures is, group learning where

students are put in groups and research a topic and present it to the class. Learning through primary sources, so

looking at sources that were written during the time of the event. Learning through media, so watching videos and

documentaries made about the topics we are learning about. Lastly, through hands on activities that will help the

students understand the historical events and get an understanding on how things were dealt with. The main goal of

this class is for the students to become critical thinkers and to come up with their own thoughts and theories on

historical events.

Sincerely,

Mr. Molino