Last week in history classes with Mindy Rice and Jelena Jaric, we focused on a very important skill: an ability to see the connections between the events and to link cause and effects in order to understand the changes that shape the human society.

In our modern history class, we have been studying the Industrial Revolution. Students have learned about key inventions like the steam engine which marked a turning point in human lives. They learned that new machines and types of fuel like coal replaced the human, water and animal power that had limited human potential for thousands of years. The students worked together to understand the connections and figure out how the industrial progress led to historical change.

Getting a sense of "moving through time" is important for students to understand history as a continuous and uninterrupted flow of phenomena that affect us to the very present. Our favourite method of learning is to employ workstations. The students were given events that they needed to match into forming a cause-and-effect pair. Later, we reviewed these key events within the timeline of the Industrial Revolution.

We did a similar activity with the students who study the history of the 20th century. We are currently looking at the disintegration of the Soviet Union. We used short writing prompts regarding different aspects of this period: economy, religion (or the lack of), education, women's rights, technological advancement, and everyday life. The students tested themselves on their understanding of the material taught and we used these writing prompts to guide and enrich our class discussions.