What you can book, and what it takes to start.
Backyard History works statewide. Every booking starts with a conversation and a scouting visit to your town. Pricing is a flat day rate, quoted after the conversation, with scouting and travel included.
Model and Plan
The lead format. One full day: a walking investigation with one of your classes in the morning, teacher observation throughout, debrief and planning in the afternoon. Teachers leave with their own next investigation on one page.
Best for: a grade 3 or grade 5 team starting Unit 3.5 or 5.4 in the spring, or any team that wants to see the method with their own students before running it.
Includes: scouting visit, the morning’s question and stop cards and sources, the observation sheet, the one-page planning template, and the materials to run the walk again.
Observe and Coach
A half day, about a month after Model and Plan. I come back and watch a teacher run the investigation they designed, then we debrief one on one. This is the piece that turns a day into something the school owns. Priced separately.
If a full day isn’t possible
Two smaller formats, drawn from the DESE listing.
Teacher workshop only. Half day or full day. Teachers investigate their own community’s history using the Investigating History inquiry sequence. The full-day version adds the planning session. No students.
Student walking investigation only. The morning of Model and Plan without the teacher afternoon. Useful as an introduction, but teachers get far less from it.
Alignment
Listed by DESE as an Investigating History Content Learning Partner for Units 3.1 through 3.5 and 5.4. Content areas on the listing: civics, environmental history, media and news literacy, United States history, Massachusetts history.
The planning template teachers leave with follows the four dimensions of the Inquiry Arc: developing questions, applying disciplinary tools, evaluating sources and using evidence, and communicating conclusions.
Investigation themes come from your town and can include Indigenous land history, the colonial era, civic and governmental history, immigration and community change, and civil rights history.
What you provide
One class and its teachers for the morning, release time for those teachers in the afternoon.
A room for the afternoon.
Your district’s field trip policy and permissions. Off-campus supervision follows your rules.
A contact at the school who can answer logistics questions during scouting.
Scale
One class per day. If you want two classes, that’s two days, and the second can be led by a teacher from the first with me observing. I don’t run a grade level at once; the morning only works at a size where every student is producing.
I facilitate; I don’t lecture.
How booking works
1
Book a time.
Twenty minutes. You tell me the grade, the unit, the town, and the window.
2
Scouting.
I visit your town, build the route, and send the question to the class a week ahead.
3
The day.
4
Optional: Observe and Coach.
A month later.
Spring units start in April. To run a walk during Unit 3.5 or 5.4, book by the end of February.
For historical societies, museums, and sites
You’re part of this, not the customer. During scouting I’ll come to you first for sources and for what the town gets wrong. If a district books a walk that passes your door, I’ll ask you to be at the stop. If you know a district that should be doing this, send them here.