Literacy – PBLife

May 14, 2016May 14, 2016

200: Teaching Chronological Thinking and Causality (Rail Strike of 1877)

Chapter 4 in Lesh, Bruce A. “Why Won’t You Just Tell Us the Answer?”: Teaching Historical Thinking in Grades 7-12. Portland, Me.: Sten house, 2011. Print.

Chronological Thinking

Beyond sequencing events in temporal order
Examining sources to determine how events relate to each other
Looking for causes of events and consequences of events
Understanding the difference between causal and correlational relationships
National Standards for History (related to chronology):
- Identify in historical narratives the temporal structure of a historical narrative or story
- Measure and calculate calendar time
- Interpret data presented in time lines
- Reconstruct patterns of historical succession and duration
- Establish temporal order in constructing historical narratives of their own
Chronological thinking needs to be taught alongside causality
Math / Science Connections:
- Scientists / mathematicians are more likely to say that two variable are correlated than causally related because the latter is harder to prove
- The relationships among things is emphasized throughout the disciplines, it is the basis of functions and functions are a main ingredient in mathematical / scientific models and the predictions that emerge from the models

Causality

Standards related to causality:
- explain causes in analyzing historical actions
- grasp the complexity of historical causation, respect particularity, and avoid excessively abstract generalizations
Debates surrounding causes of events / eras can make history more real and engaging to students
While introducing this concept, select sources that require students to form a chronological narrative – NOT multiple causes, perspectives, or other types of historical thinking – isolate chronological / causal thinking

Why the Railway Strike of 1877?

images involve buildings that are local and recognizable to Baltimore students
Background info:
- economic recession and racial tensions during the Reconstruction
- 1873 Wall Street panic negatively affected nationwide economy
- 1874 6,000 businesses close
- railroads hit really hard
- railroads engaged in a rate war to minimize effects of the depression
- lower rates led to lower labor costs
  - paid workers less
  - workers hired for less hours
  - workers had to pay for travel home when work took them to distant cities
- railroads ended rate wars in favor of an agreement to lower workers’ hourly wave
  - workers striked
    - sometimes destroyed railroad property
    - involved 100,000 workers nationwide
  - strike ended due to
    - federal trop deployment
    - lack of central workers’ org
- Impacts:
  - stirred fear in the public
  - some reforms:
    - created Employees Relief Association – provide some medical services and death benefits to employees (1880
    - 1884 companies setup pensions for workers
  - momentum for Workingmen’s political party and labor movement
  - highlighted problems of industrialization

Implementing the Lesson

Display image from strike that shoes building on fire and ask students to identify elements in the image that aid in understanding artist’s viewpoint
Introduce Driving question: What event does the image depict and what is the artist’s message about the event?
Four sources:
1. letter advertising Gatling gun to owner of B&O Railroad
2. broadside announcing lowering of worker wages
3. letter from president of B&O to President Hayes asking for federal troops
4. insurance document listing damages caused by worker
These four sources can help students’ determine causal relationship among events of the strike
Cursive note: can provide typed copies of cursive sources just in case students struggle to read the handwriting
Jigsaw analysis
- Students analyze different sources within a team of 4 with the help of thinking sheets that use question prompts to guide students to notice and interpret key features of the sources and formulate hypotheses
- As a group, students use collection of sources to create a chronological account that generate original artist’s image at project launch
Alternative to group analysis
- Each group analyzes the same source and presents their finding to the whole class
- The whole class tries to process and arrange the sources in chronological order
Note about the sources and lessons learned:
- the dates on sources do not necessarily correspond to the actual dates of the events they describe
- this fact requires students to use causality to correctly order the sources
- students learn that dates alone do not order sources / events; determinations about the relationships about the information within the sources influence the chronology
- history is more than a random aggregation of information – there is an organization to the information due to causal relationships
Concluding the lesson:
- Is the launch image pro- or anti- labor?
  - after discussing this question, teacher reveals caption of image: The Frenzy and What Came of It”

Leveraging these Lesson in the Future

Lessons learned by students:
- Challenges misconception – sources created close in time to the event are more valid
  - sometimes sources created farther in time from the event have useful things to say because they are written from a broader perspective with access to more corroborating evidence
- Moving beyond timelines – students learn to interpret sources and their relationships to each other to develop chronological frameworks that connect the sources
- Students learn to view history narratives as jigsaw puzzles that can be solved
  - students were more engaged by “creating” time line than simply memorizing it – led to better retention
  - caveats – students may read too much or too little into sources and develop chronologies with logic flaws; promoting discussing among discussion may helps students to catch logic flaws
Teaching tip:
- Many historical tools can be used to analyze and interpret sources
- While scaffolding these tools, it’s helpful to emphasize one over the others

Math / Science Connections:

This style of lesson can be used to design lessons that show:
- chronology of events that led to expanding understanding of a concept or the development of a currently well established math / science model (often called a theory)
  - examples:
    - development of quantum mechanics – happened very quickly and may have a lot of sources with dates that don’t necessarily match the exact discovery dates – (can also remove dates from source until after students have a hypothesis about the chronology). Within quantum mechanics – there are several concepts that can be focused on such as:
      - development of model for an atom
      - development for model of behavior of light
      - development for model for atomic nuclei
    - development of understanding of models to describe electricity and magnetis
    - development of model to understand gravity
    - with biology – the development of the theory of evolution
- can open with quote or a cartoon inspired by model being studied and ask students to describe what they notice and answer the driving question – What does this image depict and what is the artist’s message about the contents?
- teaching students to logically link the development of models can help them to learn how mathematicians / scientists incrementally create new knowledge using more and more sophisticated models (or sometimes simpler models) to understand phenomena

Teaching students how to create their own chronological frameworks by interpreting and connecting primary sources teaches students that history is not just an random aggregate of facts and events. Creating their own timelines as opposed to simply memorizing ones can involve students in an engaging jigsaw puzzle that makes the resulting sequence more memorable. This type of lesson can be applied in science / math lessons that investigate the development of now accepted models for describing phenomena.

Note: This sequence will be written for science teachers. If you’re looking for advice on how to prepare and implement lessons related to historical lessons on chronology, read the WHAT? summary above.

Preparation Steps

Research the unfolding of discoveries that advanced the development of models that describe a specific phenomena.
Find student friendly, engaging sources that represent different models that describe the same phenomena.
Select sources whose dates don’t necessarily relate to the dates of the origin of the models OR expunge the dates from the sources.
Developing thinking sheets with several question prompts that guide students to analyze each source and its relationship to the anchor image.
Find an anchor image to launch the project that shows the model in an interesting way that hints at its origins and implications.
Create a driving question that requires students to investigate the sources to chronologically relate the models depicted in them to the model depicted in the anchor image?

Early Implementation Steps

Introduce anchor image and driving question. Hold preliminary discussions to share and record what is initially notices and initial hypotheses
Have different teams investigate different sources with the help of thinking sheets.
Have each team present their findings to the class.
Use teams’ presentations to have a discussion aimed at sequencing the models
After models are sequenced, reconsider the anchor image and re-address the driving question

Advanced Implementation Steps

Lesson could have models that relate to concepts that are still in flux and have students predict future expressions of the model

May 13, 2016May 14, 2016

199: Text, Subtext and Context (Theodore Roosevelt & the Panama Canal)

Chapter 3 in Lesh, Bruce A. “Why Won’t You Just Tell Us the Answer?”: Teaching Historical Thinking in Grades 7-12. Portland, Me.: Sten house, 2011. Print.

A Common Language for Investigating the Part:

Using content, context and sub-text to summarize and evaluate historical sources can work for all units
Need to repeatedly use content, context and sub-text reflections to build up student skills
For guided questions related to content, context and sub-text, go this article: Making historical thinking a reality

Criteria for Selecting Sources

Do not use more than 4 to 6 sources. Especially in the beginning.
Read the sources ahead of time and check for:
- can lead to discussion related to driving question
- accessible to students
Vary types of sources
- examples: cartoons, artwork, pictures, text, pop culture sources, maps, data tables, graphs, etc
Aid students with:
- academic vocabulary
- contextualizing sources
- providing legible copies of sources (if they are originally in cursive)
Make sources of comparable length if you are using the jigsaw strategy to distribute / share sources.

Initiating the Investigation

Investigate sources and look for:
- lies,
- half-truths
- exaggerations
- rationalizations
- obfuscations
- Math / Science adaptations:
  - Look at strategies or concepts and identify
    - Always true
    - Sometimes true
    - Always false
    - Sometimes false
Students read excerpt from Theodore Roosevelt’s autobiography about the Panama Canal and ponder the Driving Question
- What is Roosevelt doing in his autobiography (lying, telling a half-truth, exaggerating, rationalizing or obfuscating)?
- What role did the US play in the acquisition of the territory used to construct the Panama Canal?
- Math / Science adaptations:
  - Could present or develop circle axioms (or other conjecture types) and ask:
    - are these always, never or sometimes true?
    - In what situations are they true?

Digging Deeper

Students in teams are given one historical source and asked to answer questions related to the content, context and subtext of the source
- source represent a cross section of view about the Panama Canal
- 2 short guide questions:
  - What role did US play in the Panamanian Revolution?
  - Is there any info in this source that challenges assertions in Theodore Roosevelt’s autobiographical excerpts?
Students in teams discuss their sources.
- Each team member read and analyzed different source
- Discuss different sources citing specific examples and quotes from their sources
Alternatives to jigsaw approach:
- One person reads all sources – very time consuming
- Each group of 3 or 4 analyzes the same source and presents their findings to the class so whole class is exposed to all sources
- Math / Science Connection
  - Jigsaw approach – Each person in the team examine a different piece of evidence and share interpretations, observations with whole team (all evidence relates to the same concept)
  - Non-jigsaw approach – All students in same team of 2-3 solve the same problem – challenge students to develop multiple approaches to the same problem and use visuals to represent different approaches

Doing Source Work:

Wineburg, Historical Thinking Matters Framework
- sourcing
- contextualizing
- close reading
- corroborating
Hicks, et al. SCIM-C Strategy Framework
- summarizing
- contextualizing
- inferring
- monitoring
- corroborating
In both approaches:
- students need to move beyond a single source
- examine relationships provided by each piece of evidence
- Corroboration phase -> legitimate interpretations of historical questions
Math / Science connections:
- Math framework
  - Asking questions
  - Making models to answer questions
  - Computations
  - Relating model results back to real life to check if they apply
- Science framework
  - Making observations
  - Asking questions and hypotheses based on observations
  - Designing data procedures
  - Gathering, organizing, analyzing data
  - Drawing conclusions
- Corroboration connections:
  - In Math – verifying that multiple approaches led to the same solution
  - In Science – verifying that different tests yield the same results

Complicating the Investigation

Students corroborate their evidence by completing the following sentence stem:
- The various types of sources used to determine the purpose of Roosevelt’s autobiography created problems because …
- Math connections
  - The various ways of representing the problem reveal different facets of the problem including …
  - The various ways of solving the problem are good for different purposes including …
- Science connections
  - The various data sources yield different conclusions because …
  - The various data sources create problems because …
Types of student responses:
- unreliable due to biased subtexts
- sources only try to portray their own biased viewpoints
- hard to know which source to believe
- contradicting viewpoints, hard to tell what really happened
Student difficulties:
- Students struggle to make connections among content, context and subtext
Another question that guides student corroboration of various sources: The subtext of the various documents was important to consider because …
- Math / Science connection
  - The contexts / subtexts of the data are important to consider because …
- Student responses:
  - explains why the source was written
  - explain variety of opinions
  - explains variety of evidence used by sources
  - helped convey reliability of sources
  - insights into intentions of authors
  - helped to tease out truth in sources
  - helped show biased in sources
“Overall when trying to interpret events from the past, you need to …”
- Math / Science connection
  - Overall, when trying to interpret data, you need to …
- Student responses
  - consider sources with different viewpoints
  - research background info that reveals subtexts of sources
  - compare information from different sources
- Student difficulties
  - believe that bias negates validity of a source (mathematical approach to history)

Student Interpretations – Transition Quick Write

Transition quick write at end of day one: Attempt to answer the driving question
- Look fors in student quick writes:
  - evidence from sources
  - perspectives from multiple sources
- Math / Science connection
  - Use driving question as quick write prompt
- Student difficulties
  - Using evidence
  - Bridging content, context, and subtext in interpretations
  - Mathematical approach to history (problematic approach)
    - require consensus among sources
    - require lack of bias in sources

Returning to the Investigation:

End analysis by revealing most controversial and faceted source to students
Math / Science connection
- Could reserve most nuanced and controversial piece of data for release near middle or end of project

Conclusions:

Analyzing sources’ content, context and subtext can help student investigate the past rather than just memorize and regurgitate text excerpts
Teacher resistance
- kids can’t do this work
  - responses
    - studies have shown that this type of work can be done by elementary school students
    - teacher perseverance helps students acquire student skills
    - historical investigations make history more interesting
    - prepares students with skills they can use in any career

Finding the right evidence and fashioning the right driving question can make boring topics interesting to students. Releasing evidence at various points in the project can start and reinvigorate conversations related to the driving question. Using content, context and subtext to analyze evidence can teach students how to investigate, question and interpret evidence.

Preparation Steps

Collect evidence (data, sources, etc) that students can use to explore content by investigating a driving question
Design driving question
Design thinking sheets that help students examine content, context and subtext of sources
Design prompts to facilitate conversations that corroborate evidence – see above for examples.

Early Implementation Steps

Use a controversial or provocative source to introduce a driving question
Assign sources (various) to students working in teams
Individually assign students to examine the content, context, and subtext to different sources within a team.
Get students to answer prompts as a team that get them to corroborate their sources and formulate interpretations that address the driving question

Advanced Implementation Steps

Gather evidence and sources that uncovers current problems that relate to central concepts in your course. Design project and driving questions around that set of sources.

May 13, 2016May 15, 2016

198: Introducing Historical Thinking Through Nat Turner’s Rebelion

Chapter 2 in Lesh, Bruce A. “Why Won’t You Just Tell Us the Answer?”: Teaching Historical Thinking in Grades 7-12. Portland, Me.: Sten house, 2011. Print.

Historical Background:

Aug 1831, Nat Turner led a brutal slave rebellion against his owner and other slave owners in Southampton, Virginia
Largest slave rebellion in US history
Nat Turner was inspired by visions from God
Eventually defeated, tried, hanged and skilled
Made Virginian legislators became more afraid of rebellion and less concerned of humanitarian concerns associated with slavery

Why Nat Turner?

Intriguing figure in history
Unlike typical victorious narrative in US History textbooks, Turner was defeated
Often left out of textbooks
Jarring juxtaposition of violence and deep religious faith
Can find a lot of primary sources that show intriguing displays of Nat Turner and the rebellion

Math / Science Connection

Research and identify a scientist / mathematician (concept) who (that) is little known and / or controversial
Select someone that has done work that can be examined to practice critical process skills
Collect primary resources related to selected scientist / mathematician / concept

Lesson Plan Goals:

Students will learn:

history is a discipline centered around questions
history applies information to generate interpretations that can answer questions
how to question their sources – identify text, context, and subtext of sources
historical interpretations are dynamic and debatable

Math / Science Connections

Identify process skills that can be taught by examining work of mathematician / scientist or examining evidence related to a controversial topics / concept. Some examples include:
- How to ask generative, testable questions and develop associated hypotheses
- How to build models that can answer real world questions
- How to design procedures to gather data that can be analyzed and interpreted to test hypotheses, answer questions with data-backed conclusions
- How to analyze models – strengths, limitations, connections to real worlds
- How to differentiate between hypotheses and theories
- How does mathematics / scientific community assign validity to findings

Implementing the lesson (2 days)

Students view a variety of engaging images of Nat Turner and asked to:
- describe actions described in the image
- speculate about Turner’s personality and emotional state
- compare / constrast depictions of Turner – height, skin coloration, facial features, clothing, interactions with other people in image, etc
Students realize after several images that images show the same person
- ask students, why would they get such different impressions of the same person?
- students might start to naturally ask, who created images and when were they created?
- ask students, why does origin and intention of artist matter?
Driving question: How do we remember the actions of an enslaved man who lead an ultimately unsuccessful rebellion of slaves?
Students worked in teams are asked to develop a narrative for a historical marker that could be a part of Turner’s 1831 rebellion. In addition,
- assess their own thinking
- describe how sources they presented influenced their interpretations of the past
Students working in teams examine other primary sources that share the following characteristics
- author’s presence is overt
- as a collection, the relationship with the rebellion of the cited sources evolves
Students working in groups in 6 jigsaw read / examine 6 sources.
Students converse / share info related to their sources within their teams (each individual in the team read a different source)
Students discuss how Nat Turner should be remembered. (2-3 min)
Share their findings with the whole class.
Interesting observations of students:
- Since 9/11, the word “terrorist” comes up often to describe Turner
- Students have trouble separating figurative and literal descriptions of the events
Use literal interpretations of historical language as an entry point for teaching students how to interpret, questions and attack historical evidence. Do this by sharing info about the context and sub-text of each historical source.
- Present background info on all sources
- Ask students if their opinions of the info in the sources change as a result of the background info
  - Combats natural habit due to traditional teaching / learning to accept all texts as true without questions
Introduce Text, Context and Subtext questions. See this article for these questions: Making historical thinking a reality
- Answering these questions and using these responses to reformulate interpretations gets students to realize there is “no one right answer”
- Student reactions:
  - some struggle to reconcile conflicting viewpoints for different sources
  - struggle to face problems that arise from acknowledge context and subtext of sources
  - some are unsure how to handle questions raised by context and subtext information – can lead to bland, fact-laden responses = textbook responses
  - some interpret Turner as a religious figure
  - some try to tease out all the bias in the sources because they have come to think of history as a subject without bias
  - some formulated a conclusion by finding commonality in interpretations of the different sources -> Turner as brave freedom fighter
  - all these student reactions are first steps in developing historical thinking because students have made first attempts to
    - question sources
    - consider implications of context and subtext of sources
    - work to solve conflicting viewpoints from sources
    - start to use context and subtext to analyze comparative validity of sources
Respond to students’ first attempts at historical thinking with praise and reminders that this work is difficult and sometimes uncomfortable

Math / Science Connections:

Use Frontloading with Images strategy to launch a project
- Select images that are different but describe the same concept and / or person (could be visuals, charts, graphs)
  - Examples: different images that were used to prove or disprove evolution, different images that explain different understandings of gravity forces
When students start to connect images, ask students:
- How are the images connected?
- Why do the images vary?
Introduce driving question. Could have the form:
- How might this ___insert person or concept___ be taught or applied or celebrated or remembered?
Introduce deliverable. Could be
- An artifact that represents the person / concept and written commentary that explain how the artifact answers the driving question
Group students and assign them different sources (jigsaw style)
Have students share findings from different sources within their teams and come to team interpretations of sources and artifacts
Have students share findings with the whole class (could do this in a discussion or a gallery)
Share background information related to the sources and ask if it changes their interpretation of the sources
Let students re-examine sources using Content, Content, and Sub-Context questions. See this article for these questions: Making historical thinking a reality
Let students reformulate their interpretations and then work on their deliverables.
Ask students what processes they used i this project and what these processes taught them about science / math.

Questions Raised by this Lesson Format:

How to cover all material on standardized tests?
Are student-centered approaches to necessary to teach effectively?
How to balance historical process and historical content?

Related Math / Science Questions:

All of the above and:
What math / science processes are critical to scaffold?
How to present controversy in subjects that are associated with hard facts?
How to scaffold problem solving in ways that mimic real, transferable processes?

Developing a starter lesson to introduce students to critical processes used by historians (scientists, mathematicians, etc) is a first step in guiding students to use content processes effectively to solve problems. These primer lessons are especially important when the processes introduced are contrary to ways the subject has been primary been represented to students in their prior educational careers. Lessons that get students to be aware of the strengths and limitations of their sources and to let these considerations influence their interpretations of these sources prepares students to be savvy consumers / interpreters / users of information.

Preparation Steps

Research and collect images that can challenge students to question how knowledge is created within a discipline and that relate to the curriculum –
- examples – images that depict different understandings of electricity or gravity or evolution
Research and collect sources that deal with a concept or event whose interpretations evolved over time
Develop a provocative driving questions that relates to curriculum, images, and sources
Prepare thinking sheets that have questions that guide students to analyze content, context, and subtext of sources. See this article for these questions: Making historical thinking a reality
Gather background (context and subtext) information for images and sources and combine into a background research presentation

Early Implementation Steps

Implement history or science / math sequence described above.
Monitor students as they work in order to learn the just-in-time moments to transition students to next step in the lesson sequence
Gather evidence of student thinking as they project unfolds
Provide formative feedback on student thinking as they work through phases of the lessons – this feedback could be mostly in the form of questions that guide students to develop more layered, deeper understanding of their sources and to question their interpretations

Advanced Implementation Steps

Over time, collect images, cartoons, and sources that present core concepts in different ways to be used in design of similar lessons
Take students on field trips to get a close look at primary sources – example the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has first edition copies of Galileo’s Starry Messenger, Newton’s Principe, etc.

May 13, 2016May 14, 2016

197: Facilitating a Historical Investigation

Chapter 1 in Lesh, Bruce A. “Why Won’t You Just Tell Us the Answer?”: Teaching Historical Thinking in Grades 7-12. Portland, Me.: Sten house, 2011. Print.

Develop driving question that will focus student inquiry:
- Question should be provocative
- Question encourages investigation and discussion
- Question should align to central concepts / skills in standards
- Question should deepen students’ knowledge of history as an interpretative discipline
- Question should emphasize disciplinary concepts such as:
  - causality
  - chronology
  - multiple perspectives
  - contingency
  - empathy
  - change and continuity over time
  - influence / significance / effect
  - contrasting interpretations
  - intent / motivation
Initiate the investigation
- Access prior knowledge by co-examining a primary source such as: poem, journal entry, map, broadside, political cartoon, etc.
- Hook students’ attention and introduce context for event / person being studied
Conduct the investigation
- Expose students to relevant and conflicting historical sources that allow students to investigate all aspects of the event
- Analyze one document individually
  - annotate information
  - extract who, what, when, where, why
  - determine answers about
    - context
      - what was going on during the time period?
      - what background info helps explain info in the source?
    - subtext
      - who created the source and what do we know about that person?
      - for whom was the source created?
      - why was this source produced when it was?
    - how do these answers affect central question
  - Group individual students so that all documents are represented in a group. Help them use their documents and annotations to :
    - generate and share interpretations of documents based on focus question
    - cite evidence to support interpretations
    - not all group members need to accept all interpretations at this point
Report interpretations and class discussion
- Share interpretations and discuss sources that most influenced their decisions and why
- Discuss and compare / contrast interpretations
Debrief student investigations
- Facilitate a teacher-driven discussion that solidifies basic historical facts and clarifies reasons for varying interpretations
Assess student comprehension of content of the past and historical thinking
- Assess students’ understanding of history content and process

The structure of this historical investigation project sequence resembles the “You do, We do, I do” sequence promoted by Jo Baoler for math lessons. Giving students opportunities to read sources while trying to answer provocative questions can make students more critical and careful with the sources they read and examine. Letting students formulate and defend historical hypotheses and conclusions based on cited evidence teachers students historical content and process.

Preparation Steps

Analyze standards and identify enduring understandings, key skills and supporting knowledge. Develop learning targets targets based on these.
Develop a provocative driving question that relates to learning targets.
Gather a variety of conflicting sources.
Develop thinking sheets that guide students to analyze sources.

Early Implementation Steps

Launch project and present driving question. Examine engaging compelling sources to formulate initial hypotheses
Examine sources individually using thinking sheets
Form jigsaw teams and develop interpretations of sources within the teams
Facilitate discussion that have students share and compare / contrast interpretations
Facilitate a debrief discussion that highlights key historical information and explains variety of competing interpretations

Advanced Implementation Steps

After students are familiar with this process, let them find their own primary sources to test their hypotheses.
Scaffold a historical writing piece that documents students’ hypotheses, questions, conclusions and cited evidence

May 13, 2016May 13, 2016

196: Making Historical Thinking a Reality

Chapter 1 in Lesh, Bruce A. “Why Won’t You Just Tell Us the Answer?”: Teaching Historical Thinking in Grades 7-12. Portland, Me.: Sten house, 2011. Print.

Features of Traditional Method of Teaching History:

History textbook is the core instrument
Teaching / learning processes:
- reading textbook
- lectures, movies
- memorization, fact retention
- unanalyzed consumption of facts provided by an expert
- providing evidence of mastery = regurgitating textbook
- learning linear narrative of history provided by experts
- assessments:
  - textbook questions
  - true / false statements
  - crossword puzzles
  - tests based on textbook
- aim to present history as an engaging subject – not necessarily as a dynamic subject

Features of Historical Thinking Method of Teaching History:

Examines different types of sources
Teaching / Learning processes
- debate
- investigation
- analyzing evidence
- interpreting evidence
Aim to present history as a useful, living subject

Inspiration from Other Subjects:

In Math, students learn:
- concepts and how to apply them
- how to “show their work”
- tools and habits of mind and how to use them
In Science, students learn:
- scientific method and how to document it in lab reports
- how to draw conclusions based on observations and data
- how to use tools used by scientists
In English, students learn:
- learn literacy devices and how to analyze them in books and utilize them in writing
- how to question the text
- connect author’s biography with their work
- place stories within their historical context so they can be understood as products of their time and place
Application to history teaching:
- What’s missing from traditional history teaching:
  - explicit teaching on how history knowledge is created (instead focus on making known facts engaging
  - process is cut out to create more room to cover a lot of content in a superficial way

Content vs Process:

Striking a balance:
- Too much process – might become hands on, but not minds on
- Too much content – may bore students with too many facts
History standards encode too much content and not a lot of process
Content can not be an end in itself because content that is not used is easily forgotten.
Historical laboratory (Phil Nicolosi & Nike Walsh)
- students confront information (experiment)
- students draw conclusions (analyze data)
- students defend their hypotheses (lab write-ups)

Connections to Past Research

Foci of History Ed Research:
- how historians create and represent historical knowledge
- whether or not students can replicate processes of historians in a classroom
Misconceptions of History Education
- it’s about learning / teaching a lot of historical trivia
- need to learn a lot of background knowledge before one can know enough to investigate historical driving questions
The Importance of Questions
- driving questions frame the learning
- teacher needs to explicitly teach process skills related to historical thinking
- purpose of essential questions
  - engage students by presenting history as a mystery or controversy
  - provide a purpose for learning new information = gathering evidence to investigate the question
  - draw students into exploring the past

Formulating and Articulating Questions

Thinking like a Historian: Rethinking History Instruction focus historical categories around 5 categories:
1. Cause and effect
2. Change and continuity
3. Turning points
4. Using the points
5. Through their eyes
Using these 5 categories allows for spiraling and building of a common language for examining the past
Other categories:
- multiple perspectives
- historical contingency
- empathy
- influence / significance / impact
- contrasting interpretations of the past
- intent / motivation
7 criteria for effective historical driving questions:
1. Does the question represent an important issue to historical and contemporary issues?
2. Is the question debatable?
3. Does the question represent a reasonable amount of content?
4. Will the question sustain the interest of students?
5. Is the question appropriate to available materials?
6. Is the question challenging for your students?
7. What organizing concepts will be emphasized?

How Historians Work:

Historians ask questions – see above
Historians gather a variety of sources and ask questions of those sources:
- investigate sources to formulate tenable interpretations about events, personalities and ideas about the past (hypotheses)
- be aware variety and pitfalls of primary sources
- interrogate the sources
- use sources to answer historical questions
- compare, contrast and apply sources to questions
- Questions students can ask of sources:
  - Text:
    - What information is provided by the source?
  - Context:
    - What was going on during the time period?
    - What background info helps explain the information found in the source?
  - Subtext:
    - What is between the lines?
      - Author: Who wrote the piece and what do we know about that person?
      - Audience: For whom was the source created?
      - Reason: Why was this source produced when it was?
Historians develop, defend and revise interpretations:
- history is about multiple interpretations – no one right answer
  - who, what, when, where – can be non-debatable
  - why, how and impact – debatable
- judgement – building and evaluating interpretations grounded in evidence
- interpretations are living – change as context, eyes, and evidence change
- debate and interpret historical evidence
- develop, define and revise evidence-based historical interpretations

For a model for how to conduct a historical investigation with students, go to this article: Facilitating a historical investigation.

Teaching a curriculum in ways that balance content and process is key to teaching students in ways that are memorable and transferable. The 7 criteria for driving questions can be used to improve historical driving questions and driving questions in other subjects. The questions students can ask of texts can be used or adapted for courses other than history to help students examine the contents, contexts, and subtexts in the sources.

Preparation Steps

Analyze standards to identify enduring understandings, key skills and supporting knowledge. Develop learning targets based on this analysis.
Develop a driving question for the project. Use the 7 criteria for driving questions about to evaluate and improve driving question.
Find primary sources that students can use to investigate the driving questions.
Adapt questions students can use to analyze sources (see above)

Early Implementation Steps

Launch project with driving question
Coach students to investigate driving questions using a variety of sources. Use source analysis questions to help students examine sources closely.
Guide students as they formulate and test their hypotheses.
Guide and challenge students as they formulate conclusions based on evidence.

Advanced Implementation Steps

Research and scaffold how to read and write genres that are important to historians. Explicitly teach these skills to students.

PBL articles
History articles
Literacy articles
Essential questions
Crafting the driving question
Setting and testing hypotheses
Learning targets
Facilitating a historical investigation.

April 25, 2016May 9, 2016

164: Assessing Synthesis and Creative Thinking Skills (2 of 2)

Chapter 7 and Angelo, Thomas A., and K. Patricia Cross. Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers. Print.

Concept Maps
- Description
  - Students create drawings or diagrams that show connections between major and minor concepts
- Purpose
  - Observable assessment of student’s schemata – webs of associates they hold for various concepts
  - Can compare teacher and student mental maps of content
  - Students build awareness and control over the connections they are making with content
  - Can assess prior knowledge
- Step-by-Step Procedure
  - Select a concept that is central to content and has lots of conceptual associations
  - Practice making a concept
    - lay down primary connections
    - then lay down secondary and tertiary connections
    - draw lines connecting concepts with descriptions of the relationships on the line
  - Model how to make concept map in collaboration with students
    - think aloud while adding concepts and relationship lines to the map
    - ask for students to volunteer topics and relationships
  - Give students time to create concept maps of their own on a different topic
- Analysis Steps
  - Compare student concept maps with teacher generated ones
  - Can code for or scan for similarities and differences in
    - primary / secondary / tertiary relationships
    - types of relationships among concepts and their descriptions
- Extension Ides
  - Use large grid graph paper for concept maps so that students can reasonably use distance among concepts to represent their degree of relatedness
  - Assign concept map as a small group assessment
  - Ask students to write explanatory essays based on their concept maps
- Pros
  - Backs up cognitive research on the value of being aware of one’s mental maps
  - Visual way to see students’ mental associations
  - Favors visual learners who are at a disadvantage at verbal assessments
  - Helps students be aware of mental associations and their ability to grow and change them
  - Can serve as a note-taking and pre-writing activity
- Cons
  - Comparisons among student responses are difficulty to make
  - Non-visual learners may find this activity frustrating
- Caveats
  - Clarify how to identify primary, secondary and tertiary relationships and how to use phrases to describe specific relationships by modeling how to make a concept map with students (use think aloud a lot while doing this)
Invented Dialogues
- Description
  - Students create dialogues between key characters or key people by using actual quotes or by inventing reasonable quotes to represent their points of view
- Purpose
  - Students practice capturing the essence of other’s perspectives and styles of communication
  - Improve understanding of theories, controversies and opinions
  - Students practice creatively synthesizing, adapting and extrapolating beyond the material being studied
- Step-by-Step Procedure
  - Select 1 or more controversial issues, theories, decisions, or personalities associated that are associated with important topics in the course and lend themselves to dialogue
  - Write a short model dialogue that goes with associated people and topics
  - Make transcripts of famous speeches, debates and correspondence available to students
  - Prepare a handout that includes instructions, guidelines for using quotes, expectations, etc. Provide guidelines that show how to use quotes to create original dialogue.
  - Discuss your model dialogue with the class. Describe how it meets criteria and guidelines. Demonstrate through think aloud how you created the dialogue
  - Give time in class to start the dialogue.
  - Encourage students in teams to give feedback on dialogues by taking turns reading aloud dialogues and giving warm and cool feedback.
- Analysis Steps
  - Can assess dialogues for several qualities
    - number and quality of key points
    - quality of reasoning in exchanges
    - degree to which speakers stay “in character”
- Extension Ides
  - Have students work in jigsaw paris. Each is responsible for one point of view and together they combines their research to create a dialogue representing multiple points of view.
  - Ask students to act out part of their dialogues live in class or in video.
  - Provide specific feedback on dialogues that will help students refine them to finished products. See Writing Workshop article for details.
  - Convert key ideas in dialogues into essays
- Pros
  - Draws on higher order thinking skills more than essays
  - A lot of room for student choice
  - Assess students’ knowledge of content and creativity skills
  - Can help students internalize theories
- Cons
  - Hard and time-consuming for teachers and students
  - Students who doubt their creativity may balk at this technique
  - Students who are not used to writing balanced written pieces may need extra coaching
- Caveats
  - Start with limited topics and modest guidelines
  - Don’t be too concerned if first products are not very convincing
  - Too many guidelines may stunt creative thinking
  - Describe how you thought through challenges while constructing your own dialogues to show students that struggle is normal and tips for overcoming struggle
Annotated Portfolios
- Description
  - Students create a collection of examples of creative work, supplemented with students’ own commentary of the significance of each selected example.
- Purpose
  - Assess how students’s creative work aligns to the learning targets of the course
  - Students practice applying content to new contexts
  - Students build metacognition of how their work aligns with course goals
- Step-by-Step Procedure
  - Choose one of the central topics or problems of the course. Ask students to respond to that topic or problem with 2 of 3 work samples that demonstrate creativity.
  - Ask students to write how each work sample responds to the proposed topic or problem. If needed, provide sample annotations for students to use as models
  - Have students turn in their works samples and commentary in an folder, binder or envelope.
- Analysis Steps
  - Portfolios can be assessed for several factors including:
    - Students’ creativity in resolving the topic or problem
    - Quality of synthesis in annotations in commentary
      - how well do these incorporate information related to course learning targets
- Extension Ides
  - Use as an first draft for a final portfolio that students will submit after they’ve had time to respond to descriptive feedback
  - Encourage students to add work as the course progresses and update their annotations to show their growth
  - Let students develop their own focus prompt for the portfolio as long as it aligns with course learning targets
  - Arrange an exhibition to display portfolios. See this article on Learning Fairs.
- Pros
  - Students can use images AND prose to show solutions to problems
  - Student select personally meaningful examples and connect these to course goals
  - Teacher learns what students value and appreciate
  - Can help prepare students to present their work to prospective employers
- Cons
  - If it’s not carefully integrated into the course, students may see academic value in it
  - Take a significant amount of time to assess
  - Students may spend too much time selecting pieces and not enough time interpreting them
- Caveats
  - Use guidelines to make portfolios more comparable
  - Link portfolio to a larger graded assignments to reward students for the time that goes into this

The strategies above all require students to actively process and make personal connections with content in order to create new products. They all build metacognition – knowledge of how one is learning a course. Being more aware of the connections one is making can give one better control over these relationships so that they can be deliberately cultivated and changed.

Preparation Steps

Analyze central topics and problems in upcoming projects.
Decide whether or not any of the strategies above can be used to process the central topic or problem in ways that are helpful and meaningful.
Develop model products for the selected strategies.

Early Implementation Steps

Introduce the strategy by showing a teacher-created model and talking through how that model was created. Be sure to model what challenges arose and what strategies were used to overcome these challenge.
Provide class time for students to work on the strategy and get timely teacher and peer feedback.
Assess products using rubrics if that’s practical.

Advanced Implementation Steps

Incorporate works into larger products that be featured in live displays of student work – especially the dialogues and the portfolios.
Adopt student’s favorite strategies into classroom routines.

April 25, 2016May 9, 2016

163: Assessing Synthesis & Creative Thinking Skills (1 of 2)

Chapter 7 and Angelo, Thomas A., and K. Patricia Cross. Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers. Print.

One-Sentence Summary
- Description
  - Students write 1 sentence summaries that answer the questions: Who does what to whom, when, where, how, and why?
- Purpose
  - Students practice chunking info into concise statements
  - Summary format that is easy for teachers to scan and assess
- Step-by-Step Procedure
  - Select important topic(s) to summarize.
  - Create 1-sentence summary of topic – first in sentence fragments and then combine into 1 sentence.
  - Model strategy for students
  - Give students at least 2x more time to write sentence as it took you.
- Analysis Steps
  - Separate sentence fragments that answer questions with slash marks
  - Code responses: 0 = inadequate, Check = adequate, Plus = more than adequate
  - Total codes for class to see where group as a whole is strong and where they need extra support
- Extension Ides
  - Gather sentence fragment responses and full final sentence in a Google form for easy of analysis
  - Convert 1 sentence summaries into more complete 2-3 sentence summaries
  - Let students critique summaries in pairs or small groups
  - Use this strategy several times to summarize key points. Then combine sentences into one paragraph that summarizes the project.
- Pros
  - Quick and easy way to assess students’s ability to concisely summarize a lot of info
  - Students practice grasping complex processes and conveying them in everyday language
  - Info is easier to recall once it’s packaged in a familiar format, one sentence
- Cons
  - If focus questions have multiple answers, 1 sentence format is too limited to adequately summarize processes
  - One sentence limit may oversimplify material
- Caveats
  - .Don’t ask students to do a one sentence summary on a topic you haven’t tested with this strategy first
  - Choose focused topics that can be adequately summarized with one sentence
  - Encourage students to make sentences grammatically correct while being OK with sentence’s clunkiness
Word Journal
- Description
  - Student summarizes text with one word then writes a paragraph to explain why that one word summarizes the text.
- Purpose
  - Students practice reading deeply and carefully
  - Students practice defending conclusions with textual evidence
  - Students practice type of concise writing needed to compose good abstracts
- Step-by-Step Procedure
  - Choose assigned text
  - Decide what aspect of the text you want students to focus on (main theme, conflict, problem, etc.)
  - Try assignment out by coming up with one summary word and related paragraph.
  - If you find the text helpful and thought provoking, assign it to students.
  - Emphasize to students that the word choice is not as important as the quality of explanations and text evidence that support the word choice.
- Analysis Steps
  - Affinity group their responses by their word choices and by their approaches to justifying their word choices.
  - Select 3-4 examples of approaches to be shared with the class.
- Extension Ides
  - For early attempts at this strategy, can support students with a word bank of possible words.
  - Use a model to hold a discussion that helps students come up with criteria for assessing quality word journals. See this article for more tips on how to do this.
  - Focus word journals by having students focus on one aspect of the reading.
  - Use this assignment to teach students conventions for writing abstracts.
  - Start class discussions on readings using the words chosen by students to summarize the texts.
  - Group students and have students read their word journals aloud and give descriptive feedback such as – What is the main idea of the word journal? What is one piece of evidence that does not go with the main idea of the word journal? What is one piece of evidence that needs elaboration to better support the main idea of the word journal?
- Pros
  - Promotes active processing of reading
  - Encourages students to make personal connections with text and to justify their ideas with text evidence
  - Practice summarizing, remembering and communication info
- Cons
  - Takes time to prepare and analyze
  - Without discussion time, value of assignment is limited
  - Anonymity of responses might help discussions
- Caveats
  - Not a good strategy for texts that can only be interpreted one way – work with texts that lend themselves to multiple interpretations
  - May be challenging for students – can help overcome this gap with good modeling
Approximate Analogies
- Description
  - Students complete statements of the type: A is to B, as _______ is to _______ where A, B, and X are ideas in the course
- Purpose
  - Assess student understanding of the relationships among words
  - Guided practice in making connections
  - Use familiar connections to formulate new ones
- Step-by-Step Procedure
  - Select key relationship among terms that is important to understand
  - Create approximate analogies with that relationship of the form A is B as X is to Y. Aim to formulate analogies that bridge technical relationships with everyday relationships
  - If trial produces results that you think are helpful and accessible to students, try out assignment in class.
  - Show sample analogies and think aloud to model how to create them.
  - Give students class time to compose approximate analogies. Not time consuming – 1 min / analogy
- Analysis Steps
  - Divide analogies into piles: good, questionable, wrong
  - Look for logical, memorable funny responses to share
  - Analyze the wrong pile to get insights into misconceptions that need to be addressed later
- Extension Ides
  - Leave less parts of the approximate analogies blank (A is to B as X is to _________ ) to focus the analogies
  - Invite students to label the type of relationship in the analogy such as: part-whole, cause-effect, exemplar-to-class, etc
  - Let students come up with several analogies in teams and compare/contrast them
  - Let students critique analogies in teams
  - Students can practice this strategy whenever they encounter new relationships in the course
- Pros
  - Thinking about analogies builds skill of transfer
  - Builds stronger bridges between new material and prior knowledge
  - Challenging and fun
- Cons
  - Can be frustrating if students can’t diagnose relationship in one part of the analogy
- Caveats
  - May need to model this strategy for students who are unfamiliar with analogies
  - Students may make analogies that are so personal that they are hard for teacher to understand
  - Strategy favors students with larger vocabularies and broader reading experiences

The assessments listed above double as active reading strategies that students can practice to process new learnings grasped in texts. All of them produce deliverables that can lead to productive team discussions about content. They all lend themselves to a variety of responses from the same prompt which can lead to interesting discussions about what big ideas and relationships students notice in texts and what textual evidence supports these interpretations.

Preparation Steps

Select assigned readings and/or learning activities
Decide which strategy students can use most effectively to process the reading or learning experience.
Trial the strategy to test if it’s worth doing and to practice modeling it for students.

Early Implementation Steps

Use samples and think aloud protocol to model how to do selected strategy.
Give students the appropriate class time to do the selected strategy.
Let students discuss their deliverables in small teams – they can compare/contrast their responses and give each other constructive feedback.
Analyze responses to see what students are grasping and what they are struggling to understand

Advanced Implementation Steps

Try extension ideas listed above.
Incorporate strategies that students enjoy into classroom routines.

Assessments articles
Reading articles
Models, critique and descriptive feedback

April 25, 2016May 9, 2016

162: Before / During / After Reading Activities

Chapter 5 in Daniels, Harvey. Subjects Matter: Exceeding Standards through Powerful Content-area Reading. Print.

Vocabulary Tree
- Focus
  - Building academic vocabulary
- Description
  - Free form graphic organizer of a tree that shows how concepts and ideas are related
    - Trunk has key concepts
    - Branches has related ideas, information and concepts
- Why do this?
  - Displays relationships among all the words in a unit
  - Build a single integrated picture of concepts in a unit
  - Develop better understanding of concepts in unit through their relationships to other known concepts
- How it works?
  - Start with short list of words – 4 to 5 words.
  - Organize words in a tree
    - more important general words go on trunk
    - sub-categories go on the branches
  - Students continue to add words to their trees and they identify more key words while reading
- Variations
  - Have students create a word tree for 1 word (given) on the trunk
  - Give students post-its – one word per post-it – and have them place the words on the tree visual. Have them rearrange positions of the words as their reading reveals new relationships.
Word Wall
- Focus
  - Building academic vocabulary
- Description
  - Wall display of key vocabulary terms for a project
- Why do this?
  - Learn words by seeing them in use
  - Refer back to new language in a visible place
  - Support student’s comprehension of new vocabulary
- How it works?
  - Model how to create word wall items by creating a few models of key terms
    - model how to put related information on the back of the card so that students can later interact with the cards by seeing if they know the information and then flipping the card to check their knowledge
  - Have students create more word wall items
  - Throughout the unit, conduct activities with words on word wall. Examples:
    - Group words according to their similarities. See List-group-label.
    - Rearrange words according to set categories.
    - Do your best to define words.
  - Add words as they are introduced in the project.
- Variations
  - Have students guess the definitions of terms from a selection of definitions using root words
KWL
- Focus
  - Setting purposes for reading
  - Connecting to and building background knowledge
- Description
  - Students generate lists of
    - K = what they already know
    - W = what they want to know
    - L = what they learned after reading
- Why do this?
  - K – activate related prior knowledge
  - W – asking questions builds a purpose a reading
  - L – assess whether or not W goals were met and summarize new info
- How it works?
  - Encourage students to brainstorm what they Know related to a given topic
  - Model how to create W questions. Ask probing questions to help students generate questions.
  - Group and categorize items in K and W columns to build connections among questions and ideas.
  - While gathering L items, compare them to K and W items. Note questions answered in W column and misconceptions clarified in K column.
- Variations
  - Show an image to help trigger prior knowledge for K column.

These strategies can teach students how to use texts to clarify and enhance prior knowledge, to find relationships among words, to answer pre-prepared questions, and to build academic vocabulary. Using these strategies can help students learn how to actively process texts in order to develop understanding.

Preparation Steps

Select readings that will students learn key information in upcoming projects.
Decide which strategies will help students most effectively process the targeted texts.
Gather materials related to the strategies.

Early Implementation Steps

Implement active processing strategy. See instructions above.
Have students reflect on how strategy is helping them learn new information.

Advanced Implementation Steps

Incorporate students’ favorite processing activities into classroom routines.
Combine reading activities with Quick Writes or Write to Learn activities.

April 24, 2016May 9, 2016

160: After Reading Activities

Chapter 5 in Daniels, Harvey. Subjects Matter: Exceeding Standards through Powerful Content-area Reading. Print.

Where do you stand?
- Focus
  - Taking and supporting a position
- Description
  - Also called: Four Corners, Human Continuum, Living Likert Scale, Barometer, Human Bar graph, Peoplegraph
  - Students represent their opinion by where they stand in the room
  - Facilitate conversations with students who share and do not share the same opinion
- Why do this?
  - Students practice:
    - offering interpretations of text
    - backing conclusions with evidence from text
    - debating view points in a social, kinesthetic activity
- How it works?
  - After some reading, ask students to evaluate what they think using a question framed like: Based on all you have read about _________________, where do you stand? Label different parts of the room for different opinions.
  - Give students time to review their notes and decide their opinions. Let students know that they will use textual evidence to back their opinions once they pick a stance
  - Students take a stance. They use their notes to explain to a partner who shared their stance what reasoning and evidence they used to come to that stance.
  - Ask several pairs to explain their positions to the entire class.
  - Fold the line in the middle such that students at extreme ends are now paired. Prior to letting students debate their position, over guidelines for their debate conversations. For example – students can take turns saying opening arguments and rebuttals.
  - Ask if any students have changed their positions as a result of debate with classmate. Have him explain why/how opinion changed. Have him move to new spot in room that represents new opinion.
  - Ask some pairs to describe how their debate unfolded and what types of evidence they would need to gather for a stronger future debate.
- Variations
  - Have students stand in 4 corners of the room to represent different opinions
  - Students can arrange themselves in a pie chart or a bar chart.
  - Key thing is to plan conversations among students who agree and disagree ahead of time.
- Related Reading
  - Teaching Strategies: Four Corners
RAFT essay
- Focus
  - Recalling and summarizing
- Description
  - Extended writing activity: topic is assigned, students can choose RAFT items
    - R = role of writer
    - A = audience of writer
    - F = format of writing piece (letter, news article, poem, brochure, etc.)
    - T = more specific topic within the material
  - Can offer students content-specific choices for RAFT options
- Why do this?
  - Students can dig deeper into content
  - Memorable activity that helps cement key ideas into minds
  - Students respond well to creative choice in their assignments
  - Good for highlighting several key ideas in a course
- How it works?
  - Develop lists of options for each letter in RAFT. Can research these ahead of time and/or brainstorm them with students.
  - Use think aloud and co-writing with class to model how to get started on sample RAFT assignment. See Joint construction.
  - Allow for in class writing times and individual coaching sessions. See Writing Workshops for ideas on what this could look like.
  - Share the writing online and in class. Allow students to read aloud their essays to small or large groups in order to exchange ideas.
- Variations
  - CRAFTS
    - C = Contexts
    - R = Role of writer
    - A = Audience
    - F = Format of text
    - T = Themes of text – rather than just address a broad topic, students make a claim about the topic
    - S = Structure of text – this deals with how ideas are organized in text
  - Students write context piece – use voice of chosen personalities to tell stories about them.
  - Represent more perspectives with other CRAFTS pieces.
  - Students read and digest 100+ pages of nonfiction materials while creating CRAFTS pieces.
- Related Reading
Password
- Focus
  - Building Academic Vocabulary
- Description
  - Students play Password game show to review vocabulary
- Why do this?
  - Review content-specific vocabulary
- How it works?
  - Students make a list of vocabulary words recently studied on chart paper
  - One student sits with back to list. Team mates offer clues to help seated student guess the words on the list.
  - Teams take turns helping their player guess the words. The team that can get their guessing player to guess all the words the fastest wins.
Tweet the Text
- Focus
  - Reading and summarizing
- Description
  - Students work in pairs to craft 140-character summaries of key concepts in the text
- Why do this?
  - Co-opt students’ texting / tweeting habit
  - Practice synthesizing texts into concise statements
- How it works?
  - Assign a short selection of content-specific text
  - Students talk aloud in pairs to develop a tweet to summarize the text. Can post on Twitter if school allows.
  - Discuss different summaries
  - Compose über tweet – one that has the most summary info
- Variations
  - Use a short hashtag so it’s easy to find all tweets such #sum
- Related Reading
  - 50 Ways to Use Twitter in the classroom
Exit and Admit Slips (Also see Minute Paper)
- Focus
  - Reading and summarizing
- Description
  - On post-it or small slips of paper, student respond to one or more of the following prompts:
    - one important idea learned
    - question
    - prediction of what’s to come next
    - thought about a character or idea in the text
  - Students can discuss their tickets in pairs and then as a whole group.
  - Teachers can affinity group their responses to notice patterns in what students understand and what they want more information about.
- Why do this?
  - Short writing assignment that builds a bridge between learning activities that occur on successive days
  - Creates focus at the start or end of class
  - Teachers get a snapshot of what students are thinking that can inform future discussions and lessons
- How it works?
  - Model how to perform activity using think aloud. Stress how it’s OK to make struggles with learning the focal points of exit/admit slips.
  - Give students 2-3 min at the start or end of class to complete slips. Can use sentence stems such as:
    - One thing I learned is ________
    - One question I have is _______
  - Now pass paper 3 spots in one direction. Read slip carefully. On the back of the slip, write a response to the original responses.
  - Can call on students to share their original responses and other students’ responses and tie these reactions back to the assigned text(s).
  - Don’t make these a grading burden. Best to quick glance at them to notice overall patterns in what students are thinking and questioning.
- Variations
  - Can use a provocative statement from one of the slips to start a class discussion

These activities help students process texts in different ways. They can use these strategies to practice developing conclusions that are backed by textual evidence, using reading to develop writing pieces that represent different perspectives, reviewing vocabulary, summarizing key ideas, and asking related questions of the texts. Using these activities can teach students how to read more deeply and to process texts in ways that are close to methods using by experts in the discipline.

Preparation Steps

Select readings that will students learn key information in upcoming projects.
Decide which strategies will help students most effectively process the targeted texts.
Gather materials related to the strategies.

Early Implementation Steps

Implement active processing strategy. See instructions above.
Have students reflect on how strategy is helping them learn new information.

Advanced Implementation Steps

Incorporate students’ favorite processing activities into classroom routines.
Combine reading activities with Quick Writes or Write to Learn activities.

April 24, 2016May 9, 2016

159: During & After Reading Activities

Chapter 5 in Daniels, Harvey. Subjects Matter: Exceeding Standards through Powerful Content-area Reading. Print.

Turn and Talk
- Focus
  - Reading as Thinking
- Description
  - Think Pair Share
  - Teacher pauses and gives students 1-2 minutes to discuss an issue in pairs
  - Gathers responses from the class
- Why do this?
  - Draws out wait time so that all students have time to process question prior to gathering responses
  - Creates several learning processing breaks in lessons. Also see writing breaks.
  - Great way to generate long lists of what students know or notice
- How it works?
  - Model the strategy with a volunteer partner. Discuss a topic suggested by a student for 1-2 minutes. Ask students to share what they noticed.
    - Things to model:
      - good eye contact
      - facing each other
      - asking each other questions
      - staying on topic
      - listening to each other
      - building on each other’s comments
      - acting friendly
  - Make sure everyone is sitting next to their partner
  - Practice strategy with a short reading a several prepared prompts.
  - Fine-tune strategy by gathering strategies from students how to have good conversations and displaying these. Can also research these conversational strategies by googling “turn and talk anchor charts”.
  - Repeat several times in class. Be sure to gather responses after turn and talk time is done.
  - Monitor students while they are talking so you know who to call on to get a variety of interesting responses.
- Variations
  - Use turn and talk time to give plus / della feedback on different pos-its and place these on the piece of work being assessed
- Related Reading
  - Using the Think Pair Share Technique
Word Meaning Graphic Organizer
- Focus
  - Building academic vocabulary
- Description
  - Students complete a graphic organizer in teams on a single vocabulary word
  - Graphic organizer has students record:
    - target word
    - topic where word is found
    - parts of word we recognize
    - examples
    - so the word means
    - why it’s important?
    - where is the word used?
    - How it connects with other words?
  - Different teams can work on different words and share their results in a gallery walk
- Why do this?
  - learn word meaning through their connections with other words, ideas, concepts and information
  - gather all contextualized meanings for one word in one place
- How it works?
  - Model how to complete the graphic organizer using think aloud. Role play with a partner and use turn and talk before completing each box in the graphic organizer. Emphasize that graphic organizer won’t be completed all at once. It will take a couple discussions and readings to finish it.
  - Let students complete the graphic organizer (1 per team) – joint understandings may enable team to complete the entire graphic organizer
  - As students read, let them meet periodically to discuss what they read and add more information to the graphic organizer
  - Teams may handle 1 or more graphic organizers – depending on whether or not groups will share graphic organizers.
  - Put graphic organizers to work –
    - gallery walk
    - can use post-its to give peer feedback on graphic organizers
    - groups can compare graphic organizers to notice similarities and differences in what they annotated
List-Group-Label
- Focus
  - Building academic vocabulary
- Description
  - Students are giving a list of vocabulary words and they cluster them into groups based on common characteristics. Some words can appear in multiple categories
- Why do this?
  - Learning meanings of words by seeing relationships (as opposed to in isolation)
- How it works?
  - Give students working in team a long list of terms
  - Students group words and decide what to title groups
  - Can have students reread texts and see if better understanding of words improves understanding of the text
- Variations
  - Display clusters on butcher paper around the room so they can be updated throughout the project
Written Conversation
- Focus
  - Sharing ideas, discussing, debating
- Description
  - Students write notes to each about learning experiences
  - Also called write-arounds and dialogue journals
  - Can have students take and defend positions using evidence from the text
- Why do this?
  - Class discussion where everyone is actively talking at once
- How it works?
  - Students team up – up to 4 persons per team
  - Each student has a large piece of blank paper.
  - Describe the strategy – key points:
    - everyone is writing ALL the time – no one is watching while other write
    - write reactions to text (summaries, questions, surprising points, etc)
    - write reactions to other’s reactions to the text
  - Can provide question prompts to focus the writing or leave it open
  - Students start with an initial note to the persons on their team
  - After 1-2 minutes, papers rotate and students start writing a reaction to the note passed to them.
  - After rotations are done, have students circle most interesting comments. Then let them continue the conversation out loud.
  - Call on groups to share key comments. Read aloud circles comments on papers.
- Variations
  - Have students write notes while mimicking a specific person’s point of view (famous scientist, famous historical figure, etc)
Second Helpings
- Focus
  - Recalling and summarizing
- Description
  - Students and teacher re-read a dense text multiple times
  - Make each rereading feel like a reward deep dive / dig
- Why do this?
  - Dispel myth that readers who need to reread texts are “bad readers”; smart readers do this too with dense texts
  - Supplement understanding that’s gathered from a quick first read
- How it works?
  - Go through first read of text and annotate to get gist of the information in the text
  - Reread the text with the help of prompt that reframes this second helping of the text.
    - Science example – reread to help you draw the process and make it a diagram
- Variation:
  - Example – on orbital motion
    - read once for main ideas
    - second helping – read for information that can help you create visuals for orbital motion
    - third helping – read for information that can help you invent a device to deflect comets
- Related Reading
  - Closer Reading for Deeper Comprehension: Uncommon Sense about the Common Core

Using a variety of strategy to process information in texts can help students actively process texts and better learn the information in these. Any of the strategies listed above can support students while they learn new concepts and vocabulary in the context of active reading.

Preparation Steps

Select readings that will students learn key information in upcoming projects.
Decide which strategies will help students most effectively process the targeted texts.
Gather materials related to the strategies.

Early Implementation Steps

Implement active processing strategy. See instructions above.
Have students reflect on how strategy is helping them learn new information.

Advanced Implementation Steps

Incorporate students’ favorite processing activities into classroom routines.
Combine reading activities with Quick Writes or Write to Learn activities.

Reading articles
Literacy articles
Quick Writes articles
Write to Learn articles