Assignments – Page 3

September 14, 2013

DBQ Design Assignment

Working as individuals or in 2 person teams, students will design a DBQ question suitable for inclusion of our DBQ iBook (available at iTunes).
See Class 4 for recommendations for DBQs and Teaching with Documents.

I’ve posted some recommendations for best websites for finding primary documents.
American History | World History

This extended assignment meets two of our course requirements as noted in the syllabus (146 KB pdf)
#1: Resources Assignment
#5: iBook showcase

The DBQ Design Assignment will be accomplished in 3 phases:

Step 1: Develop a proposal which will be submitted for peer review.
You should be prepared to deliver a 2 min pitch to class. (not a written assignment to be turned in)
Due date: 9/23.

Then we did a bit of “speed dating” of our ideas for the DBQ Assignment. Students formed two lines and had 2 minutes to pitch their DBQ design idea to each other and share some feedback. Then one line shifted and we repeated the pitch exchange. In all students pitched their idea three times.

The goal of this phase is to gather feedback from peers regarding the following:

You have an interesting generative / essential question worth answering.
Your initial appraisal indicates there are suitable documents available. (Documents could be multimedia).
You have an idea for how students will use your DBQ to build Common Core skills. “What does it say, how does it say it, what’s it mean to me?”

Step 2: Following class feedback on 9/23. Student should send a brief description (via email) of their proposed DBQ to the instructor by Sat 9/28. He will give you feedback when we meet on 9/30 at the Nikkei Center.

Step 3: Students will share their revised idea as a blog post here at EdMethods by Sat Oct 5th. It should explain how you intend to address the 3 questions above. Students are expected to review and comment on at least two of their peers ideas by Sat Oct 12th.

Step 4: Students will open an account at Learnist and use the site to post their DBQ.
Due date: Oct 26

Learnist is a web-based curation site with built in social media tools – it can collect and comment on videos, blogs, books, docs, images or anything on the web.

Your Learnist board should be tightly focused on documents that help students answer the DBQ’s generative question. Each document should include one or two scaffolding questions which help the student to use the documents to answer the DBQ’s generative question.
For a sample of a Learnist board see your instructor’s Incarceration of Japanese Americans During WWII

Your peers will be able to make comments after each document on your Learnist board to help you focus the DBQ. Since Learnist is open to the public, you can expect that others outside our class may comment as well.

Phase 3: Students will finalize their DBQs for inclusion in our iBook showcase.
Details here.

Image Credit “Damn the Zeppelins”
George Eastman House Collection
Accession Number: 1973:0126:0026
Maker: L’AT D’ART PHOT.-Bois-Colombes
Date: ca. 1915
Medium: gelatin silver print, hand applied color
Dimensions: Overall: 8.7 x 13.6 cm

September 9, 2013

Lesson Study Reflection

Note: to see student responses to this assignment click on the Lesson Study category

Write a reflection on the experience of using the lesson study format to look at your lesson and share your ideas with your classmates. Here are three perspectives that may be useful for reflecting on the experience.

Note: You do not have to write on all three – these are merely suggestions to help get you started. Make this work for you.

The model: Is this “Lesson Study” format useful? Did it help you to better understand your lesson and peers’ lessons? Did the process yield any useful improvements in your lesson? How can we improve the model for the next round of lesson study?
Working with peers: What’s our capacity as educators to discuss key elements of a lesson? Did we see lessons in the same way? Did we share useful feedback?
Big Picture: What does this activity tells us about kinds of tasks students are being asked to do? Do you see any patterns in our classes collection of lessons?

Blogging schedule:

Blog your reaction to Lesson Study I as a post by 11PM Thursday 9/12.
Comment on at least 2 other posts by 11PM Saturday 9/14. (Note: I will be leaving comments as well.)
Follow up on 1 comment to your post with your own reply by 11PM Sunday 9/15.

This is your first graded assignment. Evaluations will be based on:

Completion of full blogging assignment by the due dates above. Each step builds on the previous. Let’s not fall behind.
The quality of the reflection. Does it simply narrate the experience or does it recognize patterns, evaluate lessons learned or set new goals. See my Taxonomy of Reflection for more on higher and lower order reflection.
Do comments demonstrate a close reading of their peer’s post and serve to offer useful feedback, constructive criticism and / or to advance the dialogue.

Image credit: Smithsonian Institution A.2006-99
Description: Soldiers stationed at Fort Upton (New York) shown taking the time to write letters home, as suggested by a large banner on the room wall.
Creator/Photographer: Unidentified photographer
Date: 1918
Collection: U.S. Postal Employees
Repository: National Postal Museum

September 3, 2013

Class 2: Thinking About Thinking

I introduced a modified lesson study model. As I noted:

The goal of this assignment is two-fold. First to offer supportive feedback on your lesson development through a peer review process. Second to offer some “lenses to look through” that help you easily see the essentials of a lesson. It is not a substitute for the School of Education lesson plan format. Think of it as a pre-lesson plan planning guide. This is not some exercise for the benefit of your instructor. This should be a process that works for you. So feel free to modify to meet your particulars. Use a scale that works for you – focus on just a small segment of a larger unit, or look at the entire unit. Don’t like Bloom? Use another schema to discuss the kinds of thinking that your students will need to successfully complete the assignment. Assignment here. (41 KB pdf)

Next I used a presentation and LearningCatalytics questions to lead the students through a series of activities as participant / observers. I wanted them to look at the lesson from the students’ perspective with a focus on the four components of a lesson. I also wanted them to use Bloom’s Taxonomy to see if they could identify what level of thinking they were using. We monitored the extent the decisions about of content, process, product and evaluation were being made by me (the teacher) or by the students. Slide deck here. (6.4 MB pdf)

When I asked them to summarize what they thought my goal was for the class, one student replied “You wanted to get us to think about thinking by having to think.”