Category: Classes-18

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Class 11: Teaching Social Studies with Data

Teaching Social Studies with Data

Quite often edtech tools are used by the teacher rather than the students and don’t do much more than make things prettier.
Think: Teacher at Smartboard as replacement for the overhead.

New digital technologies allows us to “see” information in new ways.
Think: Students analyzing a text using  Wordle    

History and other humanities that tended to be strictly narrative are leveraging  data collection and display tools to spawn a new digital / data approach to teaching history and social science.
See Digital Humanities Projects at Stanford

Many apps and websites can be a great tool to introduce the research method – form a hypothesis, gather and analyze data, revise hypothesis (as needed), draw conclusions, assess research methods. Working in teams students can easily pose research questions, run the data, revise and assess their research strategy. Students can quickly make and test predictions. They can then present and defend their conclusions to other classroom groups. All skills called for by the new Common Core standards.

In today’s class we will explore a sampling of free online data visualization tools that can be used in the classroom. Students will be asked to incorporate one of these tools into a lesson design.

Data-based tools

Text-based tools

  •  NGram Viewer – online research tool that allows you to quickly analyze the frequency of names, words and phrases -and when they appeared in the Google digitized books. For more advanced searches using NGram Viewer click here.
  • Google Trends – see how often specific keywords, subjects and phrases have been queried over a specific period of time.
  • The State of the Union in Context– compare use of words by different Presidents
  • Movies – dialogues of movie and TV shows

Map-based tools

Assignment 9 | Completed work

Choose one or more of these digital tools (or use a favorite of yours) and blog about how you would use it in an activity, lesson or unit. Be sure you focus on an idea that allows your students to be using the tool. Be sure to link to the tool and include a screen shot. If the digital tool allows results to be embedded in the blog. Here’s how to use HTML Snippets.

Image credits:Teaching with a SMART Board / Flickr

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Class 10: How to Lead a Conversation that Builds Student Understanding

How to Lead a Conversation that Builds Student Understanding

I admit to being guilty of dominating classroom discussion as a rookie social studies teacher. “Class, what were three results of the War of 1812? … Anyone? … Anyone??”

After years of facing this type of discussion, students learn that their comments are of provisional value until “approved” by the teacher. Over time, students stop listening to each other and only focus on what the teacher says or validates – “will that be up on a test?” When students are put in small group discussion, they rapidly get off subject. With no teacher to validate their comments, they naturally gravitate to other subjects where peer comments are valued – “what are you doing this weekend?”

How to lead a conversation that builds student understanding

Today’s class will explore strategies and resources for taking the teacher out of the role of information gatekeeper and encouraging productive student-centered dialogue. In class we will try three different approaches to classroom discussion.

  1. “Structured Academic Controversy” (SAC) model. Not all issues can be easily debated as pro / con positions. SAC provides students with a framework for addressing complex issues in a productive manner that builds their skills in reading, analyzing, listening, and discussion. It shifts the goal from “winning” the argument to active listening to opposing viewpoints and distilling areas of agreement. We will try Was Abraham Lincoln a racist? 251kb PDF. You might consider using the SAC process with my series “Great Debates in American History“
  2. “Fishbowl” – a versatile discussion technique. Here’s a pdf explanation.
  3. “Brainstorm, Group, Label” – Scroll to  #13 in this collection I designed. “Strategies for Struggling Readers” pdf

Looking for more classroom discussion resources?

Assignment 8 | competed student work

Try a discussion idea with your students this week. Could even be a brief one.

Write a reflective blog post that includes:

  1. A good title and featured image.
  2. The context of the lesson.
  3. The discussion strategy you used.
  4. What you learned from the experience.
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Class 8 / 9: Lesson Study 2

Lesson Study II

Lesson study is a form of classroom inquiry in which several teachers collaboratively plan, teach, observe, revise and share the results of a single class lesson.  (Learn more about the “formal” process here)

We are modifying that formal process into a simple one. Each student in the class will “teach” a 25-30 minute lesson. The rest of the class will act as participate / observers – serving as “students” during the lesson and afterwards, giving feedback to the “teacher.”

Assignment 5 – lesson Study II / blog post

Class 8 (10/22). Nicole  |  Nick K  |  Gabe
Class 9 (10/29). Jana  |  Nick C  |  Jordan

“Teachers” have prepared a lesson and written an anticipatory blog post following guidelines outlined here.

Participate / observers will use the following prompts to guide their feedback  immediately following the lesson.

  1. Content: as a student, what were you learning – facts, skills, insights?
  2. Process: what did you see the teacher do to set up and deliver the lesson?
  3. Product: what were you, as a student, tasked to “do / produce” to demonstrate your learning?
  4. Assessment: as an observer, how did the lesson go? Insights on content, delivery, workflow. Suggestions?
Assignment 6 | Completed reflections here

“Teachers” will write a blog post that reflects on how your intent was realized in your delivery. Possible prompts: Did you accomplish your goals? What worked well? What didn’t?  How about your timing, delivery and workflow? What did you learn from the experience?

Assignment 7

Students will begin planning their historical thinking lesson plan for inclusion in our final showcase publication. At our Nov 5 class, you should be ready to  give an 3 min “elevator pitch” on your lesson idea.

This lesson should be designed for direct use by students and include:

  1. Introduction of the lesson with brief historic context as needed.
  2. Essential / generative  question
  3. About 5 – 8 related documents (image, text, video, audio) that will assist the students in answering the generative question
  4. Clear statement of what students will be asked to do
  5. Close reading scaffolding question for each document to assist the student in examining the documents

For inspiration for turning historical documents into a lesson see:
How did Americans change their lives to support the war effort?  (894KB pdf) and Re-Defining the Role of Women in Industrial America (492KB pdf)

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Class 7: Close Reading Historical Documents

Close Reading Historical Documents

Prep for this class – in advance students should complete these two lessons.

Teachers can use historical documents to build literacy skills in a content area while empowering students to be the historian in the classroom. But document-based  instruction in this context requires four key elements to be successful:

  1. The right documents. (shouldn’t be reliant on background knowledge)
  2. Knowing how to “read” the historical document.
  3. Letting students discover their own patterns, then asking students to describe, compare and defend what they found.
  4. Basing the task on enduring questions, the kind that students might actually want to answer.

Class 7 offers strategies for assisting students to more closely read a document (in all their multimedia formats) by answering three Common Core questions.

Broad version

  1. What does it say?
  2. How does it say it?
  3. What’s it mean to me?

More specifically, what do we mean by close reading? Teachers can guide students with scaffolding questions that explore “texts” (in all their forms).

  • Key Ideas and Details:
 What does the text say? Identify the key ideas. What claims does the author make? What evidence does the author use to support those claims?
  • Craft and Structure:
 Who created the document? What’s their point of view / purpose? How did the text say it? How does it reflect its historic time period?
  • Integration of Knowledge and ideas: 
Distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text. Recognize disparities between multiple accounts. Compare text to other media / genres. How does it connect to what we’re learning? 
And what’s it mean to me?
Assignment 5

Students will prepare to teach their second lesson to peers during the two classes noted below. As they did last time they will do a blog post to introduce the lesson and following the lesson. Students are strongly encouraged to try integrating some tech into the lesson. Here’s ideas for using Google tools.

The introductory blog post can highlight:

  • target audience
  • content (what will be studied)
  • process (what will you do – what will students do)
  • resources for lessons

Class 8 (10/22)  Nicole  |  Nick K  |  Gabe
Class 9 (10/29)  Jana  |  Nick C  |  Jordan

I’m also recommending that students join the Teaching With Primary Sources Network. A great place to discover and share classroom ideas. It’s free and member only – so no spammy social media stuff. Sign up info here.