Experiential Learning: "The service was the best part!"

I just spent a week with 80 eighth graders in rural Thailand doing service- and cultural-learning activities. To many, this seems like a nightmare scenario: goofy young adolescents? an international trip? what about safety/ managing the drama/ all that whining? did you sleep?

Yes, there was some of that middle school stuff, but overwhelmingly it was an amazing life experience. The group we worked with, Rustic Pathways, was super organized, had lots of staff on hand, and made sure everyone was involved and having fun. They organized six service projects for us to participate in over the course of our week:

• Welcome Homes (we built an external bathroom for a family-- lots of cement mixing and brick-laying)

• English Camp (we taught basic English words to 13- to 15-year-old Thai students using games)
• Fish & Sticks (we built a fish nursery our of wood poles and netting, and purchased baby fish to populate it for a local family)
• Buddhist Life (we talked to a monk about Buddhism and how he lives his life as a monk, and we planted lime trees in the temple garden)
• Hands in the Dirt (we made new garden beds for a local family to grow long beans and sweet basil)
• Meals on Flip-Flops (we bought ingredients at the market, cooked them up, packaged the food, and delivered meals to 30 elderly people in the local village)

We also learned a lot about Thai culture, including customs, some basic language, food, a traditional dance, and some history, especially about the King who had recently passed away. Our favorite cultural activity was No Reservations: a culinary "trick or treat" route on Halloween night. It featured foods that are traditional in Thailand that are not often seen in other parts of the world, including crickets, grasshoppers, bamboo worms, chicken intestines, and coconut rice cooked in a bamboo stick.

It was interesting to see how the students responded to both the service and the cultural activities. For some, building and digging were fun, but trying to communicate with someone who doesn't share your language was very intimidating. For others, they loved hearing the elderly people's stories and teaching the Thai students, but had never held a saw or hoe in their lives. It worked the same way with the "trick or treats": one American boy (new to international life) loved the insects and didn't really care for the coconut rice, while others wouldn't try anything. Of course, there were kids who jumped into everything-- service or cultural-- with both feet.

As a final reflection, the group leaders asked students to think about something they wanted to start, something they wanted to stop, and something they wanted to continue. Almost all of the students in my group mentioned that they wanted to do more service-- easy to say, harder to do, but if even a handful make an effort to keep finding service opportunities, then it's worth it. It also bodes well for our high school program which has service as a pillar of the program. By doing this "service survey", I hope students will be more open to signing up for projects, as well as having a better idea of the kinds of service they want to do (for example, building houses with Habitat for Humanity, working in an orphanage, or building water projects in drought-stricken areas). 

Several students also mentioned how they had tried new things or did things they didn't know they were capable of doing, and how much they learned about the value of collaboration to achieve a goal. At the tender age of 14, that's pretty big stuff! I think every student was challenged in some way this week: physically, mentally, or emotionally. That is something that is very hard to achieve by staying within the four walls of the classroom.

Yes, it was exhausting. Yes, there were times when adolescent social drama nearly did my head in. Yes, traveling internationally with 90 people is challenging. But it was so worth it! As one student spontaneously blurted out in the middle of our bus ride home, "The service was the best part!"

Schedules can make or break curriculum

I really love my teaching schedule, and that's not something I've said very much in my many years of teaching. I teach both English Language Arts (ELA) and Social Studies (SS) to two classes of eighth graders, 8C and 8D. My class periods are back-to-back for each group. We have a 6-day rotation schedule, so I see my two classes at different times of the day across a week. I also teach "Oasis" which is our middle school advisory program. Here's what it looks like: 

 

I have chunks of planning time each day, which are the same planning times as my teaching partner and the math/science teachers. This is great for collaboration, but also gives me time to tackle some marking (though it is never enough time to get it all done in the school day!). 

Another advantage of this schedule is that I can be somewhat flexible in how I use my double blocks. Usually I teach one block per subject, as is shown here. That ensures that I give equal time to each subject so that students get a full curriculum. But I can also steal a little time from one to give to the other if we need it (for example, test or publishing days), as long as I remember to give it back at another time!

Next week we are launching our short story writing unit in ELA which will last about 4 weeks. In about 2 weeks, we will be launching our investigative reporting writing unit in SS which will last about 3 weeks. That means our kids will be juggling two writing units, with two different genres, over the course of a couple weeks where they overlap. 

I put my writing hat on and thought about that from the student's point of view. If I were them, how would I feel if I wrote furiously for an hour (ish) on my fantasy short story, and then had to switch gears in my head to write furiously for another hour (ish) on my journalism article? That seems hard to me. I predict I would still have my fantasy world swirling in my head, and it would be difficult to pull myself into the real world of informational writing. 

CC image by Samantha on wikimedia commons

I can't really move the units. The ELA units are set up so students read a genre, and then write the genre. We're finishing our short story reading unit this week, which puts short story writing next. The SS unit is centered around our Week Without Walls trip at the end of October, so it has to happen then. So... I'm a bit stuck.

But getting back to my wonderful schedule, I do have a way to make this work. If I were a student with two different writing units going on at the same time, I would want to stick to just one genre at a time and go with it for a longer period. I can alternate ELA and SS days, so that students write fantasy short stories for the double block, 110 minutes, one day, and then write environmental science investigative reporting articles for 110 minutes the next. I can do mid-workshop interruptions to tuck two mini-lessons into the time, while still giving them a big chunk of time to write write write. 

Both units will end up on the same date they would have if I had done single lessons each day. And students will be able to focus deeply on each writing piece on its assigned day. That sounds like a win-win to me!

What does your middle school schedule look like? Does it allow flexibility and long stretches of time when you need it? Do you have common planning time with your colleagues?

U.S. Elections Projects: "Fair and Balanced"

As a teacher of U.S. History, I cannot ignore the momentous happening of a Presidential election, even though I am teaching in a Middle Eastern country to international students. Our kids walked into the new school year from summer vacation with their heads filled with news, ads, and dinner table conversations about the candidates. Passions were high, and misinformation rampant. 

My grade 8 colleague and I knew we needed to harness the energy around this topic without letting it devolve into a "my candidate is better than yours" playground fight. We needed to find a project which allowed students to learn about the candidates and issues in an objective manner so that they could make informed choices rather than being swayed by the latest sensational headline or the loudest voice. We needed a way for students to agree or disagree with a position and back up that opinion with factual information, rather than fighting for (or against) a particular candidate. Just like our professional meeting norms, we wanted them to "disagree with ideas, not people" to keep things from getting too personal.

CC image from Wikimedia Commons website

We decided against doing a traditional campaign ad project. First, the vast majority of our students already backed one candidate, which makes those that favor the other major candidate feel outnumbered and isolated-- never a good idea in middle school. Secondly, if we "assigned" a candidate to students as a way to get a more balanced view, those students who had very strong feelings against that candidate would instantly shut down-- again, never a good idea to lose motivation with middle schoolers.

By G. Skidmore on Wikipedia

Therefore, we decided to make our project revolve around issues, and to include the top four candidates instead of only the top two: Jill Stein (Green Party), Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party), Donald Trump (Republican Party), and Hillary Clinton (Democratic Party). We formed groups of 4, and students split the candidates between themselves. We then randomly assigned the groups one issue each: Immigration, Economy, Terrorism, Civil Rights, Environment, and Gun Control. 

Image from Wikipedia website

Students researched "their" candidate's position on how to solve the focal issue. They used ProCon.org (they have a very easy-to-use 2016 Presidential Elections page that features all four candidates), the candidates' own websites, and reputable news organizations to find their information. Students did not have to agree with the candidates' positions; they merely had to find out what that position was so that they could teach their group members about it. This alleviated a lot of push-back when students had to research a candidate who was not their initial choice. They could see the logic of understanding other candidates' views in order to argue intelligently against them.

Once the research was finished, students shared out how each of the four candidates would solve that particular issue. Next, they had to come to an agreement about which position their group would support, answering this question: Which solution is best for America? This led to some very lively discussions, with lots of critical thinking around the pros and cons of each, and students defending their opinions with researched information. Some groups also learned the art of compromise when they could not agree on a single position.

By focusing the discussion on the candidates' positions on a particular issue, it kept candidates' personalities out of it (the source of much of the sensationalist news headlines). Additionally, the focus was so narrow that it avoided the question of who is the best candidate overall. It also allowed those few students who backed the less popular candidate a safe way to advocate for their candidate without getting shouted down. 

The final step was to present their findings in a multimedia project ("live" slideshow, screen-cast recording, or movie) during which the group's choice for best solution was highlighted and contrasted with the other solutions. All students were involved in creating the production, since each group member was an "expert" on one position. Interestingly, when all the presentations were finished, each class featured three different candidates as having a "best" position, and across all classes, all four candidates were represented at least once. 

When I asked students what they had learned from this project, many students wrote that they didn't know there were other parties besides the Democratic and Republican parties. They had never heard of Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, or their parties. They learned that their preferred candidate may not have had the best solution to their focal issue, and that other candidates had some good points. They learned that some candidates agreed with others on issues-- even Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton had points of agreement! They learned about the particulars involved in their focal issue, and some of the terms that were being thrown around related to them: TPP, fracking, immigrants vs. refugees, Dreamers, Obamacare, Religious Restoration Act, EPA, etc. They also learned that there are places to find accurate information, and to not always believe what a candidate or headline says is true.

We still have a couple months before the elections. Although our project is over, our discussions aren't. We will jump into early US history next week, but as the Presidential debates and other major milestones happen, we will keep track of current events. My hope is that, as the months pass, my students will listen and read with a more critical and informed perspective than they had when the year began. They will be active citizens.

C3's Informed Action: Making It Relevant

Teaching early U.S. History during a presidential election year makes for endless past-present connections... IF one is looking for them. The middle school brain has an uncanny ability to segment information into discreet categories, never the twain shall meet! So teachers need to provide students with the catalyst to open the doors of those categorized boxes and let things mingle. 

We recently finished our long journey down the Road to Revolution, past the Declaration of Independence, and arrived at our destination: The Treaty of Paris. We have less than three weeks until Spring Break, and a classroom full of tired kids. It doesn't seem like the time to jump into the Articles of Confederation, Shay's Rebellion, or the Making of the Constitution. Fortunately, we live in interesting times, and the C3 Framework gives us the structure to take advantage of it.

The C3 Framework includes a fourth dimension: Communicating Conclusions & Taking Informed Action as a way to communicate inquiry findings and connect to relevant democratic activities. Making a connection between the ideals of the Declaration of Independence and the presidential election campaigns seemed very timely. The students are hearing a lot about the candidates on the news and social media. They are beginning to form opinions about candidates of their choice (or their parents' choice, since they are easily influenced at this age). We decided to grab hold of that current event interest and end the unit with an Informed Action project.

Super Tuesday: We started our Informed Action with a casual, motivational investigation on Super Tuesday. We threw out this question: Should presidential candidates tell the truth while they are campaigning? Students generally agreed that they should, but they already knew that candidates didn't always stick to it. I directed them to look at two websites: PolitiFact and FactCheck.org. These two sites check the accuracy of statements made by candidates and others related to them (e.g., Super PACs). The students were very engaged, looking up candidates they supported, those they didn't support, learning about those who they didn't know much about, and noticing differences between them. They especially enjoyed finding out which statements rated as "Pants on Fire" (complete untruth) via PolitiFact. After about 20 minutes, I brought the discussion back to the group. I asked them what they had found out, and several students shared discoveries. I asked them the inquiry question again, and got pretty much the same answer as the beginning of the class, so I flipped it around a bit: Which candidate is the most truthful? (as of that day, it was John Kasich with Bernie Sanders a close second). Which candidate is the least truthful? (as of that day, it was Donald Trump by a long shot). Students also brought up questions about why the websites would fact check some statements and not others, whether we could trust these sites, and who was finding out about this information. Great critical citizenship! 

Campaign Propaganda: Now that students had some sense of who the candidates were, we are turning our attention to campaign advertisements. The overarching inquiry question that connects back to past learning is What does "consent of the governed" and "alter and abolish government" look like? To start our inquiry, I showed a quick series of campaign ads from the previous week (found on P2016) and asked students to think about how they connected to the two ideals from the Declaration of Independence. They jotted ideas and questions on small slips of paper. We discussed afterward how the campaign ads were trying to persuade voters to give the candidates their "consent" to "alter" the government. The idea of "persuasion" led into the Mini-Q: Campaign Propaganda: Which Strategies Would You Use? Students investigate past presidential campaign ads to identify six propaganda strategies and evaluate them on how informative, effective, and ethical they are. Then they decide which three they would use to make a campaign ad. This builds student knowledge before we get into the project.

Public Service Announcement: It would make sense to have students make a campaign ad for the candidate of their choice at this point. However, we are holding off for now for two reasons: 1) We don't have enough time before spring break for the amount of research and production time they would need, and 2) Students don't have enough information about the electoral process yet to see how their candidate and their issues fit into the big picture. Instead, we are having our students make a Public Service Announcement (PSA) alerting citizens of propaganda techniques used in campaign ads. They will make a short movie/slidecast showing three campaign ads, identifying the propaganda technique the candidate used in each, and explaining how it is informative, effective, and ethical (or rather, how it is not those things). This fits into the role of informed citizenship, taking action for the greater good. 

In the spring, after we teach the Constitution and the electoral college, we will have another presidential project, probably making an advertisement. By that time, students will have time to dig into issues, see where candidates stand on them, and consider which issues are most important to address in order to get the most electoral college votes. The number of candidates will have whittled down a bit as well.

In past years, we connected The Road to Revolution to The Arab Spring through the question: When is it necessary for citizens to rebel against their government? We did interesting projects with this as well. However, rolling with the times and student interest can make for a much more relevant investigation. It will not be too many more years before these 8th graders will be eligible to vote, and perhaps they will think back on their inquiry this year as they do, and wonder, "What should I know about this candidate before I vote for him/her?" This is informed action in the real world!

Working with content knowledge during inquiry

There are many aspects of the C3 Framework for Social Studies that I am still trying to wrap my head around as I simultaneously revise and implement inquiry-based units. The biggest one remains: What is the role of content teaching in the inquiry arc, and how much should students "discover" the content vs. content being "fed" via teacher-led lessons?

As I've been wrestling with this question, I have been trying out some new resources that are more inquiry-based. Some have been moderately successful, while others really hit the nail on the head. An example of the latter was a "Mini-Q" based on this question: The Ideals of the Declaration: Which is most important? (DBQ Project, 2012).

Students had already read the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence and we unpacked the four principles of government together. Last year, I just went on to the Revolutionary War from there. But this year, I wanted to linger on the Declaration a bit longer because it forms the foundation of the US government, and if students really understand those principles, then the next units on the Constitution and Bill of Rights make a whole lot more sense. 

This Mini-Q presented a range of primary source documents, from a Declaration from the Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls in 1848 (Equality), to a segment from NPR's "This I Believe" in 2005 (Unalienable Rights), to a photo of demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 2009 (Consent of the Governed), to a statement by the Tea Party from 2010 (Alter or Abolish Government). By examining more modern examples of the ideals, students were forced to shift their thinking out of the 18th century Patriots vs. Loyalists debate and apply them to issues in the 21st century. 

The best part, though, were the discussions around the follow-up questions at each table group. Here are some of the questions presented in the Mini-Q:

• Is it possible to achieve equality without liberty? Liberty without equality?
• Can you achieve happiness without the consent of the governed?
• Which is more important: equality or the right to alter and abolish the government?

Students had to really think about what liberty actually entails, whether citizens can have any rights without the guarantee that they can change the government if it's not meeting their rights, and how some of the ideals are embedded in other ideals. (My favorite conclusion was that yes, you can achieve happiness without the consent of the governed, IF the government has citizens' happiness as a priority. Sometimes it happens, but not often.) By working with the four ideals in this way, students examined each one carefully, defended their opinions to others at their tables, thought of examples to illustrate their thinking, and tried to understand other viewpoints. 

image from wikipedia.org

And when asked to answer the main question: Which ideal is most important?, they almost unanimously agreed to this answer: It's not fair! They're all important!, which is sort-of the point of this exercise. Ultimately, they were able to pick one and defend it as most important, thus demonstrating that they understood the subtleties of each ideal. I deem this a highly-successful learning activity!

Back to my original question about content in the inquiry arc. During this Mini-Q, students worked with content, but did not learn new content. They needed to come into the activity already knowing something about the Declaration of Independence and the principles of government embedded in the preamble. Doing the Mini-Q without that content knowledge would have been confusing and students would have done surface-level thinking. Therefore, I wonder still about the value of "knowledge discovery" in inquiry-based units. 

This week we are hosting a consultant who will be addressing that questions with secondary Social Studies teachers. I am excited to hear what she has to say about this. More next week, I'm sure!

Assessment Shifts in the C3 Framework

About a year ago, I wrote a post about practicing argument strategies with an in-class debate structure called Socratic Smackdown during Social Studies. Well, here we are again, doing the same thing at the same time of year. However, this year we are also implementing the C3 Framework, so the unit was revised (see last month's blog about that). This prompted some re-thinking about the order that information was presented, the materials used, how to scaffold student learning, and how to assess.

image from wikimedia.org

Last year, students worked through the content information by reading textbook sections and answering the questions afterward. We discussed the information in class, worked with it during the Town Hall Meetings (using Socratic Smackdown), captured the information on a slick digital timeline (Timeline JS3, Northwest University, 2015), and watched part of The Revolution (History Channel, 2011). At the end of the unit, students took a test on their content learning. It contained 10 multiple choice knowledge questions, three questions interpreting visual primary source documents that we had discussed in class, and one constructed response synthesizing question. Students who studied the textbook did well on this test. 

This year, students looked for answers to historical questions using primary source documents. They used the textbook and video information from The Revolution to help them build the digital timeline, and section questions were optional. We discussed information in class and debated during Town Hall Meetings. They wrote answers to the supporting historical questions.

The C3 unit plan I used as a model, American Revolution (C3 Teachers), has this as its final assessment:

This is obviously very different than the unit test we used last year, and it prompted a long discussion with my teaching partner. First, the compelling question uses so much more evaluative and critical thinking than the test, yet students would need content knowledge in order to answer it. It also flows directly from the unit work we did, especially the supporting questions. We definitely wanted to keep the compelling question as the centerpiece of our assessment. 

Second, we talked long about the format of the assessment. Would a poster or mulitmedia presentation (what is that? a slideshow? screen cast?) give us enough to know whether students really understood? Would we have to add three days to our unit to accommodate the time it always takes for students to make a tech project? Would students who are not good writers be fairly graded if they wrote an essay? Do we want to take the time to grade 46 essays? What format would be engaging yet practical? Ultimately, we returned to the question: What have students been practicing? We decided that having small Town Hall Meetings was most logical because that is what they have been practicing throughout the unit, and it gives them the opportunity to show what they know without having to write long. Students would record their discussions so there could be four going on at once.

But what about those students who are not good speakers? How will they show their learning fairly? Part of the Socratic Smackdown rubric grades preparation, including text evidence and analyzing the evidence.

This is work we emphasized before each of the Town Hall Meetings during the unit. We decided that students should make an outline "that addresses the compelling question using specific claims and relevant evidence from historical sources while acknowledging competing views" on one day, and then use that outline during the final Town Hall Meeting discussion. This captures the thinking of our struggling writers and speakers, as well as making everyone's argument better. The outline would be graded as part of the final summative grade.

Third, we kept coming back to the prompt when it asks students to use "relevant evidence from historical sources". We knew we wanted students to move beyond memorized textbook knowledge and show us they could use primary and secondary sources to answer historical questions. We thought hard about the question, "What do historians do?" Yes, they have a lot of background information in their heads because they have studied it for a long time. But mostly they look at resources and try to put the various pieces together. We decided that students could not answer the compelling question by spitting back memorized textbook information. Therefore, we decided to give their work on the digital timeline relevance by allowing them to use it for the assessment. They could also access all of the primary source documents we worked with in class, as well as their answers to the supporting questions in their Social Studies notebooks. 

So here is the final result, our end of unit summative assessment for the Road to Revolution:

Day 1:
Was the American Revolution avoidable? Create an outline that addresses whether or not the American Revolution was avoidable. It should address the compelling question using specific claims and relevant evidence from historical sources (digital timeline, historical documents, and SS notebook only) while acknowledging competing views.

Day 2:

Was the American Revolution avoidable? Discuss the question in a small group Town Hall Meeting (record your discussion). It should address the compelling question using specific claims and relevant evidence from historical sources while acknowledging competing views (use your outline).

Curriculum implementation challenges my comfort level. It was easy to make, give, and grade the old test. The new assessment will be much harder. However, it is more authentic, meaty, and engaging, and it allows students with various strengths to show what they know and can do. And that is all good!

Inquiring into Inquiry and the C3 Framework

I am attempting to re-write my third Social Studies unit to be more aligned with the C3 Framework, which has as its core the inquiry "arc": starting with a compelling question, students then explore a variety of source documents to answer the question, and then report out their understanding. It sounds simple enough.

Fortunately for me, the great borrower of others' work, there are lots of C3-aligned resources available for me to access via the internet. One that very neatly fell into my lap was created by Engage NY for their Grade 7 unit on the American Revolution. The compelling question, Was the American Revolution avoidable?, is pretty compelling. It is interesting to ponder whether change was inevitable, and if so, did there have to be a war to make it happen. The supporting questions are also interesting: How did the French and Indian War change British relations with the colonists?, How did British policies inflame tensions in the American colonies?, How did colonial responses inflame tensions?, and What efforts were made to avoid war? This unit comes complete with a variety of primary source documents to examine, formative assessments for each supporting question, a final project that addresses the compelling question, and a suggested informed action step to bring relevancy to the unit. I could just take the unit as is and start implementing it tomorrow. Sweet!

But here's my big question about inquiry: Do students get enough understanding of the content through their constructed responses to the primary source documents? Nowhere in this unit are students reading textbooks or other secondary sources to build background knowledge. Nowhere are they watching live action reconstructions to help them visualize the events. Nowhere are they putting themselves into roles to wrestle with the varying perspectives of the time. 

If I implement the unit as is, I can anticipate that I will be having to fill in a lot of knowledge gaps. I like to think of our brains as having a clothesline of background information in our long-term memory, and new learning gets hung on that line, connecting new learning to old to deepen understanding. Being thrown a bunch of data and newspaper articles and diary entries without the necessary background knowledge means students are trying to formulate concepts without anything to hang the information on, and those unconnected pieces just pile up in a jumble. There could be a lot of disconnections and misconceptions.

I anticipate that some students will easily make the necessary abstract connections and inferences to get the point, and others will just be confused. These are middle schoolers, after all, who are just now developing their abstract thinking brains. Some are there, some are still very concrete thinkers, and everyone else is somewhere in between. I will have to scaffold a lot of the deductive and inductive thinking required. 

I also wonder about motivation. Spending weeks looking at primary source documents to understand history is a historian's work-- I get that. But these are 13-year-olds, and they need a bit more action and excitement. They are immersed in YouTube and Instagram and movies; they play soccer and tag at recess; they sing and play instruments and act in plays. History needs to come alive to be interesting.

CC image from Shelbyhistorysite

So I am adding things to the Engage NY unit. I am adding textbook readings that relate to each supporting question to build their background knowledge. I am adding role play: Patriot, Loyalist, and Neutralist colonists debate their response during this "Road to Revolution" period in Town Hall Meetings. I am adding bits and pieces from History Channel's The Revolution and HBO's John Adams mini-series.

image from wikipedia.org

Maybe this isn't "pure" C3 Framework teaching, but I know my kids and I know what helps them learn. The inquiry arc is still there, the compelling and supporting questions are driving the unit, and they will be wrestling with a lot of primary source documents. But they will also be watching movies, reading background information, and debating a historical perspective in a role play activity. That gives them enough information to build on and deepen content knowledge and makes Social Studies fun and engaging. Both of these things make learning happen.

This is all new to me. If you are experienced in the C3 Framework and see that I am way off base, please help me out in the comment section below. How do you implement the C3 while also making learning complete and motivating for middle schoolers?

Considering the Connotations of Word Choice in Media

CC photo by J. Pohl

My family just returned from a winter break trip to Vietnam. One of our first stops was the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City. It's called "War Remnants" because it is filled with the flotsam and jetsam the American military left behind when they retreated, including tanks, helicopters, boats, bombs, shells, and the long-term effects from Agent Orange. The big vehicles fill the outdoor courtyard, while inside the Museum building photographs document the horrors of war. It was very disturbing.

CC photo by J. Pohl

But I'm writing about it here on my blog because it was fascinating to view a world event from the opposite perspective from the one I grew up with. I was a child when the Vietnam War was happening, so it was background noise in my happy-go-lucky existence. I have vague memories, reinforced by movie images no doubt, of soldiers in muddy tropical jungles, of drawing the line between the "good guys" (South Vietnamese) and the "bad guys" (North Vietnamese), and of feeling sad for those families who lost a son to the war. The Museum had American journalists' articles and photographs displayed, with headlines like, "Terrorists captured..." accompanying an image of a small shirtless man with his hands tied behind his back being guided into an open jeep. In my memories, Americans were helping the good guys to defend their country from the bad guys and our soldiers were "heroes", but despite our noble aspirations, we "lost" the war.

photo by peregringo.com

In Vietnam, I heard the war called "The American War," a title that jarred me a little (all "our" wars are named for other places: Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, the Korean War). At the Museum, I read signs that called the Americans "the Imperialists" who fought against the "will of the people". The Vietnamese soldiers were "martyrs". An international war crimes committee declared that the U.S. had committed "genocide" against the Vietnamese people. 

Wow, that was so totally different than what I had been fed as a child.

It made me think about the power of words, the connotations behind the words we hear in the media and how they can so strongly spin an event to be one way or another. The "terrorist" the Americans captured was the "martyr" to the Vietnamese cause. Of course I know that governments and media show bias through their word choice, but it takes a certain amount of cognitive effort to stop and analyze that bias. How often do our students make that effort? Probably close to never.

As we move into the second semester and closer to the U.S. Presidential elections, it seems ever more urgent to teach students to notice bias-laden language in the media. The CCSS includes reading and language standards (R8.4, L8.5, H/SS6-8.6) that specifically address understanding the connotative meanings of words and how they affect meaning. It will mean drawing students' attention to word choice options, the subtleties of meaning behind synonyms, and considering the perspectives of the author and audience. 

Pretty abstract stuff. I'm hoping that with consistent practice, students will begin to internalize this process so that they take their critical lens to any reading or viewing, so that they don't just take things like "good guys" and "bad guys" to heart without considering the spin behind it.

How can I help at home? Parental Support Suggestions

I just finished meeting with 44 out of my 46 families during the two-day parent-student-teacher conferences last week. It was a marathon! Twenty-seven 15-minute conferences on one day, and 17 the next. Whew! Although exhausting, I was continuously impressed with the commitment shown by the parents to be involved in their child's education. 

image from room206lce.wikispaces.com website

One question kept coming up: How can I help at home? It's a tricky question for eighth graders. Most 13-year-olds do not want their parent hovering over their shoulder, "helping" them with homework. They know they can do it on their own, although some do need help with organization and time management. For those kids, we had a good chat together about structuring time, using organizational tools, and balancing homework and down time. Parents came away with some strategies to help their children with those needs.

What about the rest? And what about academics? Here are a few things I suggested:

• Help your child read by keeping books in his/her hands. This could mean giving time to get to the library, buying books at the bookstore or for e-readers, or suggesting books off of the family bookshelves.  
• Talk about what they are reading, not just summary, but questions about characters, author's craft, or theme. Compare this book to others: Do any of the characters remind you of any other characters in other books? If this is a book by an author you've read before, do you see a pattern emerging (is it formulaic)?
• Discuss the social studies content your child is learning. By "teaching" family members, students process and remember information longer. Asking clarifying questions, watching videos connected to the content, and looking at maps or other resources together enriches and deepens the information.
• Encourage authentic writing at home. I found this great chart that places best practices for teaching writing along side suggestions for teen writers (from Fleischer, Cathy and Kimberly Coupe Pavlock. 2012. "Inviting Parents In: Expanding Our Community Base to Support Writing." English Journal 101 (4): 29-36.). Here's an excerpt:

 

Parents want what is best for their kids, and they want to do what they can to help. Giving them tools that show them appropriate and authentic ways to support their children is a win-win situation. What other suggestions do you give to parents?

Ancient Civilizations of the Americas: a Historical Inquiry Project

A couple of weeks ago, I shared my learning about the shifts needed for disciplinary literacy vs. content literacy in Social Studies. Since I am a firm believer in adapt and adopt, I decided to use the historian's process in our first content unit on Native Americans. I had found a lot of great (free!) units on the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) website during the Improving Historical Reading and Writing MOOC this summer, so I turned to the experts to see what was available and how they organize an inquiry-based "Document-Based Question" (DBQ-- I see I am talking in alphabet soup today).

Most of the SHEG DBQ units focused on the interaction between Native American groups and European invaders. Although this is important historically, I wanted to start earlier, and study the ancient civilizations of the Americas as they were before European contact. I did some searching and found a "Mini-Q" (shorter DBQ) unit on the Maya from The DBQ Project: "The Maya: What Was Their Most Remarkable Achievement?" The Maya were one of the six civilizations I wanted students to study (the others are Inca, Aztec, and groups from the Mississippian, Eastern Woodlands, and Southwest cultural regions), and this Mini-Q was set up in the inquiry-based structure I was after. I decided to use the Maya unit as my teacher model, and write my own Mini-Qs for the other civilizations. 

However, "Most Remarkable Achievement" wasn't where I wanted to focus. I wanted students to study the groups as legitimate ancient civilizations, as established and successful as Mesopotamia, ancient China, or Greece, validating their contribution to world history. Instead of achievements, I chose this question as our Mini-Q focus: Which elements were most essential for the ______ (ancient civ.) to thrive?

I divided the class into six groups of 3-4 students each: Inca, Aztec, Cherokee (Mississippian), Iroquois (Eastern Woodland), Pueblo (Southwest), and Huron (also Eastern Woodland, but important to distinguish from Iroquois for future history lessons). Each group got a packet set up in the same inquiry-based Mini-Q structure, but with information and artifacts related to their ancient civilization:

1. Cover: Question, Graphic Organizer naming 8 elements of civilization (Government & Law, Religion, Writing & Numbers, Trade & Economy, Architecture & Engineering, Art, Technology & Inventions, and Human-Environment Interaction), a quick overview, and a list of the 4 documents they will be studying.
2. Hook Exercise: What does it mean to thrive? Students were given a series of familiar scenarios which they rated from 1 (not at all thriving) to 5 (extremely thriving). They then picked one scenario and justified their reasoning for why it showed the most thriving. This exercise helped students distinguish between "surviving" and "thriving" so that their investigation would stay focused on those factors.
3. Background essay: Students had little to no background knowledge about their civilization, so before going any further, they had a short essay to read highlighting distinguishing characteristics. The essay also included a map to locate them in the Americas, and a photo showing one of the characteristics. Students answered some basic comprehension questions that held them accountable for the information.
4. Understanding the Question and "Pre-Bucketing": Students identified terms in the question that needed definition, and then re-wrote the question in their own words. This helped them process what the question was asking, giving them a better focus as they moved into the documents. Next, based on the list of documents and the information in the background essay, students predicted which three of the elements of civilization would emerge as most essential to thriving. This prediction gave them a "clothesline" to "hang" their new learning on, either confirming or re-adjusting their initial thinking.
5. The 4 documents: Each document included the name of the document (usually an artifact), a picture of the artifact, and a short write-up about the artifact and/or information related to it. Students went through the historical thinking process for each one: Check the source for reliability, access background knowledge related to the document, do close reading that names details (What do I see?) and considers their meaning (What does it mean?) and implications (Why does it matter?), and corroborate between documents (including the background essay). I then asked them to connect the document to two elements of civilization (I gave them the elements to look at-- it's early in the year, and there's a lot of new thinking happening on this page). 
6. Bucketing and Thesis: Once all four primary source documents had been analyzed, students made their final decision independently. They chose 3 elements most essential to thrive, and named the documents that provided evidence to support their decision. They then turned that into a "boxes and bullets" outline: the thesis is written in the box as the answer to the question, and the bullets are the elements with evidence (their reasons). I asked them to do this part independently because everything else had been done in a group, with a lot of support and scaffolding for struggling students. I wanted to see what they chose based on what they got out of working with the documents, not what their group members (especially the more vocal ones) thought.
7. Decision-making matrix: Group members shared their boxes and bullets, and then as a group
   rated the 8 elements of civilization for how influential they were for helping the ancient civ. to thrive. Members had to justify their thinking using evidence from the documents. This was a very high-level discussion, with students arguing their point, negotiating ratings, and compromising based on the strength of the evidence. By the end, they picked the three that the group ranked the highest, and justified them with evidence from the documents.
   
8. Reporting out: The group next made an 8-slide slideshow to report out their findings. Each student was responsible to explain one of the elements or the summarizing conclusion (groups of 4 = one "meaty" informational slide each), and one "thin" slide: The Question, the answer (thesis), bibliography of images, and group members. I did a mini-lesson with The Worst Slideshow in the World, to highlight tips for making good slides. Since students would be presenting the information orally, they did not need to put a lot of information on the slides themselves. The assessment rubric included multimedia, informational, mechanics, and oral presentation criteria. As students presented their slideshows, the audience took notes and asked questions at the end.
9. Synthesis question: When all student groups finished presenting, I asked them to answer the Mini-Q question as a generality based on their notes. I wanted to see if they could identify one- to three elements that repeated across several civilizations, and if they could explain why that element is so important for any civilization to thrive. By moving from specific (their own civilization) to a generality, students show they have built concepts.

I did a variation on this project in previous years. Students had to do their own research on two of the elements, take notes, and then share out to their group before doing the decision-making matrix (jigsaw). Yes, there is value in teaching research skills, and structuring the project with self-directed research did help hone those skills. However, I found that this year students' presentations were much more substantial and informational than in the past, where they were rather hit-or-miss. Having the whole group discussion focused on all four artifacts throughout the project, using the historical thinking and close reading skills during the process, and emphasizing again and again the need to show evidence, all contributed to more knowledgeable explanations. Although the students struggled through the document analysis, needing more modeling and reteaching than I'd anticipated, the struggle was worth it in the critical thinking work I saw happening with each group. I am pleased with the results, and looking forward to our next unit!

Disciplinary Literacy in History: Thinking Like a Historian

There has been a lot of buzz in the education community over the past year or two about "disciplinary literacy" as distinct from "content literacy". In a nutshell, disciplinary literacy is doing the work of the discipline, and teaching students explicitly how to do that work. By contrast, content literacy is learning how to read and write in the content areas-- a valuable skill, but not the whole package.

I am an English Language Arts teacher by passion and training, and a Social Studies teacher by default. I understand teaching reading and writing. I understand how to teach reading and writing in Social Studies. What I haven't understood is what historians actually do when they read and write (beyond what I was already teaching). I decided I needed to find out.

CC0 by shotput on pixabay

Just as I was starting to poke around last spring for a workshop to take over the summer that focused on disciplinary literacy, I saw an announcement by NCSS for a MOOC they sponsored called "Improving Historical Reading and Writing." Ta da! Just the ticket (and it was FREE!). This 15-module course opened up the world of historical thinking to me. Here are some big "ah ha's":

Historians gather multiple pieces of evidence about a historical question they have. If they don't know anything about the historical question, they start with a general secondary source to get a sense of the event. Next, they try to find several primary sources (journal entries, newspaper accounts, photographs or paintings, maps, inventories, etc.) that can dig down into the details from people who were there at the time. Historians want to piece together the puzzle and find their own interpretation of what happened in the past.

• Historians do a lot of work before they even start reading-- a lot more work than ELA readers do. Historians consider the source: they search out the author, publisher, and date of the document first and consider questions of reliability: Who wrote it? Who published it? When and where was it published? Are these people biased or coming from a particular perspective? Can I trust this to be a reliable source? If not, can I use this source to gain an understanding of one particular point of view?
• Historians also access all the background knowledge they have about the context in which the document was published before they start reading. What was going on during that time? What background knowledge do I already have about this event or person that will help me understand the information? Adding this layer of thinking about contextualization also helps readers think about reliability, bias, and perspective.
• Historians do a lot of work while they read-- this is most like the work that ELA readers do. These days we call it "close reading." Historians are reading for the main idea and supporting details, but they are also watching the use of language to clue them into bias and perspective. They try to put themselves into the author's shoes to really dig into the human reality behind the writing.
• Historians do a lot of work after they read, comparing and contrasting the information they just encountered with what they already know. Is the author adding to or confirming what I already know? Is this information different than what I already know? If so, how does it differ, and why would it differ? Can I find any other sources of evidence that can help confirm or deny this information? This act of corroboration ensures historians are looking at the full story, not just the single story which can be distorted by time, selective reporting, or bias. 
• Historians tell other people what they found out so that their voice can add to the collective understanding of history. There are many ways to do this; book publishing is just one way. For students, this can mean debating issues, writing editorials, making public service announcements, starting or contributing to a social justice campaign, blogging, etc. 

image found on Wikipedia website

The Stanford History Education Group website has a lot of great resources aligned to this thinking process. I used their 5-lesson Introduction to History series last week, and my 8th graders loved it! Keeping my historical thinking hat on while I teach Social Studies this year will ensure that I am not relying on the textbook as my sole resource, and it will (hopefully) develop the critical thinking stance that students should take when encountering any source of information-- from the internet, the newspaper, advertisements, or even their friends. That is a valuable life skill!

Using Public Service Announcements to Connect Early US History to Modern History

We had one week of school left before spring break. We had just completed an 8-week unit on the Road to Independence, which included the events leading up to the American Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence, and the War itself. Our next unit would focus on creating the Constitution, the Constitution itself, and the Bill of Rights. I was not eager to jump into it knowing spring break would erase any learning we started. We needed something engaging yet worthwhile to fill that week. Our one-week window seemed like a great opportunity to make some connections from early U.S. History to the modern world.

image from U.S. History Images website

One essential question for the Road to Independence unit was, When is it necessary for citizens to rebel against their government? This question is applicable to many revolutions from history, including the Arab Spring rebellions. Living in the Middle East, many student know something about the Arab Spring movement, they or their family come from one of the countries, or they (at least) have heard of the countries involved.

My teaching partner and I brainstormed several possibilities for what we could do: news casts, Venn diagrams, informational essay, etc. Then we pushed pause and thought about what we really wanted students to understand by the end of the mini-unit, a principle of government found in The Declaration of Independence: When governments start taking away citizens' rights and freedoms, citizens can take action to try to change or get rid of the government. 

Suddenly, it dawned on us: a Public Service Announcement  (PSA) alerting the public to the dangers of tyranny and specific (nonviolent) actions that citizens can do to act against them. Students could use examples from both U. S. History (1763-1775) and one of the Arab Spring countries (Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, or Syria in 2010-11) to support their ideas. Here's how the mini-unit played out:

• Day 1: Build background knowledge about Arab Spring countries' dictatorship/ signs of tyranny. Students watched The Arab Awakening: Absolute Power (Al Jazeera English service, July 27, 2011, YouTube) and took notes in the center column of a 3-column note sheet:

 

• Day 2: Research one of the Arab Spring countries to discover why citizens rebelled and how they took action. Because we had such a tight time frame, and because PSAs don't need a huge amount of information because they are so short, we provided students a list of about 3 resources (one of them Wikipedia) to use for their research. These research notes were captured in the left column of the notes sheet.
• Day 3: Connect to U. S. History, understand the genre of PSAs, and work on PSA outline. Students worked with partners to brainstorm the U.S. History connections to the characteristics of a dictator, and then we shared out together (for example, filling the streets with soldiers to keep citizens controlled, like the British did after the Proclamation of 1763 and during the Intolerable Acts in Boston). They also reminded themselves of the actions the colonists took to try to get rid of the tyranny (boycott, petition, protest) and specific examples for each. Next, I showed several PSAs from the Ad Council and we analyzed the parts of a Public Service Announcement. This gave them a vision of what their product would look like. Finally, they used an outline template modified from the sample on the ReadWriteThink lesson, MyTube: Changing the World with Video Public Service Announcements. They would use the outline to voice over their visual when making their PSA movie. The outline my students used looked like this:

•  Day 4: Prepare the visual presentation. Each box on the outline translates into one slide on the visual presentation (4 boxes = 4 slides). We used Google presentations because then we teachers could be shared on it and nothing gets lost. We emphasized using Creative Commons and images labeled for reuse when selecting images for their slides. I reminded them how to cite images correctly. And then I let them go.
• Day 5: Make the PSA movie. Our technology integrator showed us how to turn a Google Presentation into a QuickTime movie with sound. Students scattered all around the hallways and courtyard to find a quiet place to voice over their slideshow. Using headphones with microphones allowed their sound to be much clearer than just using the computer's external mic. Once their 1:30-3:00 movie was done, they saved it into a shared Google folder so I could access it. 
• Assessment: Once again, ReadWriteThink's PSA lesson came in handy. I modified their PSA rubric to fit our project:
  Surprisingly, students found the PSA project confusing. They wanted models (of this exact project, not PSAs in general), which we didn't have because it was a new idea. I was sure the project was straightforward and clear. They have written many essays this year, and this was just another form of an argument essay with a thesis (Watch out for the danger signs of tyranny and act if you see them), reasons (characteristics of dictatorship and nonviolent citizen actions), and examples to support (Arab Spring and U. S. History). 
  
  
  As I graded the projects, I noticed that about a third of the students took this and ran with it, about a third got the general idea, but missed out on some of the components, and about a third make a PowerPoint presentation complete with a title slide and an introduction, "Hi, I'm ____, and I'm going to tell you about my Arab Spring project", completely missing the concept.
  
  
  I like this project, and I think it was do-able in the time frame we had. I like the way it took U.S. History and transferred the big ideas into a more general and modern context. I like that it connected to our region and directly to some students' lives. 
  
  
  There are some things I will want to change (always). I will show them a model of this exact project (I have a few good ones now). I will be clearer with the goal of the project and help them see how it's just another argument essay. Transferring those essay skills to different genres is essential. And I will (maybe) give it another day or two. Still, despite its rough patches, I think this one is a keeper.