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!

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?

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!

Teaching Argument Through Primary Source Evidence

A couple of weeks ago, a literacy consultant, Stevi Quate, came to our school to work with the middle and high school teachers. Our Director of Curriculum and Professional Development invited her, knowing that the English departments at both levels were implementing the CCSS, as had the Math departments, and that Social Studies and Science were soon to follow. Literacy is a big push for all those subjects in the CCSS, and Stevi would be a great jump-start into improving our practice.

Stevi sat down with my co-teacher and me one morning to help us think through improving argument skills in eighth grade Social Studies: Early American History. One of our big units of the year is The Road to Revolution, during which students take on the role of a historical Patriot or Loyalist, and debate, during a series of Town Hall meetings, the issue of rebellion. Over the past few years, the results have been something like this: "Um, so I think we should rebel because, you know, the Stamp Act was really unfair." "Yeah, me too. The Stamp Act and the Quartering Act." (Etc.) Uninspired, mindless repetition of textbook content.

Stevi introduced us to the work of George Hillocks, Jr., and his text Teaching Argument Writing, Grades 6-12 (Heinemann, 2011). In the sample first chapter, Hillocks demonstrates his methodology for teaching students how to notice evidence, explain the "rule" (he also calls it "warrant"), and draw conclusions. He uses crime mysteries-- narrative plus illustration-- as his hook to teach the skills. He asks the question: "Is Queenie (the victim's wife) telling the truth?" Then he walks students through the deductive reasoning process.

Chart adapted from Hillocks, 2011.

We just finished two big writing units: Literary Essay (use evidence to support an idea) and Investigative Journalism (find out evidence to help you explain an idea). We also did some work with "The Historian's Process": using primary and secondary sources to draw conclusions about historical events. This Hillocks method seemed like a very natural next step to develop arguments and do even better work with primary source documents. As you know, I am a great believer in adopting/adapting good ideas.

My co-teacher and I decided that the crime mystery in Hillocks' chapter would not be a good fit for our community. Besides, I like practicing skills on things that are actually part of the curriculum; it's a two-for-one kind of a thing. So we decided to use the primary and secondary source materials from our next Social Studies chapter, Life in the Colonies (US Through Industrialism, TCI, 2011) as the texts to use for learning deductive reasoning skills.

The textbook activity directions say: "Acting as investigative journalists, you and your partner will investigate life in the American colonies. You will travel to eight places to examine primary and secondary sources and uncover the truth about what life was really like in the colonies." Each "place" has a visual and a written document, and a "headline" (fictionally) published in the English press about what life was like in the colonies.

To introduce the students to Hillocks' method, I will show them a 3-minute clip from the BBC show Sherlock, in which Sherlock Holmes, "consulting detective", explains to his new room mate, Dr. John Watson, how he knew so much about him when they first met. In his explanation, Sherlock names the detail he noticed (for example, Watson's haircut and stance), explains why it is important (suggests time in the military), and draws a conclusion (combined with his tan line, it could only mean he was serving overseas: in Afghanistan or Iraq). This engaging clip, combined with their recent work as "investigative journalists" and "historians", will lead us into the day's work.

Using the Gradual Release of Responsibility method (basically, workshop minilessons), I constructed a slideshow so that I could model the technique, have students try it out with my guidance, and eventually release them to do the work on their own. With each source and using the form above, students have to find evidence, the rule (why the evidence is important), and draw a conclusion about how accurate the (fake) English headline is. Students will need 3-5 pieces of evidence before they can confidently "prove" that the headline is either true or false. I will go through at least one visual and one written source to model/practice. Here is a sample visual slide:

Image by Janet Pohl adapted from TCI, 2011 and G. Hillocks, Jr.

The important part of this process, and what has been missing from my previous instruction, is the "rule" (or "warrant"). Students were giving evidence without explaining why it was important or how it proved anything. In their literary essays, we did some work on this using sentence starters like "This illustrates...", "This shows...", "This is important because...", "This connects to .... because...", and "Consequently...". If students can transfer some of that language and thinking into their Social Studies debate skills, their debates will be much better. So will their constructed answers on tests, and on future essays.

The next part of this process will be to teach them how to prove their point with logic, and, even more difficult, how to pick apart someone else's argument. But that's for another blog.

Constructing Social Justice Concepts Through Reading

I have been reading student blog posts centered around the social justice theme questions from our Nonfiction Reading unit. Throughout the unit, students needed to answer the three thematic questions using their NF book for text evidence support. The three questions are:

image from goodreads.com

• To what extent does power or the lack of power affect individual?
• What creates prejudice and what can an individual do to overcome it?
• What allows some individuals to take a stand against prejudice/ oppression while others choose to participate in it?

It has been a journey for some students to construct answers for these questions. All of them have gotten better with identifying who has/lacks power and who takes a stand against/participates in prejudice. They can point to moments in their books where people were treated unfairly due to their race, age, or gender. They are even seeing how the characters' lives are affected by this treatment and times when they've made attempts to overcome prejudice.

The harder part is constructing the general answer behind the example, to come up with ideas such as "Lacking power pushes some people to action to gain the power they deserve", or "Prejudice is often created through the environment they've grown up in and their family's beliefs", or "The best way to overcome prejudice is to get lots of people on your side to protest against it". These abstractions are slowly built through book discussions, targeted questions during conferences or blog comments, by reading others' blog posts, and by mixing up book groups so connections can be made between books with similar themes.

Most students were able to finally construct generalized answers by the end of the unit. Some never quite got there. I think there is a bit of a developmental divide there. For all students, though, the time spent thinking about social justice issues is time well spent. It opens a little window into our imperfect world so they can look at modern-day situations with a more critical eye.

Or will they just compartmentalize all that thinking into "stuff I needed to know during the NF unit"? 

image from npr.org

I just finished reading Delirium by Lauren Oliver, a dystopian novel in which 18-year-olds are "cured" of the dangerous disease of love. Throughout the novel, Oliver constructs societal norms through propaganda, starting with revised nursery rhymes in childhood, through citizenship training in the schools, through reading Romeo and Juliet as a cautionary tale, through police raids and media messages. This propaganda blitz means that young people grow up eagerly anticipating the cure "procedure" so they can live future lives that are safe, predictable, and "happy". Of course the main character rebels against this, otherwise we wouldn't have a story.

But I was fascinated by the construction of the society, and how the social justice theme questions so neatly dovetailed into the events of the story. What creates prejudice (or thought control)? How can an individual take a stand against it? If all of society believes in the rightness of a wrong, what does it take to break out of that individually as well as systemically?

I hope that some of my students will begin to notice parallels between the books they are reading and the "big questions" we talk about in class. I hope that they notice parallels between the "big questions" and the events in our modern world. I hope they examine their own lives for bias or participation in oppression, and find ways to take a stand.

A Glimpse into the NCSS's C3 Framework

I read the October issue of The National Council of the Social Studies' newsletter, The Social Studies Professional this morning. Pages 7 and 8 give an overview of the new College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies Standards (which is available as a free download here). According to the overview, the major guiding principles are:

• Social studies prepares the nation's young people for college, careers, and civic life.
• Inquiry is at the heart of social studies.
• Social studies involves interdisciplinary applications and welcomes integration of the arts and humanities.
• Social studies is composed of deep and enduring understandings, concepts, and skills from the disciplines. Social studies emphasizes skills and practices as preparation for democratic decision-making.
• Social studies education should have direct and explicit connections to the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History/Social Studies.

The C3 Framework is organized along four "dimensions":

1. Dimension 1: Developing Questions and Planning Inquiries
2. Dimension 2: Applying Disciplinary Tools and Concepts
3. Dimension 3: Evaluating Sources and Using Evidence
4. Dimension 4: Communicating Conclusions and Taking Informed Action

As I read over these guiding principles and the C3 Framework Organization, I felt comfortable with all but one bullet point: "Inquiry is at the heart of social studies." I can visualize lessons that prepare students to have a broad understanding to lead them into their future. I can visualize lessons that integrate the arts and humanities. I can visualize unit plans that lay out enduring understandings, concepts and skills. And I can visualize how reading and writing in the content areas support the CCSS.

What is hard for me to visualize is how to make inquiry the "heart" of social studies. As a teacher of early US history to international eighth graders living in a Middle Eastern country, I wonder how student questions can drive the instruction, as the Framework suggests. The students have so little background knowledge, they wouldn't know what to ask that would lead them into a deep inquiry. I always have an essential question that drives our unit, but that is not inquiry since the question came from me.

And once the students have a question to go with, then what? Does each unit turn into a research project? That sounds dull. In my class, the most exciting and engaging activities have been the role play activities that lead to debating issues leading up to the American Revolution and the development of the Constitution. Students also enjoy watching historical documentaries that bring the people and events of the time to life. The visual, kinesthetic, and oral involvement make concepts stick.

I am not rejecting the idea of inquiry as the "heart" of social studies. I think it's an interesting idea. I am just wondering:

• What does it look like?
• How would I organize it and support it?
• How would I assess it?

The C3 Framework is new, and like the Common Core, there will most likely be lots of resources coming out to support its implementation. I will be on the lookout for the inquiry pieces. Meanwhile, I will see how I can do the other parts just a little bit better.