A Rewarding and Demanding Lesson

By Kristen Gierman

Historical documents are tricky.  They are full of baggage.  Historical context.  Higher level vocabulary.  Perspective.  Author’s purpose.  You name it, they are HARD to digest.  But that is no reason to shy away from them in the classroom.  In fact, I sit here writing this blog because challenging my students to break down arguably the most difficult document they have seen thus far culminated in one of the most demanding yet rewarding lessons of the school year.

As my world history classes focus on the rise and fall of governments during the time period after World War I, we turned our attention to the Middle East.  What happened to the region after the Ottoman Empire came crashing down?  What role did the League of Nations play? How might this impact the region today?  These are all questions I wanted my students to consider, however, I did not want to simply answer that for them.  Instead, I wanted to release this responsibility of learning to the students.

This took some careful planning and pre-reading strategies to make it all come together.  To start the lesson, students were teamed up and competed in a Quizlet Live that included eight “difficult” terms they might not know or might not have ever seen yet would encounter during the course of the period.  Words like sovereignty, tutelage, and mandate are no walk in the park for any sophomore.  However, allowing students to work together to gain some familiarity with the terms shifted the conversation from “I have no idea what these mean” to eventually building some confidence in what used to be unknown or unrecognizable.  

After creating a historical context for the lesson, the students worked to decipher the potential meaning of the political cartoon seen below.

The claims produced by the students echoed the criticisms of the League of Nations’ decisions and ultimately set the stage for the Big Kahuna of this entire lesson...analyzing and understanding the language of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations.  

For anyone, this would appear a daunting task but the students got after it!!  After modeling some word substitution thanks to the help of the Quizlet, the students worked with their partners to take each sentence and put it in words they could understand.  Not only did they strive to complete this challenge but I found them more engaged in the process and seeking my feedback to confirm their understanding of the text.  

I even laughed a bit as students, who regularly do not want to do work, busted it to prove to me that they were “Ivy League” material….only to conclude class by announcing their future attendance at Stanford University. :)

All jokes aside, it was rewarding to see the students grapple with their understanding of a document that was arguably “out of their reach.”  I am confident that they can make an argument as to why the mandates were created in the Middle East by the League of Nations and I look forward to the next step of the process where they connect these concepts to the rise of independence movements in the region.

Argumentation Skills Using Current Events & Gatsby

By Kim Miklusak

This year I have decided to flip the order of how we access The Great Gatsby.  In the past we have read texts that center around the idea of whether The American Dream is accessible to all people at all time and have used supporting text as analysis and comparison.  This year I have decided to start with prior knowledge of The American Dream and wait until the end of the unit to analyze whether it exists today and for all people, using this information to analyze Gatsby rather than applying it to Gatsby as we go.  To begin the unit, students brainstormed and wrote a 1-page response that I hung up on the walls for them to read now and return to later.

Then for 3 weeks (3 days each week) students will work in groups of 3-4 to analyze an article about a given "right."  Some of the rights are more "traditional" such as the right to arms, freedom of religion, freedom of speech.  Other topics are less traditional like the right to select your own gender label, the right to clean drinking water, and the right to quality literacy education.  Each group pulls a random envelope with an article--all recent, all from various political leanings and sources.  The students read and annotate and look up any other information they may need.  They then state the author's argument and analyze the limitations, applications, and implications using sentence starters and guiding questions.


Finally, students randomly drew defend/challenge as their stance.  Their task was to respond to the argument and provide convincing evidence and analysis as support in a 1-page written argument.  I was pleasantly surprised at how engaged students were in these discussions: some partners separated their groups to work in secret before sharing their work with "the other side."  Some groups worked together with "the other side" to talk about complexities as they worked.  At times students argued stances other than their own beliefs to respectfully challenge their peers verbally and in writing.  We pushed each other to look at other implications such as states' rights, identity, laws, etc. They also discussed the best ways to frame the argument and how to be most convincing in a short amount of space and time.

We will be broadcasting this lesson via Periscope on Tuesday, February 7th.  Check out our @EGCollabLab Twitter account if you're interested in tuning in.  I will write more about the assessment for the unit and reflections later!

Get Students Writing! Modeling, Peer Collaboration, Argument Towers and More!

By Linda Ashida

Your students need to synthesize information from varied sources--complex texts even--to defend a claim or hypothesis, make an argument, debate an issue, persuade or present a point of view.

How do you get there?

That is just the question that many teachers have been examining recently recently in the Collab Lab.

Some recently scaffold Persicoped lessons from English and Social Science classrooms gave us some ideas.

Then Google Hangouts conversations with some of our D214 colleagues gave us even more ideas! Becky Kinnee and Carrie Mattingly shared a valuable resource that included an "Argument Tower" strategy to scaffold the writing process and to help students "get it" as they synthesize information from multiple texts.
 

You can check out the resource here: Building an Argument Tower (From the AP World History Blog by Jonathan Henderson).

Let's see how Mark Heintz incorporated the strategy in his AP World History class in a series of week-long scaffolded steps to help his students prepare to write a document-based essay.  

Key Steps:

1) Present the Guiding Question:
How did people legitimize their rule between 1450 and 1750?

2) Activate Background Knowledge:  
Mingler Activity: Using key ideas from the upcoming documents, Mark created a "Find someone who . . . "  activity that got students up and moving, connecting with peers, and using vocabulary and important words/concepts that they would encounter in the readings. 

3) Model:  Document #1

Mark started with the first document with a think aloud and questioning with the whole class to help students interpret the key information and isolate evidence that supports the guiding question, or claim. Students annotated their own document on their iPads while one student modeled the notetaking by mirroring her iPad on Apple TV.

Check out this video to see the process in action:

4) Paired Collaboration: Document #2
Following Mark's model with the first document, students worked through the second document with a partner. They helped each other interpret the document, write key evidence (in support of the guiding question) on the whiteboard tables, and make connections to the evidence from the first document.

5) Peer Review, Self-assessment and revision: Documents #2
After writing their own responses, the pairs rotated to another table to give feedback to their peers.  Students were guided to give meaningful feedback based on the DBQ criteria. Then they rotated back to their own tables to review the feedback and make revisions.

6) Repeat steps 4 and 5 with Document #3

7) Argument Towers: Synthesize evidence from Documents #2 & #3
Following the steps in the Argument Tower resource, Mark guided the students to use colored index cards write to write and categorize their thesis, evidence and reasoning to organize their thoughts to write the introductory paragraph for their essay.

This kind of scaffolding takes time, and Mark is continually reflecting and asking students for feedback on the process.  He finds that in this student-centered approach, students are more engaged (he can hear it, and see it, as they work with their partners), and they demonstrate deeper understanding on both the content and the writing process as compared to a teacher-centered approach.

In the student-centered process, students see more models, get ongoing feedback from teachers as well as peers, and they have multiple opportunities for revision.  Students gain deeper understanding and confidence in the writing process, which better prepares them for second semester writing when the scaffolding will be gradually removed and students will write on their own.