Sunday, April 29, 2012

Blogging and Its Connection to "Writing to Learn"

Best practice instruction includes giving students the opportunity to reflect on their learning, clarify thinking, or make connections among different ideas through writing.  This is the process of writing to learn.  It may happen through students reflecting on essential questions, connecting discrete details of learning to their more significant concepts, or even just in considering what makes sense and what is confusing within the skills, processes and content of social studies.  Writing to learn elevates metacognition, the process of thinking about your own thinking.  As more teachers begin to use 21st century tools, blogging is something that students can do.  In terms of assigning relevant, worthwhile homework, student-created blogs seem to make sense.  And, if student blogs are connected to each other, blogs create opportunities for teachers to support students in their practice of 21st century skills such as collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity/innovation.  This video explains, perfectly, why blogging is so powerful for teachers and students as they mediate thinking.  One place to establish classroom blogs is Edublogs.org.  For additional thinking, see this post from ASCD Edge.

The Five C's: Learning to Think Like a Historian

Over the course of four summers, I had the chance to participate and administer a Teaching American History grant for Jeffco schools.  One thing that struck me is how we have, for ages, asked kids to remember history rather than employ flexible structures for thinking about history.  Basically, how to think like a historian?  Thomas Andrews and Flannery Burke have outlined the concepts that are connected to thinking historically.  Their essay, What Does It Mean to Think Historically?, examines these five concepts so teachers can begin to apply these concepts within classroom conversation and student work.
1. Change Over Time
2. Context
3. Causality
4. Contingency
5. Complexity

George Washington's French and Indian War

In the intermediate grades, students work with perspective as a foundational thought process.  This causes a teacher to be well-versed in the events of a period.  This essay, George Washington's French and Indian War by Theodore J. Crackel, appears on the Gilder Lehrman website and examines one perspective in great detail. 

Is it okay to adapt primary sources for different learners? How?

As students progress through grade levels, standards consistently ask students to analyze primary sources to understand the past.  Unfortunately, the content assigned to 5th grade is typically early American history, and the content assigned to 6th grade is typically early cultures of the Western Hemisphere up through nations and cultures within the present.  Teachers frequently find themselves wondering, "How do I support students in their use of primary sources when they are either too complex or they contain difficult language that reflects eras in the past?"  This leads teachers to wonder if it is appropriate to modify a primary source so that its content is accessible for the learners engaging in the content. While our intent is to stay true to history, it IS acceptable to adapt a primary source while maintaining the historic message and perspective communicated within the source.  For a deeper explanation, take a look at this post from teachinghistory.org titled Adapting Documents for the Classroom: Equity and Access

Go ahead...adapt a primary source...make historical thinking happen!

Added May 28, 2013 (Article: DESCRIBE - A Strategy for Making Text-Based Primary Sources More Accessible, from the Library of Congress)