ST.

THOMAS UNIVERSITY

Professional Reflective Journal

Methods in Middle/Secondary Social Studies
Kate MacLeod

2012

Table of Contents
1. Structure and Methods 2. Strategies and Techniques 3. Reflections 4. More strategies and techniques

Structure and Methods

1. Round Table
Purpose: Every student in the group has an opportunity to contribute their own ideas. This is a good method for team building activities or brainstorming. Steps: 1. Divide students into groups 2. Have students pass around a sheet of paper and write one piece of information that they know about the given topic. The time spent at each student should be under 30 seconds. 3. The sheet may be circulated a few times to give each student multiple opportunities to contribute.

 Example of class activity: Uncommon Commonalities Ways to use this in Social Studies: Use it as a structure for a warm-up strategy at the beginning of a unit to gather information about how much students know about the topic. For example, the teacher could ask students to write down something that they know about the Holocaust in order to determine the students level of background knowledge. References: http://www.utc.edu/Administration/WalkerTeachingResourceCenter/FacultyDevelopment/Coope rativeLearning/index.html#roundtable
Keys to Teaching Success http://keystoteachingsuccess.blogspot.ca/2009/02/roundtable-and-roundrobin-both.html

2. Jigsaw
Purpose: The task is divided up into parts and each student (for a within-team jigsaw) completes a different part, representing the different pieces of a puzzle, which are eventually put together to create a final product. The Jigsaw helps students engage with the material and develop better communication skills by having to teach their classmates. Steps: 1. Divide class into groups 2. Assign different parts of the task to each student. If the overall task was to research the American Revolution, one student might be responsible for researching important dates; another student might be responsible for researching key political figures involved, another student might look up The Declaration of Independence etc. 3. At a later date, the students will gather again and report their findings to each other. 4. Once all the information is gathered, the teacher may have the students present the information in the form of a project. References: The Jigsaw Classroom http://www.jigsaw.org/overview.htm

3. Numbered Heads
Purpose: To put students into different groups in order to do an activity or answer a question once in their new groups. Steps: 1. Decide how many students you want to have in each group 2. Give each student a number or have them number-off themselves 3. Make sure everyone with the same number is in the same group 4. They are now ready to complete a strategy or technique
Reference: http://www.lauracandler.com/strategies/structures.php

4. Think, Pair, Share

Purpose: To give students longer time to think about a topic before having to engage in class discussion. Steps: 1. Decide how to divide class into pairs 2. Announce a topic or question for students to think on 3. Pair students off 4. Discuss in pairs 5. Have pairs report back to group
Reference: http://www.eworkshop.on.ca/edu/pdf/Mod36_coop_think-pair-share.pdf

5. Popsicle Sticks
Purpose: To divide students into groups using coloured Popsicle sticks. Steps: 1. Determine the number of people that you would like to have in each group and the number of groups that you will have. Make sure that you have one color to represent each group, and that the number of Popsicle sticks for each color corresponds to the number of people in each group. 2. Walk around the classroom with the Popsicle sticks in a bag and have students reach in and pick one without looking. 3. Once all of the students have picked a Popsicle sticks, tell everyone to form a the other students who share the same colour of Popsicle stick. group with all

Strategies and Techniques

1. Line-up (Continuum Line-Up)

Purpose: To have students engage with a question and respond to it in a physical and intellectual manner by moving to whatever point on the continuum represents their answer.

 Steps: 1. State and explain the topic 2. Mark off the continuum (i.e. the far left of the line could be strongly agree, while the far right could be strongly disagree) 3. Explain to students that you will ask them a question and then they will respond physically by walking to the appropriate point on the continuum. Example from Technology class: students were asked to rate how comfortable they felt with different programs, Web 2.0 tools, etc. Reference: http://www.ascd.org/publications/books/104014/chapters/Human-Continuum.aspx

2. Icebreakers
Purpose: To help students get to know each other. Example: Two Truths and a lie Steps: Students take turns sharing three facts about themselves, two of which are true and one of which is false. The class has to guess which fact is false. Reference: http://wilderdom.com/games/Icebreakers.html

3. Team-Building
Purpose: To help students get to know each other so that they have a better understanding of how to work together Example: Uncommon Commonalities Steps of Uncommon Commonalities: 1. Divide into groups 2. Pass out sheets with a text box on them

2. Have each student in the circle share something unique or uncommon about them. 3. If that fact is true for the other members of the group as well, then the fact is written inside the box. If not, then it is written outside the text box. Reference: http://www.saskschools.ca/curr_content/bestpractice/coop/examples2.html

4. Sponge
Purpose: An activity used for groups or individuals who happen to finish their work earlier than other students. Example: A longer exit slip could be filled out by the students who finished earlier. This gives them a chance to reflect and comment on what they learned for the day. References: http://www.readwritethink.org/professional-development/strategy-guides/exit-slips-30760.html

5. T-Chart
Purpose: Can be used when learning and taking notes about something that is more detailed or in depth. Included below are a few possible ways to label each half of the chart: Fact / Opinion True / False Objective / Subjective1 Steps: 1. Give students the topic and label each side. 2. Have students write down notes in each side as the lesson progresses. Reference: http://teaching-strategies.wikispaces.com/T-Charts

http://teaching-strategies.wikispaces.com/T-Charts

6. Brainstorming
Purpose: To collect and gather ideas before starting a project or assignment, etc. Example: Graphic organizers such as a cluster web can be used Reference: http://www.educationoasis.com/curriculum/graphic_organizers.htm

7. K-W-L chart
Purpose: The K-W-L chart is used to introduce students to a new topic or unit, and is often used

at the beginning of the class as a warm-up. It is also a good way to encourage students to participate because it requires minimal, if any, background knowledge on their part.
Example: In the lesson plan that Sarah Bagnell and I created on The African American Struggle for Equal Education, we used a picture of a young African American student who was attending school at the time in the Civil Rights movement when integration become possible in schools. The message of this picture is fairly clear, but the activity also works well with visuals (such as artwork) in which the meaning is less obvious.

Steps: 1. Hand the K-W-L chart out to students 2. Display the projected image on the screen 3. Have students fill out the K section (what do they know about the picture). This cannot include any assumptions, only facts about what is in the picture. 4. Have the students fill out the W section (what they want to learn about the picture). These are questions that the students have about the picture, and these questions often arise based on the observations that students make in the K section. 5. Give a brief explanation of the picture and the topic that it represents. You may also answer the questions that the students raised. 6. Have the students fill in the L section (what they learned). 7. At the end of the unit, you may want to get students to return to the K-W-L chart that they filled out to compare how much they learned since initially filling it out.

8. Discrepant Event
Purpose: To introduce a new topic and to help students develop problem-solving skills and higher order thinking by solving a puzzle. Steps: 1. As the teacher, create a puzzle or story for students, but leave out a few key pieces of information to make it somewhat mysterious to the students. 2. Read the story to the class or present the puzzle to them. 3. Students have an opportunity to question the teacher. The questions are used to gather information, and need to be phrased as questions with a yes or no answer. 4. Give students the opportunity to collaborate and process the information and possible answers together, perhaps in smaller groups or pairs. 5. Once students are ready, allow them to take turns sharing their answer as well as an explanation for how they arrived at that answer.

Strategies/Techniques from NCSS articles

Strategy #1: Current Events and Video Analysis Graphic Organizer
Reference: Garrett, H. James, and Mardi Schemeichel. "Using the Daily Show to Promote Media Literacy." Social Education. 76. no. 4 (2012): 211-215. Description: This graphic organizer is laid out as a square with four different sections. Each section has a direction on what the student is supposed to write in the space provided. The first section requires students to list the subtopics from within the segment. The second section is for the different types of news that the clip might feature. The third section is for social studies content, in which the student would make connections between the news clip and what they are learning in the classroom. The fourth and final section of the graph is titled Object of Ridicule/Type of Joke and is to be used for shows or videos that have a comedic element (e.g. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart).

Purpose: To help students organize their thoughts while watching a media critique. The example that is used in this article is The Daily Show. Application: The graphic organizer is filled out by students while they watch a video clip from the news. It helps students organize their thoughts while watching the clip and it also helps them prepare for a follow-up discussion. Procedures: 1. Before watching the video and handing out the graphic organizer, the teacher may take a poll to find out how many students have seen the type of clip before and how much they know about it. Example: In this case, the clip was from The Daily Show, so the poll functions as a way to help the teacher determine how familiar students are with the show. Authors of the above article, Garrett and Schemeichel, discovered that although students had often seen the show before, many of them were unaware of the shows relevance for a social studies class. After conducting a poll to assess how familiar students are with the type of news clip, the teacher hands out the graphic organizer for students to fill out while watching the video. 2. The teacher starts the video clip. Since this activity often involves critical thinking and evaluate the various media messages that the clip is sending, it will likely be necessary for the teacher to play the clip more than once. 3. After the students finish filling out the graphic organizers, the teacher begins a discussion in response to the clip. Example: If using video clips from The Daily Show or a similar show that features political satire as a model for media critique, the teacher may use the following topics for discussion: Content knowledge: what background knowledge do students need in order to understand the humour and criticism Easy laughs: humour that involves the use of things such as sarcasm, sexual innuendo, profanity to make fun of a particular topic. Easy laughs do not require a lot of background knowledge on the topic at hand. Hard laughs: this type of humour requires more background knowledge on the subject matter and a proficient level of media literacy. Garrett describes these laughs in the following way: These laughs are hard, we think, due to the degree to which a sophisticated set of media literacy strategies is required of the viewer to get the joke (Garrett & Schemeichel, 2012). Not only are students required to have some knowledge current events and politics, but they need to be aware of the way in which news sources present information.

Strategy #2: Teaching Documents: Drawing Connections Activity

Reference: Potter, Lee Ann. "Teaching Documents: OurDocuments.gov." Social Education. 66. no. 7 (2012): 390-399. Description: This strategy requires the student to use one primary government document to connect two other seemingly unrelated documents. Purpose: To use primary documents to help students recognize cause and effect relationships between different historical events. The different strategies that fall under the Teaching Documents section of Social Education are also a response to the Our Documents initiative launched by George W. Bush in 2002, and are intended to help familiarize students with key documents from the National Archives such as public laws, Supreme Court decisions, speeches, treaties and other documents. Application: The Drawing Connections Activity is used as a way to integrate primary documents into the classroom.

Procedures: 1. To prepare, teachers should visit the website www.ourdocuments.gov, look at the images of the documents and find transcriptions and explanations. 2. The teacher provides his or her students with two documents that appear to be unrelated. The teacher then asks the students to connect the two documents using other documents. The best structure/method for this strategy would likely be Think Pair Share, so students could also be paired off at this time. Example: Lee Potter, author of Teaching Documents: OurDocuments.gov, gives an example of an answer on how the documents for the Lee Resolution and the Homestead Act are connected. One possible answer: The Lee Resolution and Homestead Act can be connected using the Declaration of Independence and the Louisiana Purchase. The Lee Resolution led to the formation of three committees, one of which drafted the Declaration of Independence. One of the authors, Thomas Jefferson was the president during the time of the Louisiana Purchase. Much of the land that joined the U.S. because of the Louisiana Purchase also opened up for settlement, which relates to the Homestead Act. 3. After students determine which document(s) they will use to connect their two documents and why, the class reconvenes and each individual, pair or group shares their findings.

Reflections
September 10th 2012

Journal Entry #1: Building a Caring Community

In the article Caring in Education2, Nel Noddings writes about the importance of developing caring relationships between teachers and students. I thought it was interesting that he also pointed out the difference between being a teacher who cares about doing their job well and someone who is genuinely interested in their students and tries to develop relationships of care and trust. In my personal experience (at work and school), I tend to be task or goal-oriented and I sometimes overlook the importance of building good relationships with others. This article provided a helpful reminder for why having healthy relationships is important in education. Noddings writes about how an effective caring relationship also requires the participation of the student. It is necessary for the student to give some sort of affirmative response, otherwise the relationship cannot be described as caring. Once this relationship is established however, it makes the learning process easier. Once teachers build caring relationships with their students and get to know them more, they will better understand how to engage them with the subject matter by connecting topics of study with the students interests. I was also intrigued by the connection that the author made between caring relationships and formal testing, and how education that is based on caring relationships should reduce the
2

Noddings, Nel. (2005). Caring in education. Infed. Retrieved from http://www.infed.org/biblio/noddings_caring_in_education.htm

need for testing. The reason for this is that a focus on testing demonstrates separation and a lack of trust between the teacher and student. My only question relates to how one should try to foster caring relationships with their students, without falling into the trap of trying to be their students friend or becoming too concerned with the students reaction and while becoming too much of a people-pleaser. I look forward to reading more on this topic in the future!

Journal Entry #2: Curriculum Focus Group

September 10th 2012

In the article The revised NCSS standards: Ideas for the classroom teacher,3 Syd Golston explains that the purpose of the updated NCSS standards are to help teachers figure out how to teach social studies content. The new standards provide guiding questions, strategies and Snapshots of Practice. Golston points out that the main changes in the revised standards feature an expansion of the learning expectations of the original standards. There are also four categories of guidance available to the classroom teacher, which include the following: Key Questions for Exploration, Knowledge, Processes and Products. The standards give helpful direction to the teacher on how they can teach social studies content in a way that is relevant and engaging. One of the most helpful points in this article was its emphasis on teaching social studies in a way that is not just limited to facts and memorization, but in a way that deals with concepts or issues. In my personal experience, this is when a subject area such as history comes alive when we move beyond memorization and start thinking critically about it, and begin to understand how it affects us today. The NCSS section Time, Continuity and Change is very

Golston, Syd. (2010). The revised NCSS standards: Ideas for the classroom teacher. Social Education, 74 (4), pp. 210-216.

useful in helping teachers teach subjects such as history in this way. One prompt requires students to explore different perspectives about historical issues. Another prompt encourages students to go further and consider how different perspectives from the past influence us today. It seems that the reason that these standards are so successful is because they focus on developing how students think rather than just focusing on what students think. It helps students develop an appreciation for subjects such as history because the students are considering why historical events happened and how they affect us today. In closing, this article provides one helpful example of how one can avoid just teaching to the test, providing helpful ideas of how to develop engaging units and lesson plans.

Journal Entry #3: Lesson Study

September 17th 2012

In her article Lesson Study: Teachers collaborating in lesson development,4 Janie Hubbard introduces a new type of professional development in which teachers function both as teachers and as researchers as they work together to produce lesson plans that they then test out and evaluate together. In this scenario, Hubbard is writing about four grade two teachers who chose to use a collaborative professional development strategy called Lesson Study. This approach can be extremely effective, but its success depends on the interest and commitment level of both teachers and the administration. Lesson study can involve a number of different teachers from one school or a number of teachers from multiple schools. Before designing a lesson together, the teachers decide on a target research theme that they would like to focus on. The process involves planning a lesson, teaching the lesson, observing how well it worked, and then critiquing it. Teachers teach the
4

Hubbard, Janie. (2007). Lesson study: Teachers collaborating in lesson development. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 19 (4), pp. 25-29.

lesson themselves and then they also observe other teachers in their classrooms, reflecting on the effectiveness of the lesson based on the learning that took place in response. Lesson Study is a unique professional development strategy because it focuses primarily and student learning, rather than mainly focusing on the teachers behaviour. This was one of the most inspiring and helpful articles that I have read yet this term. It provided a good balance between explaining the philosophy behind the Lesson Study approach and also demonstrating the practical steps of how to actually carry it out in ones workplace. It also supports the idea of lifelong learning, in which teachers continually learn how to become more effective educators. The Lesson Study approach ties in well to the way that the St. Thomas B.Ed. program is structured (with its emphasis on group work and collaboration), and seems to be a good illustration of how a professional learning community should operate. Although my initial tendency in the past has been to work alone, I am learning that teaching is a demanding profession and it is important to have a support network to rely on.

References for images:

Young boys looking at book http://office.microsoft.com/enca/images/academicCM079001901.aspx#ai:MP900439493| Writing on chalkboard http://office.microsoft.com/enca/images/academicCM079001901.aspx#ai:MP900439481| Figure cut-outs on globe http://office.microsoft.com/enca/images/academicCM079001901.aspx#ai:MP900433193|

Cooperative Learning
List of Methods and Strategies:
Methods/Structures: -Round table -Within-team Jigsaw -Numbered heads -Think-Pair-Share Popsicle sticks -Teacher Learner (Expert Learner) Strategies/Techniques: -Line-up; continuum -Ice-breakers -Uncommon Commonalities -Sponge -T-Chart graphic Organizer -Brainstorming (i.e. cluster web) -Discrepant Event -Interactive Slide Show -Social Studies Skill Board (matching) -Using Music Analysis to teach a subject -Writing across curriculum -Timeline companion -Writing prompts -Documentaries -Partner poems (perspective -Role-playing living history -Response groups -Take a stand