The Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of the Civil Rights Movement

Strategies

The strategies employed for building background as well as interpreting and extending understanding in this unit include mind streaming, think-pair-share, cooperative learning, picture notes, discussion, oral presentation, intra-act, the Frayer model, analysis of primary sources, and two column Content/Process notes.

Mind streaming²⁸ is an easy way to activate prior knowledge or build background for students. Students work with a partner, each decides if they are partner A or partner B. The teacher provides a topic or idea about which the students will talk about and/or actively listen. Partner A will talk for one minute on the topic. He/she must keep talking for one minute, if they run out of ideas, then they can repeat what they have already said. Partner B in the meantime may not talk, but rather must encourage their partner with nonverbal clues. I usually do a "T"²⁹ chart before this activity to set the ground rules and my expectations for student behavior. Another helpful tip is to make mind streaming a component of Think-Pair-Share where students talk after they have written what they think they know. You know your students best, use your teacher judgment; sometimes writing helps, sometimes writing is too much. At the beginning of this unit, students will talk about everything they know (or think they know) about women's rights, the women's movement, and/or woman suffrage. Double check to make sure that all the students know who is "A" and who is "B" and who will be talking first. Say go, and time them for one minute. If students run out of things to say, they can and must repeat what they have already said. In other words, they must keep talking until you say stop talking. You can be the judge, if one minute is just too long for your students, adjust the time. When time is up, partner B talks and partner A encourages and listens. You know your students if one minute is too long, you can have partners talk for 30 seconds. Next, it is necessary for you, as the teacher, to debrief with the class. Ask what they know about the women's rights and write the information on the board, overhead transparency, or chart paper. It is important that you monitor what they think they know so that you can correct any misunderstanding and inaccurate information they have provided. Record what your students say, but introduce the concept of questioning here. If you or one of your students questions a piece of information, put a question mark next to the information in question. Say to students. "Questioning is what good readers do all the time." Tell students that when they read and study in this unit, they now have a purpose - to confirm or reject the accuracy of the information in question.

The Think-Pair-Share³⁰ strategy helps to eliminate risks for students so that they are more comfortable participating in classroom discussion. It is a quick and easy way to change the learners' state or put some movement into your classroom. This strategy can be as easy as saying, "think for 15 seconds (no talking to anyone) about what justice means to you. Jot down your ideas on paper or in your notebook, then when time is up, I will ask you to turn to the person next to you to share your ideas." It is essential to always debrief with the entire class by asking for their ideas, record them and again mark with a question mark any pieces of information a student or you belief to be inaccurate, as explained above with regard to mind streaming.

Cooperative learning³¹ generally positions students in small learning groups of about 4 or 5 students. All group members work toward the same objective of interacting with text to extract information and make sense of what they are reading. Research suggests that cooperative learning has an advantage over individualized learning by resulting in higher group and individual achievement. If structured and implemented well, cooperative learning motivates students to be more curious about and actively engage in learning. The tasks of the cooperative learning groups in this unit will be to create picture notes³² about the chapters of the book that they will read.

Pictures notes are a strategy designed to meet the needs of a kinesthetic and/or auditory learner. Students are to read a section of text and draw pictures to represent the main idea of what they have just read. Have students collaborate with one another in small groups (this strategy can be done individually, but they miss out on the instructional conversations with each other). It is through the dialogue about what they have just read as well as what and how they draw in order to accurately represent a concept or idea from their reading that is so valuable in terms of comprehension. Insist that pictures are large enough to be seen across the room and that the picture notes are colorful. These poster size pictures notes are used as visual aids when the group orally presents the important information to the entire class.

When students read informational text concerning events and behavior of some of the key figures during the women's movements, such as Stanton and Anthony, they will participate in an Intra-Act strategy.³³ Intra-Act is a group-oriented strategy that engages students before, during, and after they read text. The Intra-Act strategy has four phases: comprehension, relating, valuation, and reflection. This strategy is a structured way to allow students to talk about controversial issues and to learn how to understand and accept a different point of view from their own. (See appendices)

Graphic organizers have been shown to be effective. The graphic organizer used to develop vocabulary in this unit is the Frayer model. The purpose of the Frayer Model is to help students explore concepts in-depth. Students must think of essential and non-essential characteristics of the concept as well as examples and non-examples of the concept. When introducing the Frayer, be sure to model for students and provide a lot guided practice with your students where you all complete the Frayer together before you ask students to complete a Frayer on their own. (See appendices) You can select the vocabulary words and when to introduce them. Some suggestions of words and concepts to teach may include: movement, reform, universal suffrage, enfranchise, disfranchise, political status, feminism, racism, tyranny, despotism, justice, equality, and rhetorical.

The graphic organizer to help student process and synthesize information is the two column Content/Process note.³⁴ This easy to construct form provides a framework for students to track their thinking. On one side of the form they keep track of the content they are learning and on the other side of the form they write what they did to access that information. Then they code their thinking. For instance, if they make an inference, they can code it with an "I" or if they ask a question, they can code with a "?."

Writing is commitment on paper. Many times students think they understand something until they must write to explain it. The RAFT³⁵ (Role-Audience-Format-Topic) strategy scaffolds the writing process for students by providing a purpose and structure for their writing. Students are to assume a role, which requires that they place themselves in another's shoes. Next they are given a certain audience to whom they must write. As they write they must sustain their attention on this audience. The format provided, such as an editorial or eulogy, requires student to be critically thinking about their word choice and purpose for writing. Finally they must stay focused on the topic. Often students' writing will drift from what they really want to say causing their writing to lose coherence and organization. (See appendices)

A transfer task is a way to see if students understood the big ideas in your unit. This concept comes from the work of Grant Wiggins and Jay McTigue in Understanding by Design. Students must create or complete an original task that has not been covered in class. In this way the task is more that just a test on some material for which they have studied. It is more than that because students must apply their newly gained knowledge and create something original with the new knowledge. It truly assesses a deeper level of understanding on the part of the student.