Classroom Strategies
Interactive journals
Interactive journals offer multiple points of entry for students to navigate the content and make their own connections with the larger ideas of the unit. I was first introduced to interactive journals through the History Alive! curriculum and have been using them in some form ever since. The basic idea of interactive journals is to have students write notes on one side of a notebook and the other side is left for the student to genuinely interact with the information from the notes. For this side, students are given options for expressing their ideas. Students can write in prose or poetry, draw images, cut images out and make connections with the material, or come up with other ways to present their connections to what they are learning. (See appendix for larger explanation and example of interactive journals and journal prompts used for this unit)
Anticipation Guides
These guides will serve as an introduction to each of the three sections of the unit. Anticipation guides vary with purpose but for this unit they will be used to introduce ideas through aspects of culture. Such guides serve as jumping off points to help get students discussing the larger concepts by taking positions or identifying norms without the fear of being wrong.
Life Road Map 13
This pre-learning strategy asks students to take positions on issues or to answer questions of content to assess their prior knowledge. In this case the students will draw a time-line map of their life thus far including map-like items such as mountains, four-way stops, short cuts, etc that represent events in their life that were difficult or meaningful. The point of this exercise is to encourage students to think about their lives with a long lens and to mark the events that may have contributed to the development of their cultural lens. Baptism is one example of such an event. By choosing that path, many students may have adopted beliefs that shape the way they see the world. Instance of racism is another example that could contribute to the beliefs about a group of people.
Main Idea and Supporting Detail
As part of our freshman team, all teachers are working to help students better understand main idea and supporting details. We are working to create worksheets that help students break down the skills and practice seeing how a text works.
Schoology (on-line discussion forum)
Throughout the course students will use the on-line private forum of schoology for discussions and reflections. Schoology is essentially a Facebook for your classroom. A place where the teacher and students can post links, images, resources, etc to start or respond to a conversation.
Human Sculptures
I first learned this strategy in a class called "Improv for Teachers" offered at Second City Improv 1 4 in Chicago but it is also listed in the Facing History and Ourselves teaching strategies page (see bibliography). Essentially, the idea is to get students moving and thinking about how to physically represent an idea. For this unit, I will use the terms "masculine" and "feminine" as the characteristic to be represented. Prior to the activity, students will journal what they believe the terms "masculine" and "feminine" mean. Students will choose one person in the pair to be sculptor and another student to be the clay to be molded into the image of the characteristic. This not only gets students moving but it also creates a moment where many will let down their awareness of their cultural lenses for the sake of the "game."
Bringing the Image to Life
Project an image on the screen for students to examine. For this unit the image should contain four or more people that shows cultural lenses at work. One example from history is the famous image of the Little Rock Nine student, Elizabeth Eckford, walking to school alone and being followed by a jeering crowd (see appendix). Here students step in the shoes of the people in the image and provide their thoughts. This allows students to both explore their own interpretations of perspectives but, within these interpretations, lie our own beliefs and assumptions. This activity offers an opening for dialogue.
Media Literacy
This strategy will be used to evaluate female advertisements, another strategy from the Facing History and Ourselves website (see appendix for link). 15 The basic idea of this strategy is to use the "describe-identify-interpret-evaluate-reflect" process. For example, students will be given (or bring in) a magazine advertisement where they will describe in detail what is happening in the image. From there, they identify "basic information about the image" and generate questions that they would need to answer to help them better understand. Step three is to answer the question, "Given what you see and what you know about the image, what do you think it means?" followed by an evaluation of purpose and audience. Finally, the students reflect on the impact of this image.
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