Learning Activities and Strategies
Part One: Present
I will be using multiple articles, videos, blogs, etc. about present-day Englewood. Students will choose one issue they believe is the biggest issue facing the community and write a speech bringing attention to the issue and calling for action to solve it. As a guide for this part, I will use the Mikva Challenge "Project Soapbox" curricular resources. 20 The purpose of this is to help students become familiar with the current issues facing the neighborhood to build interest and relevance in exploring its past.
Cognitive mapping exercises 21
Students will begin by describing their dream home. Identifying what it looks like, what is in it, etc. Throughout I will push them to respond to questions about objects and aesthetic. From the description of the home, we will move to a description of the neighborhood where their dream home is located. Again, through their description, students will identify how the neighborhood is organized, who lives there, what kind of atmosphere is present in the neighborhood, etc. Finally, students will examine the schools that exist in their made up neighborhood. What are the schools like? Who attends the schools? What is their relationship, if any, to the community?
From these descriptions, students will create a map of their "dream neighborhood" complete with houses, stores and other services, transportation, schools, etc. This image will serve as the foundation for our examination of the personal and institutional choices that went into story of Englewood.
Measuring Preconception (butcher block PreMidPost hung in classroom)
This activity will enable me to understand the preconceptions that students have about the neighborhood. Following the KWL format and using massive butcher block paper, students will begin to name their perceptions about Englewood and their understandings of how it became the neighborhood they believe it to be.
Part Two: Past
Each lesson in this section of the unit will begin with an inquiry warm-up, followed by an interactive mini-lecture and ending with a mapping exercise to apply some of the lesson to the present issues already discussed.
Inquiry Challenges
These challenges are meant to gain students' interest as they walk into class but also to connect directly to the topic for the day's lesson. I usually vary the challenges using images, maps, graphs, text, music, etc. that provoke conversation and interpretation. These sources serves as the anchor document for each lesson and are aimed at getting students to generate questions that will be answered through the day's lesson.
Interactive Mini-Lecture
The name of this activity is very purposeful. I believe that content delivery is often most efficient using lecture but that the lecture must include students through questions and challenges and must be kept to twenty minutes or less. The lecture builds directly from the inquiry challenge and provides a segue to the map exercise to follow.
Map Exercises
Each of these exercises incorporates old school paper mapping (print outs from the city planning website) and sites such as Google maps, yelp.com, and our state's school report card website. Students will divide into teams using a common system of labeling and take sections of the neighborhood to map. We will put the maps together on the wall to
Part Three: Present
Researching Solutions and Creating the Final Product
Multiple resources listed in the appendix are useful in approaching this type of project. I have found Twitter a particularly useful place to start by getting students connected with geographers, urban planners, and neighborhood activists within and beyond our city who can serve as a resource for ideas about how to support the work that is already being done in the neighborhood.
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