History in Our Everyday Lives

CONTENTS OF CURRICULUM UNIT 15.03.07

  1. Unit Guide
  1. Introduction
  2. Rationale
  3. The Bones of the Unit: Enduring Understandings, Essential Questions, Objectives, and Assessments
  4. Public History: An Overview
  5. Historical Context: The Development of Landscaped Urban Parks
  6. Aural Storytelling and Podcasts
  7. Teaching Strategies
  8. Key Activities
  9. Common Core Standards
  10. Bibliography
  11. Notes

Telling Stories: Place, Space, and Memory in Chicago's Parks

Elizabeth M. Miller

Published September 2015

Tools for this Unit:

Teaching Strategies

I believe in setting up democratic classroom spaces that focus more on teacher-facilitated, student-centered learning. I like to allow students to learn through inquiry and discovery rather than through didactic instruction. As an instructor, I am seeking a “dialogic” experience; that is, I am in search of one where my students and I share authority with one another and with the community as we write the histories in question. This approach is in the spirit of public history and public history practitioners such as Michael H. Frisch and Linda Shopes. That said, I think there are some core strategies that can lead students to that place of readiness to take the intellectual risks necessary for inquiry-based learning, specifically close reading, visual thinking, and seminar-style discussion. Ideally, in this unit, all three strategies would be used more than once (on a weekly basis if possible) to allow students several at-bats think deeply and critically about the history that surrounds them.

Close Reading

Having students do multiple readings of texts that are appropriately challenging is at the heart of what I do as an English teacher. There is one strategy I use for close reading that tends to be successful with challenging texts like the ones I will want my students to grapple with before they can tell the stories of their parks-- texts like Burnham’s Plan of Chicago.

First, the teacher must select a text or an excerpt of text that is manageable in length (no more than one printed page). After that, students read through the document in question once independently, and they note any words or phrases that are confusing or unknown. Thereafter, the teacher reads the text aloud, and students call “stop!” when they want to collectively define a particular word or phrase. With challenging documents, this can be a laborious process, something teachers should consider before selecting textual excerpts. This process repeats until all words are defined.

Then, students answer questions pre-planned by the teacher as a model for thinking deeper about the text. The questions should run the gamut of Bloom’s Taxonomy, and can help teachers assess in the moment the extent to which students comprehend and are able to apply what they read. The teacher-facilitator should make sure that students refer to the text when they answer and, if possible, should use visual representations that mirror the places in the texts students are discussing. One way to achieve that is for instructors to make use of document cameras and LCD projectors when possible.

Next, students ask their own questions of the text and take a stab at interpretation. If they have closely read the text, then they have the evidence to answer the next two questions: “What does it mean?” and “Why does it matter?” This can be done whole-class or in small groups. I like introducing this strategy to students at the beginning of the year and then allowing students to rotate into the “teacher” role as a way of ensuring a classroom space focused on collective rather than singular authority.

Visual Thinking

Strategies for close reading of printed texts lend themselves nicely to other mediums. And, as the reader will likely notice, there are similarities between the close reading strategy discussed above and the visual thinking strategy I am about to describe. This strategy can be used with paintings, photographs, or any non-print text, and can even be used to examine the park spaces as texts, provided educators instruct students to focus themselves around a particular place or space. There are three key questions to keep in mind with visual thinking: 1) What’s going on in _______? What do you see, and how would you describe it? 2) What makes you say that? What evidence do you see that made you reach that conclusion? 3) What more can we find? In other words-- what else is there? The process becomes cyclical, as the “what more” question can bring students the discussion to the beginning.

Just as with the close reading strategy, the teacher facilitating this close visual analysis of a non-print text should encourage the use of evidence. The teacher should point or make use of technology to highlight particular areas being discussed. Furthermore, the teacher should paraphrase using the stem “What I hear you saying is…” as a means of reinforcing and eliciting more information from the students if possible. As facilitators, teachers should make the discussion a communal one rather than a two-way one. So, if students aren’t already doing so, teachers need to connect students’ ideas and model stems such as “I heard _____ say ____, and ______ agreed,” and “__________ said ___________, but ____________ said _____________. Can we hear a third viewpoint on the matter?” Again, this is an activity that students can easily facilitate with some modeling.

At the suggestion of my Seminar Leader, I intend to explore using these same visual thinking strategies applied to aural texts. Both are, after all, nonprint texts. And, it could be interesting to analyze a podcast or other method of oral storytelling using the same methods of inquiry used to analyze photographs and maps. I will ask students: 1) What’s going on in ________? What do you hear and how would you describe it? 2) What makes you say that? What evidence do you hear that made you reach that conclusion? 3) What more do we hear?

Seminar-Style Discussion

As I wrote in my 2013 National Curriculum Unit, “Interpreting the Urban Landscape,” seminar-style discussion according to the methods described in The Paideia Classroom. Since then, I have evolved in my use of classroom discussions to adopt elements of the Harkness Table model used at Phillips Exeter Academy.28 The discussion is successful because it is democratic in nature and in physical set-up. The structure encourages students to question, discover, and make meaning by collaborating with others.

A Harkness Table set up is one that, if at all possible, should be done in groups no larger than 12-15 students. I often split the class in half if I am in a co-taught classroom; my co-teacher will take one group and I will take the other. However, I have also done an inner circle/outer circle model to describe to students how it works, and then I appoint student leaders to facilitate and move between groups to monitor discussion progress. The important thing is that students, physically, are facing one another in an egalitarian shape-- a circle or oval. This can happen with tables or desks; but, it is necessary that each participant can see all others to engage in conversation.

The other set-up prior to discussion is allowing students to engage with key ideas or texts. In a traditional (non-block) classroom, this can happen by introducing a question on day one and discussing on day two. In a block-schedule school, it is possible to read or brainstorm via writing and then discuss all in one class period. If, for example, students are discussing one of this unit’s essential questions, “What makes a place?” they will have thought deeply about the question and possibly written about or researched ideas on place-making through teacher-curated and provided materials or on their own (as might be possible with more advanced students). In addition to preparing students with the seminar topic, they also need to be familiar with ground rules for democratic discussion-- rules the class can create together or adapt from an existing source.

On the day of discussion, the teacher should take a less active role. The students will discuss the essential question and indicated materials with little intervention. And, until the students attempt this kind of discussion more than once, there may be some uncomfortable silence. That’s okay; it usually takes my students more than two or three times to get used to the flow of discussions. As a teacher, I observe, and I track student participation on a model of the Harkness Table set up which resembles an annotated seating chart, complete with lines to chart directions of conversation. After the discussion is finished, I have students reflect on what and how they learned from the discussion. The what part is about the content or the discussion strategy. And, the how part is where students have an opportunity to reflect on their own contributions--positive, negative, or neutral.

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