Teaching Strategies
Guiding Questions
A daily Guiding Question is the touchstone for each lesson. The guiding question should be open-ended and shared with students at the beginning of the class. By the end of the class, students should have multiple answers to the question. You may have students answer this question at the end of the lesson as a formative assessment.
Freedom School Relaxation Strategies
Each day during this unit should incorporate one of the “relaxation activities” that were used in the Freedom Schools to build verbal skills. There are multiple benefits to this. First, it is an easy way to have students directly experience some of the methods that were used in the Freedom School and can help give students a clearer understanding of what it may have been like to be enrolled in one. Participating in those activities will give students more material to draw upon when they are developing the mini-lesson for their final project. Additionally, the activities were designed to help students build skills that were determined to be necessary for political participation such as reading/writing, observation, and oral communication. Finally, the activities are simply fun. They are called “relaxation activities” for a reason and using them serve the same purpose today as they did in the original Freedom Schools: they help build student-to-student and teacher-to-student relationships and create a more open classroom environment.
Graphic Organizers
Since this unit is content-heavy, graphic organizers should be used to help students process their learning and keep track of information. Students will keep a unit journal that houses all this information so they can reference when creating their mini-lessons. The KWL and Triple-T charts will be particularly helpful.
KWL
KWL stands for Know, Want to Know, and Learned. The goal is for students to identify prior knowledge and generate some questions about the topic before they are presented with any new information. In addition to being a good way to slowly introduce a new topic, the KWL chart empowers students by demonstrating the value of their own knowledge and experience rather than treating them as empty vessels to receive information.
Completing the Learned section helps review and reinforce main takeaways from the unit. It is important to give students this space to reframe information in their own words as this acts as a low-stakes opportunity to check for understanding. This final section of the KWL chart can be updated throughout the unit or at the end of it based on teacher preference.
Triple-T Chart
The Triple-T Chart is a three-column chart that is used to compare two subjects. The first and last columns are labeled with the two subjects, and the middle column should list specific concepts to be compared. Because the chart is organized both horizontally and vertically, it acts like an analog spreadsheet that students can easily refer to throughout the unit.
Primary Source Analysis
In the study of history, it is always important to use primary source material as often as possible. In studying recent history, it is especially important to lean on the experiences of the people who lived through it to avoid conflating the past with the perspectives of the present. Primary source material can be written (e.g. books, poems, newspaper or magazine articles, diary entries), visual (e.g. film or video clips, art pieces, textiles and clothing), audio (e.g. songs, oral histories, speeches), or anything else that can be found from the time. The faces and voices of real people from the past bring history to life for students.
For analysis, it is critical that students understand the difference between objectivity and subjectivity. Both are useful in primary source analysis. I like to use the Primary Source Analysis Tool from the Library of Congress, which encourages students to observe, reflect, and question.44 In the observe section, students should practice objectivity by looking for facts from the source such as direct quotes in interviews or speeches or colors and materials in art or textiles. In the reflection section, students will incorporate their own opinions by explaining what the source made them think or feel. From there, students should formulate several questions about the source. The answers to those questions can then become the basis of their original analysis of the source.
CER Framework
The Claim-Evidence-Reasoning framework is used to help students improve the structure of their argumentative writing. The first step is for students to make a specific claim in response to the prompt. For our project, student claims should explain what issue they identified in their communities that necessitates a Freedom School lesson. For the evidence piece, students should reference the research that they have done to help them determine that there is truly a need for education around their topic. Evidence could include information from news articles, personal experiences, or historical research. Finally, students need to use reasoning to connect the evidence to their claim. The CER framework is helpful because it requires students to take a stance and explain their thinking rather than simply listing information.
CRAAP Test
CRAAP is an acronym used to help students evaluate the credibility of secondary sources. C is for currency: students should check the date of the source to ensure the information is current. R is for relevancy: students should make sure whatever source they are looking at is relevant to the topic they are researching. A is for authority: students should consider the trustworthiness of the author and publisher of the source. A is also for accuracy: students should cross-check the information in the source with other sources and against their own knowledge. P is for purpose: students need to identify the author’s purpose for creating the source and be aware of potential biases.
Think-Pair-Share
Give students time to think independently about a question, talk about their answers with a neighbor, then share out with the whole class. This strategy helps students build confidence in discussion and gives quieter students a way to participate without putting them on the spot. It is also a good opportunity for students to hear more perspectives that may influence their own thinking.
Free Write
A free write activity is designed to get students to process their thoughts on paper. Free writes should be completed within a specific time limit, and the only goal is to keep the pencil moving the whole time. Grammar does not matter in a free write. This activity can be used for grounding after a particularly tough assignment, or it can be used to generate ideas for further research.
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