Connecting with the 5Es

I found a number of new terms this week. When I think of engagement in a lesson, I think of it as an ongoing student interaction with the lesson. Students are engaged when they are excitedly working on the topic, not doodling along the side of the paper. The BCSC 5E Instructional model gives a different definition for engagement. What the BSCS calls engagement, I would call activating. On one thing we agree, student need to call to mind what they already know or connect with past learning to make the present learning relevant.

The BSCS model follows this directly with Exploration. I see how this works in science, but I don’t know that it always works in other inquiry. I have found that if I set the kids off finding information without some background instruction that is teacher led in Social Studies that they get lost in a sea of information that they are not familiar with. For a topic like government, I do like to give them a small foundation before I set them out on their own.

Then once they have this foundation they can explore the topic. I have tried the reverse, but there is too much vocabulary that the students are unfamiliar with to trudge through the topic alone first. Social Studies doesn’t have labs the way that science does, but students can explore with reading and games. Students can also walk video topics of their choice to find out more about different content facts.

Next I do agree that it is time for students to elaborate. They need to get out the basic ideas and then see how they can expand on them. Can they connect them to current issues, or chart them out, or crate a skit that would explain it to someone else. All of these are great examples of how they can elaborate.

Evaluation naturally comes at the end. Not that formative assessments have not been on going through out the process, but there needs to be an end and a culminating something that highlights all that the students have learned and now understand through the work of the unit. Choice boards are one of my favorite evaluation methods with Social Studies simply because there are so many rabbit holes of information that students can be drawn into. This allows them to take a topic that they had more curiosities about and explore them, while proving what they know and understand. 

Resource

The BSCS 5E Instructional Model. (2006, June 12). Retrieved February 26, 2015, from http://bscs.org/sites/default/files/_legacy/BSCS_5E_Instructional_Model-Full_Report.pdf

How Deep Can We Dig?

What is a fact? If it is something that can be proven and it is a smaller part of a concept, it can be many things. How small is small? It almost seems like one of those questions you get stuck on when you are a kid. “If I throw a baseball and it goes half the distance in 1 second, and half that distance in the next ½ second, and ½ of the half in the next ½ of ½ a second, and it keeps going and you can keep breaking it down, how does the ball ever get there?” The ball gets there because it always goes the full distance; it is just the budding mathematician that got stuck in a never ending line of fractions. In the same way, we need to pick an end point and stick to it. We only have some much time as teachers to allow students to delve into a topic, in the same way the ball only has so much time before it gets to the batter.

In elementary school we have a wide breath of topics to explore. Hopefully we can find way to integrate the topics so that we can have students use skills in one area, like reading, while learning about another content area.  Because of this wide variety of standards and concepts we need to teach, students are not going to get down to all the nitty-gritty facts in a concept. They should, however, get to some of them. Those little facts that are solid are the foundation so that they can understand more abstract things.

Inquiry allows students to have some say in the facts that they learn. There isn’t time for them all, and different facts can help build up the same concept.  When students are given, or helped to form their own high quality questions that are investigable, they can take some control. For instance, when we look at why people came to the colonies, there are many reasons, many small facts that add up to why. They came for religious freedom. Religious freedom alone looked different for each group. Puritans wanted the freedom to be Puritans, but they were not interested in any other religions being free. Quakers, on the other hand, had more of a worship-as-you-please attitude. Others came for the chance at land, or a fresh start from the poor house.  Yet other came for the chance to be rich. That makes that question of why people were will to leave England for a new unsettled world a great one for students to look at in a deeper way.

Now that same concept of Europeans had motivation to move to North America could be broken down into smaller concepts. You could look at why they wanted to move to Massachusetts and be Puritan.  There are so many facts in just that concept. That could be looked at in a tighter lens still and we could look at, was a strict religious society a successful one? Or we could investigate who wanted to come live in Puritan Massachusetts?

As teachers we need to think about this breadth and depth as we prepare lessons and investigations. This will help us and our students on track. 

History Detectives

          The next unit that I need to plan is the last unit for social studies for the year. In it I will wrap up what we learned about the Revolutionary War through reading fiction and non-fiction so that I can teach about the formation of our government. While I am swimming in ideas, I am trying to find how I balance having students investigate history and make sure that they can answer the district provided essential questions. These questions are based on the standards, so they are kind of important.

          I had students looking at both the PA and US Constitutions last year, but the way the PA standards have changed doesn’t seem to focus as much on the PA Constitution.  This simplifies things for me. I only have so much time and the differences between the two are not easy to discern at 11 years old. They can, but it takes time that it better used elsewhere. I think that I will move to select pieces from the Constitution and other period pieces, along with textbook reading to give a broader base for the readings. They need these textbook readings to find questions that they want to answer. I have found that they have a lot of questions. 

https://app.discoveryeducation.com/player/view
/assetGuid/6a4d056a-f25d-4022-ab25-57243332fbd8

https://app.discoveryeducation.com/
player/view/assetGuid/6a4d056a-
f25d-4022-ab25-57243332fbd8

           The Discovery Techbook that I have access to through my program at Wilkes is great. The lesson on the Articles of Confederation alone is very hands on. The lesson on the formation of the Constitution also has wonderful primary documents and student organization tools to aid them in looking at these documents in a meaningful way. Some examples are pictured above. There is a document based inquiry that has the Constitution, time period cartoons, and formed inquiry output to share with the class. These inquiries would give students structured questions to answer, and allow them to form some questions on their own. The investigations are designed for students and provide them with both reading and viewing material and tools to organized their thoughts and interpret them.

Part of a Interview writing activity that would have student create their own questions for important people of the time.https://app.discoveryeducation.com/player/view/assetGuid/6a4d056a-f25d-4022-ab25-57243332fbd8 

           I think that where I would like to go next in my unit formation is to rewrite a choice board that I created for government based around multiple intelligences. I want to take the basic idea that I had about allowing students to choose an output to show their understanding and build deeper understandings through the activities. Students would take what they understand from the document based investigation and find a topic they still have questions about or are interested in learning more. They would be able to explain what they understand through more modes than just a written response.

          What I have found missing in these assignments is the student explanation that highlight the evidence and contain logical arguments. First, I think that I need to cut out some of the fluffy options and replace them with options that allow students to conduct their own investigation. The activities should allow them to then take what they learned and be able to teach from their examples. All of this ties together the Abilities Necessary to Do Inquiry. They would be developing descriptions, thinking critically, and communicating it to others.     

           I did use a Law Craft game last year that I think I will include this year as well. I wrote about it previously in my  November 2014 blog. It allows student to interact with the law making process in ways that I just cannot simulate half as well in the classroom.  Way to go Law Craft! The game is an inquiry game. The game give instructions on how the game play works, but students are able to have enough choices and options that it is as close to being in a hands on science lab as social studies gets. As long as this game is functioning, it has a place in my classroom.

          As I continue to read about inquiry, I can't say that my thoughts about what inquiry is have greatly changed. It would be fair to say that my definition has broadened to include activities that I just lumped into high level thinking. I still have some ways to go to craft student led inquiry. I want to be open to it, but I am just not ready to let go and feel that they will learn what I want them to learn. I feel that their choices are important, so I need to find a place where I can feel comfortable with it. 

References

Discovery Education. (2015, January 1). Retrieved February 6, 2015, from https://app.discoveryeducation.com/techbook2:concept/view/guidConceptId/6DAA9EEC-EECB-4396-BB43-7F9DD72FD5CE/guidUnitId/CDEAA01B-19A2-4490-90ED-9B964AC11F63#/tab=model-lesson-tab

GAMEUP | Law Craft. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2014, from https://www.brainpop.com/games/lawcraft/