Geographical Inquiry

Today, we thought about maps as texts that organize information spatially from a particular vantage point. Each part of this definition seemed important as we worked through what it is we might do with the maps we share with students: focus on the data and information that is presented, look at it in its spatial distribution, and think about the vantage point of the map projection.

In NatGeo Mapmaker, we got to play around with the spatial distribution of different variables. Of particular interest is when we could create a map that yielded information on the spatial relationships between two or more variables. This allows us to raise questions about geographic determinism (see this article by Jared Diamond). What does it mean if social violence or poverty is especially concentrated in the tropical areas of the world? Are there any geographic features that explain this? How do geographic features such as climate and landforms influence societies? How important are such geographic factors as we try to make things of why things are where and why they are?

In Worldmapper, we looked at cartograms as tools that allow us to look at the distribution and location of different variables as they interact with territorial size. This was an excellent tool for teaching kids to generate hypotheses, bring to bear background knowledge that would inform the hypotheses, confirm or disconfirm our hypotheses through the cartogram, and then to ask what other information would be necessary to further understand what it is we are seeing.

In Google Earth, we saw how we can create spatial tours that integrate picture, text, and satellite imagery. As a spatial alternative to PowerPoint, such tours allow us to share and present information through spatial frameworks. (Here is a cheat sheet for some of the things we did in class today.)

Simulation Review

In your assigned groups, look at your assigned simulation-type activity. Start to read, evaluation and discuss the materials. Then consider:

·      What would you need to do in order to help students learn from this activity?

·      What you would do to set up this activity and how you could extend it once it was over?

·      In class on Wednesday, you will have be asked to engage the class in 10 minutes of the simulation.

Ancient Incan City

French Revolution Play

Bodysculpting the Holocaust

Silk Road Simulation

World History Lecture Notes

World History Standards for Grade 7
1) Disciplinary Skills and Processes
2) Study of Specific Eras

o WHG Era 1 – The Beginnings of Human Society
o WHG Era 2 – Early Civilizations and Cultures and the Emergence of Pastoral Peoples
o WHG Era 3 – Classical Traditions, World Religions, and Major Empires
o WHG Era 4 – Expanding and Intensified Hemispheric Interactions
3) Final Project
4) Integration of Other Disciplines 

High School World History Standards 
 
1) Study of Specific Eras x Lens/Frames

o WHG Era 5 – The Emergence of the First Global Age, 15th to 18th Centuries
o WHG Era 6 – An Age of Global Revolutions, 18th Century-1914
o WHG Era 7 – Global Crisis and Achievement, 1900-1945
o WHG Era 8 – The Cold War and Its Aftermath: The 20th Century Since 1945

2) Final Project on Contemporary Issues
3) Social Studies Processes and Skills

In order to think about our units and lessons, we therefore have to have a process for drawing upon diverse standards across multiple areas of the document. In general, we want to integrate:
a) Global patterns, inter-regional interactions, and regional case examples
b) Essential research and literacy skills in the discipline
c) Concepts and connections from other social studies disciplines
What are ways that we can do this?
 
1) Plan units that are focused on an era, but that that have an essential question that links to another discipline.

o Examples: 
§ Did the agricultural revolution solve or invent food scarcity? (history integrated with economics)
§ Did the agricultural revolution promote equality or inequality? (history integrated with government)
 
2) Make sure to integrate projects and activities into every unit that emphasize aspects of the inquiry arc (where students examine primary and secondary sources, make claims, and write narratives that evaluate agency, motive, and cause/effect).
3) Use regional case examples to illustrate global trends.
4) Look for moments of inter-regional “historical convergence”: trade, migration, war, empire, and cultural and technological diffusion.

TE 408 Course Documents

Here are links to course documents you will need this semester:

TE 408 Course Syllabus

Formal Lesson Plan Assignment

Objective Test Assignment

Formative Assessment Assignment

Radical Alterity

The ideas behind UDL are, in some ways, pretty radical. As teachers, we “plan from the margins.” That is, we think about some of our most disadvantaged students as we contemplate our instruction.

Maybe you think this is not possible?

In response to this, my contention might be that we always have a student in mind when we plan our lessons. Perhaps this student is ourselves? While this is not a bad place to start—indeed, can we ever start from anywhere else but our own experiences?—I would argue that it is not enough.

For our own experiences as a learner only take on their full shape and meaning as we put them into dialogue with other experiences. In this way, I would argue for a type of “radical alterity” to be put at the heart of our planning.

That is, we should think about the children who might be most different from us in order to spot both commonalities and differences. To see what in our experiences is helpful for our teaching practice and to see where our own experiences might not actually be all that helpful as a guide to the learning needs for some of our students.  

If we are always thinking about the “average” student, we risk treating all of our students as average—as typical, as not unique, as not a gift to the world. 

But of course all children are gifts and carry with them gifts that the world is in desperate need of. When we plan from the perspective of those in most need of our assistance, hope and support, then we perhaps plan in ways that work harder to uncover those gifts.

As I pointed out in the context of our immigrant and refugee language learning students, we never want to be caught unawares by the trauma and tragedy that our students might have lived through.  The work of uncovering gifts happens best, perhaps, when we start to recognize the shadows that keep us from seeing our students in their best light.

Socratic Seminar: Providing a Frame for the Picture

We developed a metaphor in class today that is worth thinking about. A powerful text is your picture—a powerful question is your frame.

We are so accustomed to teaching as telling, that sometimes it can be hard to see that our most powerful tools for shaping student learning might be questions.  Questions suggest, they don’t dictate. They open up possibilities rather than certainties. Because a good question can be answered on many levels, questions might, I think, more easily meet students where they are at.

We can ask questions that move student attention in many different directions—inwards, towards their values; backwards in time, towards their experiences; out into the world, to a historical context they may or may not know much about; towards a problem, that a collective “we” must try to solve.  Each of these questioning strategies can be valuable in the social studies classroom.

In a Socratic Seminar, we ask questions that move students into a personal encounter with a text. What does this text say? What does this text mean? What does this historical actor think she is up to? What do I think she is up to? What parts of the text make me think the way I do?

The text is a great picture, but it is ultimately the frame that sets it off . . .

Assessment: Catching Kids Acting Smart?

Assessment is one of the trickier areas for us as new teachers to approach. For so long, assessment was done roughly the same way. On the high school level, at least, it was about grades, report cards, taking tests, and fitting oneself into a curve.

Things have changed drastically over the past fifteen years, so it’s important to realize that our own experiences in this area may not be completely reliable guides for our professional actions in the future.

Take the issue of grades. We spent a bit of time in class trying to disentangle issues of grading from issues of assessment. While the two are no doubt linked, it is important that we do not let the current (and perhaps archaic) grading system totally determine our assessment practices. At the end of the day, we will likely be required to give a student a single grade of either A, B, C, D or F. But that should not prevent us from providing that student and his or her family helpful and targeted information that will lead to a better appreciation for what needs to happen in the future. It should not prevent us from communicating strengths and areas of needed growth, in the domains of knowledge, skills, interests, disposition, character, and leadership. It should not stop us from telling students whether or not they have met specific state-mandated standards.

Assessment can be one of the more inspiring areas for us as educators. It’s where we get to search out the hidden talents and gifts that each human being possesses. It’s where we help children connect what they can do (or what they are interested in doing) to the needs of the world. It’s where we help children discover their passions and help them reach out for them.

But it’s important that we don’t tell easy truths in this search for inspiration. We need to trust that kids can handle the truth. But to get to the truth, we need to be smart. We need to realize that no one instrument can tell us everything we need to know as teachers (even the best written test can’t do that).

So we need multiple forms of assessments, with multiple instruments: some standardized and some classroom developed, some authentic and performance-based, and some objective. With this rounded picture of summative assessment tools (and with the help of a ready stock of formative assessment strategies—something we will continue to talk about throughout the year), we, as teachers, can help take us out of the past of education and into its future.