This area of my practice was not something I needed to fix until I started really digging into my inquiry and looking over my units as a group. I make a point to include modern articles, videos, and pieces of art into every unit I design. There are always a cyclical patterns and every unit I tried to bring it to the attention of my students. I did not always do a good job of explaining why that was a pattern or how those patterns came to pass.
It is my job as their teacher to give students not just the information but also the tools for understanding and dissecting that information. I got so excited about bringing students this cool information and blowing their minds, that, as a general rule, I forgot to teach them how to interact with this information or what to do with it. I am reminded of something Tomlinson and McTighe (2006) write, “Therefore instead of merely covering the content, effective educators “uncover” the most enduring ideas and processes in ways that engage students in constructing meaning for themselves” (p. 123).
It is my job as their teacher to give students not just the information but also the tools for understanding and dissecting that information. I got so excited about bringing students this cool information and blowing their minds, that, as a general rule, I forgot to teach them how to interact with this information or what to do with it. I am reminded of something Tomlinson and McTighe (2006) write, “Therefore instead of merely covering the content, effective educators “uncover” the most enduring ideas and processes in ways that engage students in constructing meaning for themselves” (p. 123).
In my future practice, I need to stick more closely to the sage advice of Tomlinson and McTighe. By “engaging student in constructing meaning for themselves,” I can still teach students about the importance of cyclical history, but do it in a way that promotes student engagement and teaches them the tools to use to understand and analyze in the content. Some of the specific ways I want to amend my practice include modifying modern documents, providing better timeline scaffolding, and building a yearlong theme that allows students to practice picking out cyclical patterns in history. |
As I worked through my inquiry, I noticed many of my current event documents were not modified and as a result, too much class time was spent understanding the an article, and there was never enough time given to discussing the cyclical patterns. Modifying documents so that students get only the important parts will help to move this process along and will help me to think like a student to figure out what parts they might struggle understanding.
One of the biggest mistakes I made while trying to engage students with the study of cyclical history was to not provide students with timelines. This seems so simple, and yet so often I forgot or did not think students would need it. A timeline would help students place the events we are discussing on a linear plan and thereby give students the chance to see the cause and effect relationship between different events.
Lastly, I have come to the conclusion that in order for students to deeply understand cyclical history, there needs to be a yearlong theme of patterns in cyclical history. If I begin the school year telling students that we will be looking at cyclical patterns in history for the whole year and then teach them the key elements, we can refer back to those key elements every time there is a discussion of cyclical history. The repetition of this theme will help students to be able to eventually find the patterns in history themselves by using the skills: contextualizing, analyzing, sourcing, and creating timelines that I emphasize over the course of the year.
One of the biggest mistakes I made while trying to engage students with the study of cyclical history was to not provide students with timelines. This seems so simple, and yet so often I forgot or did not think students would need it. A timeline would help students place the events we are discussing on a linear plan and thereby give students the chance to see the cause and effect relationship between different events.
Lastly, I have come to the conclusion that in order for students to deeply understand cyclical history, there needs to be a yearlong theme of patterns in cyclical history. If I begin the school year telling students that we will be looking at cyclical patterns in history for the whole year and then teach them the key elements, we can refer back to those key elements every time there is a discussion of cyclical history. The repetition of this theme will help students to be able to eventually find the patterns in history themselves by using the skills: contextualizing, analyzing, sourcing, and creating timelines that I emphasize over the course of the year.