Inquiry via iPad

Two Sides to the American Revolution:  

An Inquiry Lesson using iPads 

Taught by: Nicole Bosi and Lindsay Roe

                                                                            

Screen in which questions are
displayed during Socrative quiz.

Engage: As we had access to iPads and smartphones, Nicole and I opted to use the app, Socrative, to pre-assess and motivate students in the engage phase of the lesson. Students were asked to respond to four constructed-response items on the causes of the American Revolution learned in the direct instruction lesson. At the same time, we were able to see on our own iPad, the one in which we launched the assessment, how students were progressing. The students were eager to participate in the Socrative pre-assessment and as a result of this technology, I was able to receive responses from all students, as opposed to the few who would raise their hands to respond to questioning in a typical introduction. However, now seeing how much time it took to set up the students on the application, and for them to type in their responses on the keyboard, I would want to utilize more selected-response items in the future. Using selected-response items would also make it easier to present the answers to students immediately following each question and allow for easier scoring, all through the Socrative application.

Next, to introduce the problem, we created and planned to use a Voki "Historian." Technical difficulties prevented us from showing the Voki Historian until later in the closure. However, as a back-up plan, I read the script that the voki would have said to introduce the question: "Why did the war happen when both sides claim they did not do anything wrong?" Still, I think establishing the problem as having access to confidential files and the students assuming the roles of “history investigators” still fostered motivation. Had the Voki worked, it also would have helped to model for the students what their web-based projects would look like at the end of the inquiry process and it would have guided and motivated their participation in the inquiry process for creating their own Vokis in the explore phase.


Explore: The problem having been introduced, we then reviewed with the students the six steps of the inquiry process using animation on the SmartBoard Notebook 11. Animating the presentation so that students could contemplate and predict the steps of the inquiry process as opposed to me directly providing them to the students, allowed for students to think about what they already knew about the inquiry process as well as provide me with an understanding of their prior knowledge. During this time, the students remained attentive to the lesson, and anticipated each step that would be presented.

   We then reviewed how to form "if,then" hypotheses, and gave students time to create their own hypotheses about how different points of view led to war. In hindsight, considering time constraints, the class as a whole could have come up with a hypothesis as opposed to waiting for individual students. Then groups were given their confidential group folders with the "secret" historical files that contained background information on the event that they were assigned as well as an individual account or an overview of the viewpoint of one side: colonist or British. After reading through the documents, students were asked to discuss the viewpoints with their groups and then design a script for a Voki character who had the viewpoint assigned about the event assigned (Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party, Proclamation of 1763, or Stamp Act). I tried to go step-by-step with the whole class as opposed to modeling the entire process and then letting the students go through each step at their own pace. However, this became challenging as certain groups took longer for certain parts than others. In the future, I would tell students from the beginning that they will be creating their own Voki characters and then let that motivate and guide them through the earlier steps. 

The Voki web-based project was highly motivating to students; as I observed every group working to create their Vokis, I saw all students engaged in the task, looking for a way to participate. Unfortunately, between the Socrative pre-assessment and this assignment, there was not a lot of time left for discussion among groups with different perspectives to create Venn Diagrams comparing and contrasting the different views of the causes of the American Revolution. In planning, I had hoped that groups who had the same event but different perspectives would be able to come together and compare and contrast the perspectives using Venn Diagrams. The idea was that one group would be an expert on one perspective and the other group the experts on the other perspective, then students would have to engage in analytic conversations comparing and contrasting the perspectives to fill out the middle section of the Venn Diagram. Thus, the Venn Diagram was meant to focus students' attention back to the original question and hypotheses. Nosich suggests that as students are brainstorming, concept maps or graphic organizers be utilized to identify the “fundamental and powerful concepts” that emerge (2001, p. 63). Without this part of the inquiry-based lesson, I think the lesson was less powerful in terms of the big goal of having students form generalizations about the role of perspective in leading to the American Revolution.

Explain/Closure: Instead of Venn Diagrams, groups were asked to share their Vokis with the class as their closing presentations. The Voki characters were scored according to a rubric that required the students to describe the event assigned to them and correctly portray the point of view of the assigned side on the event. Thus the entire class was able to hear both the British and the colonial perspectives on each of the four events assigned. Of the eight groups who created Voki characters, only two groups failed to meet the the requirements for accurately presenting both the perspective and the event. Thus, I feel that even just with their Voki characters, and not the Venn Diagrams, the students were still able to critically evaluate the data and represent the perspectives accordingly. All of the groups were able to speak as if they were the colonists or British referring to the event. Additionally, the students seemed very proud and enthusiastic about sharing their Voki characters with the class; this level of enthusiasm probably would not have been reached if students were only asked to share Venn Diagrams as planned. 

Understanding that “the presentation of inquiry-based projects is different from traditional class reports or research assignments” and “the emphasis is on telling the story of the learning journey,” I purposefully asked students to describe how they came to create their Voki characters during their presentations (Ohio Department of Education). Similarly, Rosenshine (2012) asserts that: “The most effective teachers ask students to explain the process they used to answer the question, to explain how the answer was found. Less successful teachers ask fewer questions and almost no process questions” (p. 14). As expected, I was able to more effectively assess students’ higher-order thinking by asking them how they determined what their Voki characters would say and look like. Once again, due to the time crunch, students were not able to completely alter their characters' appearances to serve the purpose of the project, however, one group in particular did say, “I chose this character because she looked angry and the colonists were angry.” All of the students were able to refer back to earlier stages of the inquiry process when they said they chose what to say from the important data they read.

After all of the groups had presented, I was able to close the lesson by asking what the students realized from the different Vokis. The students recognized through their Voki characters that the British and colonists viewed the same cause in different ways.

Evaluate: For independent practice, students were asked to choose a different event than the one they studied in class, and write the perspective of colonists on the event, write the perspective of the British on the event, and then evaluate how the difference led to war. Instead of asking for a single essay or journal entry with all of these parts, I chose to separate each part to require a specific response so that students targeted all of the elements. I assessed the three required responses according to a holistic rubric; the learning objective for the lesson was for students to score at least two out of three on the rubric. Of the seventeen students who returned this assignment, fourteen met or surpassed the objective. This demonstrates to me that the independent practice assessment was effective, and that students learned from the inquiry-based lesson. That being said, I think that the lesson would have been even more effective had it been allowed to span two class periods. Then, students would have had more time to engage in the explain phase of the lesson, further developing their higher-order thinking skills with the Venn Diagram.

In the future, I would definitely want to utilize this lesson again. The students were thoroughly motivated and engaged by using the iPads, especially enjoying creating their own Voki characters that they could share with their classmates. However, to enhance the quality of the lesson, I would want to devote two periods to its completion. With this change, students could more fully participate in the expand and explain phases.

References

Nosich, G. (2001). Learning to think things through: A guide to critical thinking across the curriculum. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Ohio Department of Education. (n.d.). The Evidence Base for Social Studies: Inquiry-Based Learning. Retrieved March 16, 2015, from http://ims.ode.state.oh.us/ode/ims/rrt/research/Content/inquiry_based_learning_what_we_know.asp

Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of instruction: Research-based strategies that all teachers should know. American Educator, 36(1), 12-19, 39.

Give Me the Facts!

A Direct Instruction Lesson

on the Causes of the American Revolution emphasizing the Domino Effect 

Taught by Lindsay Roe and Nicole Bosi    

                                                                                         

Planning for Understanding of "Domino Effect": Creating a New Tool 

In planning our direct instruction lesson, Nicole and I knew that we were responsible for providing students with the facts associated with the causes of the American Revolution. Similarly, we were also aware that students would better understand and retain the facts if they understood the relationship between them. Instead of a presentation of seemingly disjointed slides that talked upon events as separately occurring incidents, we consciously tried to plan for students to recognize the facts as an interrelated story. This led us to the concept of the "domino effect" or as a fourth-grade student described in the video above, "a chain reaction." It was at this point that we began looking for ways to illustrate the domino effect at play in the causes of the American Revolution. We turned to the world wide web to try to find a suitable teaching tool that would emphasize how each cause led to the next, but only found graphic organizers such as these:  
                               

We felt that these graphic organizers left something to be desired, especially as they did not physically show how one domino hits the next which we thought would be more meaningful and concrete for students. Thus, not having a tool at our disposal that we felt would optimally capture students' attention and enhance the concept of one cause pushing into the next cause, we decided to create our own three-dimensional domino graphic organizer that students could utilize to take notes during the development phase of the lesson. 

Time to Teach: March 9, 2015

For the introduction of the lesson, using a Google Presentation, Nicole and I showed a video clip with scenes from the American Revolution. As it was the first lesson of the unit, the students shared vague understandings of the Revolutionary War, chiefly that colonists fought British soldiers for freedom. Many students volunteered to participate, and made statements that included what they saw in the video and what they thought the scenes represented. I think the students gave more general information as opposed to sharing specifics that they already knew, because I elected to use a video that encompassed many different ideas as opposed to pictures that pinpoint specific information. The more formal digital pre-assessment conducted prior to teaching provided more specific information as to students’ prior knowledge. As the students acknowledged that a war would occur and that the colonists wanted to be independent of Great Britain as part of the pre-assessment, I was easily able to transition to say, now I am going to present what led to war. Then, I introduced the concept of the “domino effect” by showing an example of the domino graphic organizer, which helped to describe that we would be discussing multiple interrelated causes today. One student quickly caught on, and said, “It will be like a chain reaction.”

A fourth-grade student takes notes on his 3D domino 

graphic organizer while following the lesson.

For the development, students utilized the new and improved three-dimensional graphic organizers to take notes, as Nicole and I presented facts on the causes of the American Revolution. In the corner of each factual slide was a domino with a number that matched the numbers on the dominoes in their graphic organizers. For example, students would need to find the "five domino" for the Townshend Acts when the Townshend Acts slide showed a five domino in the corner. The hope was that students would be able to better self-regulate when and where to take notes.  However, I did not anticipate how much assistance students would need in navigating the graphic organizer. I thought that showing the corresponding domino on the presentation and saying, “The number of the domino in the corner, is the number of the domino you write on for your graphic organizer,” would suffice as an explanation. After there was initial confusion on when and where to write notes, I modeled using a student’s graphic organizer. If I taught this lesson again, I would model the first two slides, stating, “I see only one dot on the domino in the corner of the slide, so I know I need to turn to my first domino. I will write down two details on the back of the domino.” When I turn to the second slide, I will say: “Now I see two dots on the domino in the corner, so I must turn to the second domino on my graphic organizer. Again, I will write two details on the back of the domino.” Another future change I would make is to better capitalize on students' eagerness to complete the graphic organizer. While in the throes of the lesson, I became more concerned with presenting all the content at a fast pace within the allotted time. Thus, I missed important opportunities to focus in on students’ questions about what to write for certain events. In the future, I will pace the content at a reduced speed, and provide students the opportunity to write more complete notes. I will be more flexible, and follow the students’ lead in how they want to engage the material.
           


Additionally, to check for understanding, we utilized "Contemplation Slides" complemented by an animated light bulb to signal to students that it was time to stop writing, and think. I found that the “Contemplation” slides were successful in making students think about how the causes relate to one another. The students’ answers indicated that students were following the content of the lesson and that by trying to verbally answer the questions, the students were making their own connections between the material: “An important finding from information-processing research is that students need to spend additional time rephrasing, elaborating, and summarizing new material in order to store this material in their long-term memory” (Rosenshine, 2012, p. 16). Requiring frequent responses, specifically student participation every

few minutes, “helps [the students] focus on the lesson content, provides opportunities for student elaboration, assists [the teacher] in checking understanding, and keeps students active and attentive” (Archer and Hughes, 2011, p. 3).  However, some students were more eager to participate than others when I relied upon volunteers. When I opened up questions for choral responses, asking for certain words to be repeated or for an answer I knew everyone would know such as “Taxing what item caused the Boston Tea Party?” all of the students seemed more confident responding. Knowing this now, in the future, I hope to incorporate more choral responding. Also, to try to involve more students, I need to improve how I was asking students to agree or disagree. For some questions, I would interject the statement, “thumbs up if you agree,” but the way I asked and followed up with this request for responses was ineffective in engaging all students. I failed to provide students another option besides simply agreeing. In the future, I will want to emphasize the agreement or disagreement participation element by providing students with two options and presenting this element as an expectation after all questions. Beyond this, I think that the “contemplation” questions I selected were appropriate and focused students’ attention on the essentials I wanted them to take away from the lesson. In particular, on the last contemplation slide, I think that the sequence of the questions and how they lead into each other helped to stress the concept of the “domino effect.” I especially liked how when I asked students to “put pencils down and think” for the contemplation slides, most students seemed to respond and once pencils went down, they made more eye contact and appeared to be following closely along. Also, I think that by asking students to predict what would happen next in the sequence, helped to show which students were following along, which acted as a formative assessment, and drew their attention to the next slides to see if their predictions were correct.

For guided practice, we had time for two activities. First, we rolled a 10-sided-dice using Smartboard Notebook 11. The number the dice rolled corresponded to the number of the domino on the 3D graphic organizer that students would have to discuss with their neighbors. The idea in planning was that this would provide students a chance to clear-up misconceptions and add notes to their domino graphic organizers that they missed in the development. If ever attempting this activity again, I would want to ensure that the classroom was conducive to my being able to walk around the classroom and hear the responses of all students. When circulating, I would be able to provide immediate corrective feedback to students. Also, I would want to make certain that I could quickly regain students’ attention and have students quietly listening to the responses the students shared with the whole class at the end.Then, the next activity was designed to be more challenging, because “when students demonstrate success, you can gradually increase task difficulty as you decrease the level of guidance” (Archer & Hughes, 2011, p. 2). Using Google Presentation animation, we showed students pictures of the causes of the American Revolution that slowly came into focus or became unscrambled. Then, using a hand signal of five fingers to zero, students knew when to share their ideas regarding the pictures. The students remained engaged, and unlike during other activities, the students stayed with me and responded to the signal for attention. Also, I believe that this activity was particularly important because it gave us formative assessment feedback on how the students would perform on the independent practice assessment which also required students to describe pictures relating to the causes of the American Revolution.

           

For closure, as can be viewed in the video above, we utilized the Smartboard Jeopardy Template to create a Jeopardy game on the causes of the American Revolution for students to play in small groups. Categories from which students could choose to answer questions included: "Acts," which focused on acts passed by the British, "Mailbox," which focused on correspondence between the colonists and Britain, and "Blame the colonists" and "Blame the British" which focused on questionable behavior from both sides. Groups wrote responses on laminated paper using dry-erase markers, and thus, more students were involved than if students were called to the board individually. In this way, the game was both engaging for students and efficient at reviewing content. For next time, I would want to improve upon signalling students’ attention for responses, and quieting down the classroom so that all students may hear the correct answers. Also, I did not have time to administer final jeopardy which was designed to have students explain the causes of the American Revolution in terms of the domino effect, which I had hoped would be a perfect closure transition.

Lastly, for independent practice, students completed an "Instagram Captioning Activity," in which they were given pictures of causes of the American Revolution and had to hash-tag the name of the cause and provide two details for the cause in the caption to meet the learning objective for the lesson: "“Given an instagram template with four pictures representing the causes of the American Revolution, the student will write captions describing the pictures for at least three out of four pictures correctly.” The students were motivated by the infusion of "instagram" into the assignment, making it appear as more than just another worksheet.

References

Archer, A., & Hughes, C. (2011). Explicit instruction: Effective and efficient teaching. New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of instruction: Research-based strategies that all teachers should know. American Educator, 36(1), 12-19, 39.

  

Battle Decoding

Nicole and Christine's Unit on the Battles of the American Revolution 

Like Kelli's teaching on the causes of the American Revolution, Nicole and Christine planned and implemented direct instruction, inquiry, and cooperative learning lessons to develop fifth-grade students' understanding of the battles of the American Revolution. The structure of their unit allowed them to provide students with a factual knowledge base in the direct instruction lesson which was then utilized with reasoning skills in the inquiry lesson and social interaction skills in the cooperative learning lesson. Of the three lessons taught, I found their inquiry-based lesson the most impressive and valuable for me to observe, as it was the first time I was exposed to QR (Quick Response) Codes. 

Direct Instruction 

       


To activate prior knowledge and warm-up students to start learning about the battles, Nicole and Christine presented pictures related to the causes of the American Revolution that Kelli taught previously. The students were able to quickly and accurately share their ideas regarding the pictures. Then, Christine and Nicole delivered many facts to the students at a fast-pace, checking for understanding with "Stop and Think" slides. As Christine and Nicole lectured, the students were asked to take notes by filling in the blanks on guided notes that were identical to the Google Presentation slides. The guided notes increased students' active participation within the lesson and hopefully helped students to focus in on key

terminology. Considering note-taking is still not a fully mastered skill in the fifth-grade, the use of guided notes "supports students during note-taking by reducing the cognitive demands that are required to successfully complete the task" (Haydon, Mancil, Kroeger, McLesky, and Lin, 2011, p. 226). However, a fear that I have about guided notes is that it is possible for students to just look for the missing word or phrase on the slide and copy that word or phrase without actually reading the entire sentence or grasping the intended fact. Thus, I think it is critical that if teachers are going to utilize guided notes, that they conduct frequent and rigorous checks for student understanding with verbal or visual prompts throughout the lesson as well. Following the development, as guided practice, the teachers created an interactive timeline using Smart Board Notebook. Unfortunately, technological difficulties dampened the impact of the planned activity in the classroom, however, students still worked towards mastering the facts by sequencing the important battles and events of the American Revolution. For their second activity, Christine and Nicole again made use of the Smart Board to engage students by choosing student volunteers to come up to the board and draw lines connecting terminology to corresponding definitions. Many students were eager to participate, motivated by the Smart Board, and when students did not have the answers, they were encouraged by Nicole and Christine to ask their peers for assistance. For the last guided practice activity, each student was given several pictures of important figures in the American Revolution, the teachers then read clues and required students to hold up the picture of the figure about whom they were talking. The students were excited to participate in this activity as well, however, this also

led to a lot of talking between peers which was difficult for the teacher candidates to control. In the closure, students were asked to share what they had learned from the lesson, what they were interested by, and one question that they still had. For independent practice, students were asked to describe pictures related to the battles of the American Revolution. Overall, this lesson was successful in developing students' factual knowledge of the battles of the American Revolution, thus targeting the lower levels of Bloom's taxonomy pictured here. 


Inquiry Instruction
 

To discover the relationship between
the direct instruction and inquiry
 lessons, scan the QR code above. 

  As the engagement phase of the inquiry-based lesson and to review previously learned facts, Christine and Nicole displayed pictures relating to the battles of the American Revolution in their Google Presentation. Students were then asked to share their ideas about the pictures and to agree or disagree with statements made by their peers. This warm-up showed that the students had retained many of the facts that they had learned in the direct instruction lesson. Then, Christine and Nicole reviewed the inquiry process with the students, and recognizing that these fifth-graders had struggled to create hypotheses the previous week in Kelli's inquiry lesson, Nicole dedicated additional time to reviewing the concept of hypothesizing using sports analogies. Then, Christine and Nicole introduced the question students would be using the inquiry process to answer during the lesson. They told the students that each group would be given clues to lead them to certain a individual who was important during the Revolutionary War. First, the students hypothesized about who their individual was based on a picture on the outside of the group folders. Then, each group was given five paper bags each containing a QR (Quick Response) code for students to scan to reveal a clue that they then analyzed to determine if the clue supported or disproved their original hypothesis. Eventually, after revealing and analyzing all five clues, students had to evaluate whether their hypotheses were correct or incorrect. I found the QR codes to be very motivating for students and effective in guiding students through the inquiry process. Students were able to further take on the role of investigators by decoding the clues and then evaluating them.

  After students concluded which historical figure their group's clues defined, the students were asked to present their inquiry project to the class. The presentations were structured so that the presenting group asked the class the questions they had been asked through the process, and of course not having been privy to the same material, the class did not know the answers. Instead of structuring the presentations in this way, I would have instead focused upon the process that the students themselves underwent in their groups to arrive at their historical figures. I would have liked to hear the group's original hypothesis and then how each successive clue either helped them to strengthen their original hypothesis or led them to create new hypotheses. Even though the presentation format could have been improved, I still feel that the lesson was extremely successful in engaging students in the inquiry process, specifically, collecting data to draw conclusions. As you will read below in the "In My Future Classroom" section, I am definitely thrilled to have been introduced to QR codes in Nicole and Christine's lesson and plan to use them in my future teaching! 

Cooperative Learning Lesson 
          

For their cooperative learning lesson, Nicole and Christine reviewed prior learning using pictures and also assessed students' knowledge of teamwork and cooperation. Then, they introduced the day's challenge to create a board game on the battles of the American Revolution. They reviewed the rubric for creating the board game, explained the roles that students would be assigned within their groups, and informed the students that teachers would be walking around to observe students' teamwork skills. Similarly, Nicole and Christine presented a worked example of a board game that they created. The students were very excited to be creating their own games; one group designed their board based on the "Shot Heard Round the World" from the Battle of Lexington and Concord.  By having each group create one board game, Nicole and Christine assured positive interdependence was achieved. However, the assigned roles and peer and group evaluation forms ensured that students maintained individual accountability and that all aspects of the project were completed. In terms of social skills and face-to-face interaction, I was pleased to see that the students were engaged in group decision-making often discussing with each other what would look "cooler." Students' ownership of their board games could easily be observed in the group presentations shown in the clip above, when students described their projects and more importantly, their reasoning behind why they created the projects as they did. Overall, this lesson was successful in establishing genuine cooperative learning as opposed to just "group work," all of the students were motivated to participate to achieve a quality product. Johnson and Johnson (1988) assert that unlike group work, cooperative learning requires that there, "be an accepted common goal on which the group will be rewarded for their efforts." 

In My Future Classroom

After observing Nicole and Christine's teaching, I saw QR codes being used in another fifth-grade classroom as a part of English Language Arts stations. Motivated by the success of both these observations, I am now eager to use QR codes in my own classroom for all content areas. Monica Burns, in her blog,"Five Reasons I Love Using QR Codes in My Classroom," asserts that QR codes: "Eliminate the frustration of long web addresses, take students directly to a designated website, save time, are easily made, and change up the normal routine." Thus, QR codes can engage students and be easily incorporated into my lessons at the same time.

References

Burns. (2013, January 23). Five reasons I love using QR codes in my classroom. Retrieved from: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/using-qr-codes-in-classroom-monica-burns

Haydon, T., Mancil, G.R., Kroeger, S.D., McLeskey, J., & Lin, W.J. (2011). A review of the effectiveness of guided notes for students who struggle learning academic content. Preventing School Failure: Alternative Education for Children and Youth, 55(4), p. 226-231.


Johnson, R.T., & Johnson, D. W. (1988). Cooperative learning: Two heads learn better than one. Transforming Education, 18, 34.