Exploration through Artifacts!

Learning with Artifact Bags: 
To introduce us to the the artifact bag activity within an inquiry lesson, Dr. Smirnova modeled facilitating the activity with artifacts from her life in Russia. Teacher candidates were required to make meaning from artifacts such as photographs, legal documents, and tangible objects, even utilizing translating technologies to understand Russian text. Next, teacher candidates explored the artifacts further by researching their significance, evaluated the standard questions: who? what? when? where? why?, and lastly arrived at conclusions. In this way, teacher candidates applied the inquiry method to the information presented to them through the artifact bags to construct meaningful generalizations.

Also, studying primary sources within the discipline of history prepared me for planning an artifact bag activity. Prior to this project, I understood the discipline of history and the importance of incorporating primary documents, however was unfamiliar with the underlying benefits of artifact bags in terms of learning targets and motivation. Being a history major, I have long interpreted history as the collective story of our past as a human community, built on the interplay of individual experiences throughout the world. Understanding the role of individual perspective in shaping history, I recognized the value of primary sources as a means to engage students in identifying the emotional aspect to history: “Primary sources fascinate students because they are real and they are personal; history is humanized through them” (National Archives and Records Administration). However, even more meaningful, when presented with different accounts of events through primary sources, students can apply higher-order thinking skills to evaluate and attempt to reconcile the juxtaposing perspectives:

By using primary sources, students learn to recognize how a point of view and a bias affect evidence, what contradictions and other limitations exist within a given source, and to what extent sources are reliable. Essential among these skills is the ability to understand and make appropriate use of many sources of information. Development of these skills is important not only to historical research but also to a citizenship where people are able to evaluate the information needed to maintain a free society (National Archives and Records Administration).

Therefore, before the artifact bag project and the focus on teaching the discipline of history, I was aware of the teaching power of primary sources, however, I do not believe I categorized them as artifacts. In my mind, artifacts were only physical, tangible objects, when in actuality, “one type of artifact [is] primary sources…includ[ing] diaries, letters, photographs, maps, audio and video recordings, and music” (Fuhler, Farris, Nelson, 2006, p. 655). Thus, recognizing primary sources as artifacts allowed me to design a lesson

that incorporated my aforementioned fondness for infusing primary sources into my curriculum under the disguise of the newly discovered artifact bag approach, with its intriguing bags motivating students with an “irresistible invitation to learning that cannot easily be forgotten” (Fuhler, Farris, & Nelson, 2006, p. 656).  Therefore, before this project, I recognized the content and reasoning objectives I wanted students to master, however, was unaware of the artifact bag activity as a means of having students actively construct the knowledge and skills with high motivation and interest. 

In designing the artifact bag activity for the students to experience, I selected artifacts, literature, and websites that would enhance content knowledge, genuinely challenge students to make the inquiry process meaningful, smoothly complement other lessons to maximize students’ mastery of goals for the unit, and provide a range of artifacts to meet fourth-grade state standards. The social studies unit focused on the causes of the American Revolution, and thus, the artifacts had to correspond with the historical period between 1763 and 1776. However, as I planned to begin my unit with a direct instruction lesson to maximize background knowledge for the rest of the lessons within the unit, I needed to ensure that students had the opportunity to gain new knowledge and not be presented with artifacts for which thorough explanations had already been provided. Thus, I set out to find additional information that went beyond the scope of my direct instruction lesson, and would provide students freedom in constructing their own generalizations knowing that inquiry-based learning is structured to “provide students with opportunities to learn with more freedom” and apply “funds of knowledge” (Ohio Department of Education).  In the process of finding new information for my students, I also uncovered historical content with which I was not previously familiar. Searching the Mount Saint Mary College library for lesson resources, I found two non-fiction picture books, appropriate for fourth graders, that detailed valuable information about the causes of the American Revolution that had not been stressed in the direct instruction lesson and served as an excellent connection to the next lesson in the unit that focused on the current event of women’s empowerment globally. Therefore, the two books I selected as data collecting resources for students were Anderson and Faulkner’s (2008) Independent Dames: What You Never Knew about the Women and Girls of the American Revolution and  Roberts and Goode’s (2014) Founding Mothers: Remembering the Ladies, confirming that “for inquiry-based learning, nonfiction books are a mainstay” (Ohio Department of Education). From reading these books, I came away with the understanding that women were central to causing and winning the American Revolution both directly through actions and indirectly through influence over male power holders at the time. This is exactly one of the overarching generalizations that I wanted students to obtain through the lesson, and thus, in my subsequent readings of the material, I created a list of possible artifacts that through implementation of the inquiry process would lead students towards this generalization.

Planning/Teaching with Artifact Bags:
 In planning the artifact bag lesson, I endeavored to follow the guidelines set forth by Fuhler, Farris, and Nelson (2006) in their article, “Building literacy skills across the curriculum: Forging connections with the past through artifacts.” Thus, I began by activating students’ prior knowledge about the inquiry process as well as the unit topic, the causes of the American Revolution, as they had already accessed the basic factual knowledge in an earlier direct instruction lesson. This review served to minimize the strain on students’ working memory and allow students to recall important elements that I wanted them to connect to the new information they would uncover in the inquiry lesson: “It is important for a teacher to help students recall the concepts and vocabulary that will be relevant for the day’s lesson because working memory is very limited” (Rosenshine, 2012, p. 13). Next, as suggested by Fuhler, Farris, and Nelson (2006), I utilized teacher modeling while thinking-aloud to scaffold students’ inquiry process, “using an artifact that is unrelated to those with which the [students] will be working” (p. 648). Drawing attention to the uniquely decorated “mail carriers” replicating mail delivery in history, in place of typical bags, I began modeling what the students would need to do: I opened the carrier and revealed a mysterious object, a souvenir from the Netherlands, a painted wooden shoe; I offered my quizzical thoughts appraising the unknown object; I wrote down a description of the artifact and questions for which I wanted to find answers regarding the artifact on my Artifact Bag Discovery Guide. After generating questions, I probed the students about what I would need to do next in order to fulfill the inquiry process. The resulting answers delineated the plan: hypothesize the meaning behind the object, then collect data through resources such as websites and books, and lastly, analyze that data to draw conclusions. I expedited this process by summarizing for students what happened when I actually went through this process, showing the website resource, and filling out the “Discoveries” section on the Artifact Bag Discovery Guide. Given this scaffold and a copy of my worked example to consult, students were well prepared to commence the challenge of discovering the three artifacts in the remaining mail carriers.

A wide range of artifacts had to be creatively presented in order to meet the objective of the lesson and target standards. For instance, I wanted a copy of the Boycott Agreement of the Boston Women (1770) complete with 300 signatures as it was discussed in both books and also constituted a new discovery for me. However, after much searching, it was unattainable. Instead, I had to try to remake a Boston Evening-Gazette covering the material, using quoted material I could find, a heading from another day’s entry of the Boston Evening-Gazette, and creatively crafted burned “parchment.” After, having secured this article, I wanted to incorporate other types of artifacts too. Thus, for my second artifact, I provided tangible buttons and thread to represent the homespun clothing movement to encourage colonial women to boycott British goods. Lastly, I utilized a photograph of the cover of Phillis Wheatley’s book of poems. It was my hope that selecting three different types of artifacts would broaden students’ experiences working with artifacts as well as better target the Common Core Practice Standard for fourth-grade social studies: “Gathering, Interpreting, and Using Evidence: Recognize, use, and analyze different forms of evidence to make meaning in social studies (including primary and secondary sources, such as art and photographs, artifacts, oral histories, maps, and graphs).” Similarly, the three artifacts I chose also perfectly corresponded to further information that students could explore with pre-selected resources. In addition to the books, I chose to incorporate websites as additional resources for students to utilize to collect and analyze data understanding that: “It is vitally important in today’s classrooms to have technological literacy woven smoothly into the standard book-related literacies” (Fuhler, Farris, & Nelson, 2006, p. 648). Thus, wanting students to explore the artifacts made available to them in greater detail and to answer their specific questions as well as add to the formation of the generalization, I found museum and historical society websites to shed light on the role of the artifacts in causing the American Revolution. Accordingly, together, the artifacts, literature, and websites provide the information which students will analyze and evaluate, aided by social interaction with peers, to form generalizations. In other words, these resources are crucial in framing students’ learning journey as: “Inquiry-based learning is a complex process where students attempt to convert information into useful knowledge through a structure of identifying ‘real’ questions, finding resources to gather information in answering the ‘real’ question, interpreting the information and reporting the findings” (Ohio Department of Education).

Reflection on Artifact Bags:

As the description of the activity and objectives for the lesson should emphasize, the artifact bag inquiry-based lesson implements the National Council for the Social Studies’ (1994) five principles of powerful teaching and learning, that instruction be: meaningful, integrative, value-based, challenging, and active. Firstly, artifact bag lessons are meaningful because they concentrate on students developing connections between knowledge and skills in ways that they understand; students “ponder different artifacts, drawing from personal experiences initially to make sense of the object at hand” (Fuhler, Farris, & Nelson, 2006, p. 651).  Similarly, the inquiry process in which students are actively working is developing genuine thinking skills that are “important ideas for understanding, appreciation, and life application” (National Council for the Social Studies, 1994).  Secondly, this activity is integrative as it has limitless potential in terms of incorporating both technology and other content areas, in particular English Language Arts. In my own lesson, technology was incorporated through the use of websites; however, to better capitalize on technology, teachers could utilize Quick Response (QR) codes linking students to audio and video files which also serve as artifacts. Also, as there are countless ways to make artifact bags cross-curricular, my social studies lesson also targeted fourth-grade Common Core English Language Arts standards such as: CCSS.ELA.RI.4.9. “Integrate information from two texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably,” and CCSS.ELA.W.4.2. “Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.” Thirdly, the value-based principle is achieved through the incorporation of primary sources as artifacts and the ensuing “debate[s] with teachers and classmates about the interpretation of [those] sources” (National Archives and Records Administration). Therefore, the lesson meets the value-based principle as it encourages students’ “recognition of opposing points of view and respect for well-supported positions” (National Council for the Social Studies, 1994).  Fourthly, artifact bag activities are challenging as students must enact the inquiry process and provide well-reasoned arguments in support of conclusions drawn: “learners construct meaning during authentic interactions that enable them to negotiate, evaluate, and transform the knowledge they acquire – a more effective process than simply memorizing teacher-disseminated information” (Fuhler, Farris, & Nelson, 2006, p. 646). Lastly, the artifact bag lesson is active because it champions constructivist theory’s emphasis on student-centered knowledge construction. The students work through the inquiry process and consult with peers to arrive at their conclusions, with teacher acting as facilitator as opposed to lecturer.

Generalizations from Artifact Bag Lessons:

Therefore, the artifact bag activity as part of an inquiry-based lesson helps to develop students’ content knowledge and reasoning skills in accordance with national and state standards. Artifact bag activities can be adapted to effectively target content and reasoning objectives for all grade levels. Furthermore, the use of intriguing artifact bags and tangible artifacts spurs student enthusiasm and engagement for the lesson. This enthusiasm is then carried throughout the lesson as students are called to actively engage with peers to construct their own knowledge, bringing in their personal experiences to connect to the new material. Learning how to teach a successful artifact bag lesson is an important pedagogical skill considering all of the aforementioned benefits and as it ensures that I am incorporating the five principles of powerful social studies teaching in my classroom instruction.

References

Anderson, L., & Faulkner, M. (2008). Independent dames: What you never knew about the women and girls of the American Revolution. New York, New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

Cunningham, P.M., & Allington, R.L. (2011). Classrooms that work: They can all read and write (5^th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Fuhler, C., Farris, P., & Nelson, P. (2006). Building literacy skills across the curriculum: Forging connections with the past through artifacts. The Reading Teacher, 59(7), 646-659.

Massachusetts Historical Society. (n.d.). Non-consumption and Non-importation. Retrieved April 4, 2015, from http://www.masshist.org/revolution/non_importation.php

National Archives and Records Administration. (n.d.). History in the raw. Retrieved April 4, 2015, from http://www.archives.gov/education/research/history-in-the-raw.html

National Council for the Social Studies. (1994). Expectations of Excellence: Curriculum Standards for Social Studies. Washington, D.C.: NCSS.

National Council for the Social Studies. (n.d.). National curriculum standards for social studies. Retrieved April 3, 2015, from http://www.socialstudies.org/standards/strands

National Women's History Museum. (n.d.). Phillis Wheatley. Retrieved April 5, 2015, from https://www.nwhm.org/education-resources/biography/biographies/phillis-wheatley/

New York State Education Department. (2011). New York State P-12 Common Core learning standards for ELA and literacy. Retrieved April 4, 2015, from https://www.engageny.org/resource/new-york-state-p-12-common-core-learning-standards-for-english-language-arts-and-literacy

New York State Education Department. (2015). New York State K-12 social studies framework. Retrieved April 4, 2015, from https://www.engageny.org/resource/new-york-state-k-12-social-studies-framework

Ohio Department of Education. (n.d.). The evidence base for social studies: Inquiry-based learning. Retrieved April 3, 2015, from http://ims.ode.state.oh.us/ode/ims/rrt/research/Content/inquiry_based_learning_what_we_know.asp

Roberts, C., & Goode, D. (2014). Founding mothers: Remembering the ladies. New York, New York: HarperCollins.

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

Teaching History Channel. (2010, November 10). Teaching with Artifacts. Retrieved April 8, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQDA1pdC7nQ

Extra, Extra: Cooperation Works!

A Cooperative Learning Lesson 

To view the entire Google Presentation for this lesson, please click here.

Introduction:To introduce this lesson, Nicole and I displayed pictures related to the causes of the American Revolution for students to share the facts they learned in the Direct Instruction lesson and the generalizations they constructed in the Inquiry lesson. The students were eager and willing to share their ideas about the Boston Massacre and Boston Tea Party as well as the concepts of taxation without representation and boycotting. This time I was more purposeful in asking other students in the classroom to agree with thumbs up or disagree with thumbs down to speakers' statements. At first, some students were not indicating agreement or disagreement, and this time I knew to stop the students and specifically say, “I want to see thumbs up or thumbs down from everyone.” At one point, a student provided a correct description of the Boston Massacre, but I saw a few students with their thumbs down. I was concerned that the students had developed a misconception about the Boston Massacre, so I called upon a student to explain why she disagreed. The student indicated that she thought three people had died in the Boston Massacre with two more being mortally wounded, while the student said five people died. This provided me the opportunity to clarify the meaning of mortally wounded and indicate that different historical documents might have similar, yet slightly different reportings. This experience taught me that having students agree and disagree not only keeps them engaged in the lesson, but also helps me to clarify misconceptions. 

We had students share ideas for teamwork and how to be strong team players, and the displayed a GoAnimate video on presentation skills. The students listened intently to the GoAnimate video on presentation skills, and were able to recall and elaborate on all of the video’s tips afterward. When students were later given the opportunity to practice for their presentations, I observed students purposefully standing up to practice good posture and heard a student remind peers to make eye contact. Thus, the GoAnimate video was effective and motivating for students. Still, in practice, many students failed to follow the tips during their presentations, many looking at the floor which indicates, as should be expected, that more practice will be needed.

Development:As this was a lesson utilizing the cooperative learning method falling within the indirect/interactive strategy and social interaction model, it was imperative that students work together and learn from each other during the lesson. Thus, I informed students that they would be working in small groups to create newspapers that could have been circulating in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War and would persuade readers to join a side. I showed the students a worked example, and thoroughly explained the requirements of the project by showing them a rubric. While some groups still missed an item, the majority of requirements were met to the highest degree on the rubric. Within groups, students could be heard making statements about needing an additional item or missing an item, which indicates that providing students early access to the rubric allowed them to self-monitor throughout the task.I also informed students that I would be watching throughout the lesson to see if they were acting as team players and truly cooperating as they said they should in the introduction. Similarly, students were informed that at the end of the task they would have to evaluate each other and themselves as group and they were shown pictures of the peer and group evaluation forms in the Google Presentation. Next, I assigned students to certain roles within their groups, selecting titles and jobs that could be found on a real newspaper to try to make the task more genuine: editor, reporter, fact-checker, designer, photographer. From observation, and the accompanying anecdotal notes, it is clear that students were very focused on fulfilling their roles. On the one hand, this helped to ensure the participation of all students and encourage timely task completion. On the other hand, a few students only focused on their parts and did not collaborate with other group members for larger group decision-making which is an important skill of social interaction.   

Nicole and I opted to use anecdotal notes knowing that anecdotal notes and evaluation checklists help teachers to “track individual progress” (Levstik & Barton, 2001, p. 36). By focusing in on each individual student, I was provided a clearer picture of how students were meeting the goals of the lesson and not just how the groups’ projects were coming along. Most importantly, the anecdotal notes if collected regularly with cooperative learning lessons will allow me to track how students’ interactions are becoming more meaningful. Thus, this type of monitoring becomes more valuable if implemented over the long-term, not just one lesson.

           

Contrasting the inquiry-based lesson, this lesson was appropriately timed for student success. Overall, the students were able to successfully navigate the rubric, and create strong cooperative projects that incorporated the facts they learned from the direct instruction lesson and the idea of different points of view that they explored in the inquiry-based lesson. While I did provide some reminders about paying attention to the time, for the most part, students were able to self-regulate and plan accordingly.

The five elements of cooperative learning were facilitated throughout the lesson through careful planning. Positive interdependence was achieved by having each group complete one assignment, the newspaper, together. Thus, all students benefited from the contributions of every team member, thus encouraging all students to be part of the decision-making process. To facilitate individual accountability, all team members were responsible for the completion of their distinct roles within the group. I emphasized when introducing the task that in order to complete the project successfully, all of the roles would need to be fulfilled. The peer and self-evaluation forms also provided incentive for students to responsibly participate in the lesson. To achieve face-to-face interaction and promote social skills, students sat in unified groups and discussed ideas for how to create their newspapers. Based on the anecdotal notes and the peer evaluation forms, it is clear that students will need to continue to work on the social skills of effective leadership, decision-making, trust-building, communication, and conflict management. Lastly, to facilitate group processing, students were informed in advance that after the presentation, they would complete peer and group evaluation forms. Through these forms, students had to reflect on their own experience and determine ways that they could improve their teamwork in the future. While students completed the peer evaluation form independently, for the group self evaluation form, students were provided the opportunity to converse as a group, and together generate ideas for improvement.


Closure:Surprisingly, in terms of the peer and group self evaluation forms, many of the students’ peer ratings were aligned with what I observed in anecdotal notes indicating that the students have a clear understanding of how collaborative work is supposed to look. However, many students demonstrated difficulty evaluating themselves, giving higher scores than deserved. Many students recognized that arguing with other team members took up valuable time and made them poor team players. A particular issue that was documented in both my anecdotal notes and in the group processing forms were problems surrounding students in the role of editor (leader). In two groups, the leaders received low scores from peers and were defined as “bossy.” Other groups reflected that they needed to better control their volume next time and to "not fight." 
          
 
After the twenty-five minute work period, the groups were provided 3 minutes to practice presenting their newspapers. Students practiced having strong posture and making eye contact like the GoAnimate video advised. Then, students shared their newspapers with the class. Many groups chose to incorporate the Boston Tea Party and Boston Massacre into their newspapers, but some groups added unique items like an advertisement for a blacksmith or a causes of the American Revolution word search puzzle.

 Independent Practice:The independent practice assignment required that students evaluate what they learned from working in groups and how their groups could improve for the future as the social interaction objective, and to evaluate which event in their newspapers would most cause readers to join their side on the issue as the content objective. Of the twenty students who returned the assignment, nineteen either met or surpassed the score required for mastery indicating that the lesson appropriately led students to meet the social and content learning objectives. The structure of the questions also gave me a wealth of information as to what students had learned. In particular, the question asking for at least two examples of how groups can improve in the future, resulted in students thinking in terms of better quality products and methods to increase time-management. Students reasoned that increased cooperation and the assigning of group roles allows for more work to be completed in less time. Their explanations far surpassed what I was expecting, and never would have been documented had I not specifically asked for students to provide two examples for how their groups can improve. Similarly, by asking students to evaluate which event in their newspapers would cause readers to join their side, I was able to assess students’ application of factual knowledge and the generalizations about points of view that were emphasized in earlier lessons. Therefore, this summative assessment demonstrated students' mastery of not just this lesson's objectives but also those of earlier lessons in the unit. Several students were able to reason that the Boston Massacre, because colonists died, would make readers feel sympathetic to the colonists and join the colonists’ side.

Overall, I think that this cooperative lesson was successful at promoting social interaction skills while at the same time enhancing understanding of the facts and generalizations gained in the earlier lessons. Furthermore, these three lessons came together as a unit and had students increasingly gain understanding of the causes of the American Revolution and apply it.

References

Levstik, L.S., & Barton, K.C. (2001). Doing history: Investigating with children in elementary and middle schools. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

What is Cooperative Learning? (n.d.). Retrieved April 2, 2015, from http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/cooperative/whatis.html#elements

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.