However, while many teachers loved the idea of teaching more with primary sources, they were often ill-equipped for knowing the right strategies for helping students break apart the documents placed in from of them. So, here's my quick how-to suggestions:
- Encourage student collaboration. Whether students are analyzing text, images, charts, maps or graphs, they can be easily overwhelmed with the task. Many complain they do not know where to start or they feel they are not following the correct steps to complete the task. But if students are working in pairs or small groups, they can discuss the guiding questions and work their way through the reading material together.
- Use Think-Pair-Share activities (my next how-to post!) or a Jigsaw to allow students the opportunity to process the content and to reinforce it through discussion and "teaching" with their peers.
- Always encourage step by step analysis. I love using spiral questioning with my primary source analysis activities, and this method gives students the confidence to read further and to leap with assumptions they can then further investigate to prove right or wrong!
- Vary the primary sources you use in your instruction. If students only see text, they will tire out quickly and will lose interest in the topic of study. Instead, add in images, music, video, and any other form of media available to make your topic much more fun and engaging for students to enjoy as they learn.
- Always allow students the opportunity to process what they have learned. Whether you use a short exit slip or a full writing prompt, be sure to assess your students understanding of the content and their ability to take from the documents the relevant content.
Be sure to check out the How-To Category of my blog, A Lesson Plan for Teachers, for more great tips for the secondary classroom!
Happy Teaching!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for visiting my blog. I welcome your comments, and if you'd like to discuss further, please send me a note using the contact form on the right.