Issue 122: Jan 31, 2011 Connections Newsletter
Extending Thinking in History Classes
Debbie Willingham
Jan 31, 2011
How can your students better understand the past through Extending Thinking activities?
When you consider the ways you extend your students’ thinking about what they are learning, you first need to think about what they really need to know in depth about the content. Ask yourself, “Is this important in the big picture of what students are learning in this course, and if so, why?” Based on that, think about what you want them to consider in greater depth and how you want them to think about it.
In history classes, there are usually two main reasons that details are important in the topics/events/eras we teach. The first reason is that you can best understand the present by knowing what has happened in the past. Using historical events, actions, and beliefs to find patterns (abstracting), look at different points of view (analyzing perspectives), and make comparisons (compare/contrast) should automatically happen on a consistent basis in every history classroom. The second reason details are important is that you put them together in order to see the bigger picture—you use both inductive and deductive reasoning as well as error analysis as you put the pieces of history together in order to understand it.
Often you immediately want your students to move to a deeper level of understanding as you teach an acquisition lesson, and you can almost always incorporate one of the top eight Extending Thinking strategies in an activity or assignment as a natural part of the lesson. Have students consider what they have learned in several lessons and how the content from them fits together in some way; in those instances an Extending Thinking lesson in which the primary focus of the lesson is the activity/task that leads students to a greater understanding of and bigger schema of how history fits together is most appropriate. In either type of lesson, there are many easy, automatic ways to increase the rigor by having students think at a higher level. Consider each of the following Extending Thinking strategies and examples of their fit:
Abstracting: looking for and expounding on the patterns seen in settlement or colonization efforts both in characteristics, purpose, and challenges; or explaining the patterns that are found in events leading to different wars or conflicts
Analyzing Perspectives: seeing different political viewpoints; opposing sides in war
Classifying/Categorizing: people, places, events, or things
Comparing/Contrasting: groups of people or individuals; religions; governments
Constructing Support: taking one side of a historical issue; supporting a historical decision; supporting or opposing a political viewpoints
Deductive Reasoning: explaining how a series of steps, actions, or events led to an irrefutable conclusion
Error Analysis: finding and describing errors or mistakes in judgment, decision-making, economic planning, or military planning and looking for alternative actions that would have changed the outcomes
Inductive Reasoning: considering/predicting what might happen (or might have happened) with a particular set of circumstances; making inferences about people, attitudes, and actions based on the details given; answering “what if” questions
In addition, there are many opportunities for you to take advantage of current events to link to whatever era in history you are teaching. Commercial products such as History Alive! and Art in History also provide opportunities for students to delve deeper into the thinking and workings of past civilizations and generations. In addition, the Bill of Rights in Action, produced by the Constitutional Rights Foundation, is a free quarterly resource that provides Extending Thinking lesson plans on a given topic for US and World History classes.
However you choose to incorporate higher level thinking in your classes, remember that it is an integral part of the teaching of history. If you only have students consider history on the surface level and just memorize facts, you are wasting obvious and invaluable chances to deepen their understanding and really appreciate the vast importance of what they are learning.
Extending Thinking with RAFT Writing
Bill Blynt
Jan 31, 2011
As state assessments continue to increase the number of ExtendingThinking questions, you also need to increase the opportunities you provide your students with to develop Extending Thinking strategies. In addition, states are placing increased emphasis on the need for students to become better writers. Content teachers are consistently asked to have their students do more writing in their class. Writing can be a vehicle to address both of these responsibilities.
Writing is an effective way to help students synthesize their understanding; however, students tend to view writing as a labor intensive chore with little benefit to them. As a result, their writing is often of poor quality. This lack of a quality end-product is frustrating and defeats the purpose of using writing as a learning tool.
One way to provide students with Extending Thinking experiences and promote writing for learning is to use the RAFT strategy. A RAFT (Santa, 1988; Santa, Havens and Valdes, 2004) activity infuses a writing assignment with imagination, creativity and motivation. The strategy involves writing from a viewpoint other than that of a student, to an audience other than the teacher, and in the form other than a standard assignment or in response to a question prompt. Therefore, students are encouraged to use creative thinking and learning strategies as they connect their imagination to newly learned information.
RAFT is an acronym for:
- R= Role - Who are you? What role will you assume? Painter, Refrigerator, Army Tank
- A= Audience - Who will read your work? Parent, Moon, President of US
- F= Format - What type of writing will you do? Letter, Postcard, Obituary
- T= Topic - What will you be writing about? Poverty in Your Community, Bullying= Topic - What will you be writing about? Poverty in Your Community, Bullying
The purpose of RAFTs is to give students a fresh way to think about approaching their writing. It requires a different type of writing that falls somewhere between standard essays and free-for-all creative writing. RAFTs require students to extend their thinking and utilize effective strategies while they develop their response. They require students to think about content from a different perspective. Provide multiple options to the students when developing RAFT assignments. Introducing choice into the assignment will serve as a motivator or can facilitate differentiation within the assignment. RAFT tasks should be graded using a pre-developed rubric.
Some possible RAFTs are:
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Buehl,D. (2001). Classroom strategies for interactive learning. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. |
Additional Examples can be found at:
http://curry.virginia.edu/files/rafts.pdf,
http://daretodifferentiate.wikispace...T.+Assignments
http://www.tantasqua.org/superintend...nt/etraft.html
