I wear many hats as a teacher at a small international school accredited with WASC and ACSI. One of them is the 7/8 Social Studies teacher (perhaps, considering this lesson, it looks like a deerstalker). The MHS teachers have been working together as a team to develop a strong curriculum based. For historical subjects, we use a combination of Common Core and McCrel World History Standards which are divided up between grades, and, for combined classrooms like 7/8 years.
This year I’ve decided to start with a strong emphasis on critical reading skills. These are foundational for much of what we do after, and the sooner the students get comfortable using these skills again, and developing them further, the more fun stuff we can do.
So I’m starting out with a review on close reading/pulling out the main points of the text followed closely by
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.6
Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author's point of view or purpose (e.g., loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).
20th Century history (the year that I am on) is rife with propaganda and people telling events from their points of view. It is therefore necessary for students to be able to navigate what people are actually saying and why they are saying it.
Unfortunately, the importance of this skill doesn’t stop at 20th Century sources. With the internet comes a plague of lies and misrepresentations, Holocaust denial not least among them. It is important to give our students such tools to help them navigate this minefield of truth.
To do this, we’ll compare their job as student historians to that of a detective. We’ll watch a clip of Sherlock and his crazy wall, and discuss what it means to be a detective. After starting with the facts, we’ll move on to this standard: motive.
By the time the students have finished this unit, they should be able to:
— Understand an author's point of view or purpose in writing
— Be able to find clues about the author's intention
—Be able to pull out signs of propaganda or bias:
- loaded language
- inclusion or avoidance of particular facts
To gain an understanding of point of view and how words and events can be twisted, we’ll start with looking at The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. Students will listen to it once just to get a flow of the story. Then they will listen to it again, jotting down ways we see his point of view and ways he twists the story. I’ll have them discuss their notes (and add to them) first, and then bring it together as a group, writing things they’ve noticed on the board. We’ll also talk about other ways people can twist stories.
For homework, they are to talk with their parents and come up with current examples of twisting truth in the news or online. They need to write down their findings and bring them in on a small card.
The students will then work at gaining a deeper understanding of these ideas through making videos based on fairytales or other well-known tales. They will be asked to choose a particular point of view (may do a sample story & brainstorming session with them to get them started). Then they have to figure out how to tell the story from that viewpoint. Before they start filming they have to okay their plan with me, as this video is a formative assessment.
They will be given a deadline and will have to show their videos to the class in whatever state of completion they are in. Students will write down their thoughts about each one and what techniques are being used. This will be an informal assessment, so that I can see where they are in understanding.
We will then move on to the real detective work. I will show them a piece of work I used to teach looking at the main points of a text and being able to accurately recall it. This time, I will be going through and highlighting the point of view of the author and commenting on any loaded language or distortion of facts that I come across.
We’ll then pull out one we did together as a class, and teams will take turns sending up members to underline things.
Then the students will do one (also evaluated previously for main ideas) in their groups together, passing it on to check. If something is believed to be improperly highlighted, students should put a small x in pencil on the offending highlighted line and write why they think it is wrong in the margins.
Finally they will do it individually, checking their work as a group. This will be a timed activity, with them setting a record for them to be in similar activities. I will gather these up at the end of the day, and give them written feedback, going over trouble spots with individuals or the group as needed.
They will then be given detective packets which include a bias worksheet that hones in thinking through the author’s intent. They will have free choice of a range of primary and secondary documents from the early 20th century which deal with various aspects found in the McCrel World History Standards. This will be another assessment. Students will be allowed to fill out more than one, and choose their best for grading. Every time they complete one, it will be recorded in their team stats along with its difficulty level. So one team might have 7 with a difficulty level of 2 and another might have only 4 with a difficulty level of 5. We will try to keep this up as a running total throughout the quarter or semester (depending on how well the students work together as a team, and whether things need moving around).
To keep with our detective theme, space permitting, we may put our findings on a crazy wall, displaying the range of points of view and ideas of the early 1900s.
Finally, for homework students will be asked to choose one of their analysed sources and write a letter to the editor from the point of view of its author. They will also have to write a paragraph on a separate piece of paper (stapled on to the first) explaining why they made the choices they made. Is he the kind of person who would leave facts out? Would she make loaded statements? Why? This gives a more real world application to the silly team exercise at the beginning, and enables me to check for a full understanding of the idea of point of view.
It also prepares them for the next unit, where they will be researching to create their own persona from WWI.
This year I’ve decided to start with a strong emphasis on critical reading skills. These are foundational for much of what we do after, and the sooner the students get comfortable using these skills again, and developing them further, the more fun stuff we can do.
So I’m starting out with a review on close reading/pulling out the main points of the text followed closely by
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.6-8.6
Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author's point of view or purpose (e.g., loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).
20th Century history (the year that I am on) is rife with propaganda and people telling events from their points of view. It is therefore necessary for students to be able to navigate what people are actually saying and why they are saying it.
Unfortunately, the importance of this skill doesn’t stop at 20th Century sources. With the internet comes a plague of lies and misrepresentations, Holocaust denial not least among them. It is important to give our students such tools to help them navigate this minefield of truth.
To do this, we’ll compare their job as student historians to that of a detective. We’ll watch a clip of Sherlock and his crazy wall, and discuss what it means to be a detective. After starting with the facts, we’ll move on to this standard: motive.
By the time the students have finished this unit, they should be able to:
— Understand an author's point of view or purpose in writing
— Be able to find clues about the author's intention
—Be able to pull out signs of propaganda or bias:
- loaded language
- inclusion or avoidance of particular facts
To gain an understanding of point of view and how words and events can be twisted, we’ll start with looking at The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. Students will listen to it once just to get a flow of the story. Then they will listen to it again, jotting down ways we see his point of view and ways he twists the story. I’ll have them discuss their notes (and add to them) first, and then bring it together as a group, writing things they’ve noticed on the board. We’ll also talk about other ways people can twist stories.
For homework, they are to talk with their parents and come up with current examples of twisting truth in the news or online. They need to write down their findings and bring them in on a small card.
The students will then work at gaining a deeper understanding of these ideas through making videos based on fairytales or other well-known tales. They will be asked to choose a particular point of view (may do a sample story & brainstorming session with them to get them started). Then they have to figure out how to tell the story from that viewpoint. Before they start filming they have to okay their plan with me, as this video is a formative assessment.
They will be given a deadline and will have to show their videos to the class in whatever state of completion they are in. Students will write down their thoughts about each one and what techniques are being used. This will be an informal assessment, so that I can see where they are in understanding.
We will then move on to the real detective work. I will show them a piece of work I used to teach looking at the main points of a text and being able to accurately recall it. This time, I will be going through and highlighting the point of view of the author and commenting on any loaded language or distortion of facts that I come across.
We’ll then pull out one we did together as a class, and teams will take turns sending up members to underline things.
Then the students will do one (also evaluated previously for main ideas) in their groups together, passing it on to check. If something is believed to be improperly highlighted, students should put a small x in pencil on the offending highlighted line and write why they think it is wrong in the margins.
Finally they will do it individually, checking their work as a group. This will be a timed activity, with them setting a record for them to be in similar activities. I will gather these up at the end of the day, and give them written feedback, going over trouble spots with individuals or the group as needed.
They will then be given detective packets which include a bias worksheet that hones in thinking through the author’s intent. They will have free choice of a range of primary and secondary documents from the early 20th century which deal with various aspects found in the McCrel World History Standards. This will be another assessment. Students will be allowed to fill out more than one, and choose their best for grading. Every time they complete one, it will be recorded in their team stats along with its difficulty level. So one team might have 7 with a difficulty level of 2 and another might have only 4 with a difficulty level of 5. We will try to keep this up as a running total throughout the quarter or semester (depending on how well the students work together as a team, and whether things need moving around).
To keep with our detective theme, space permitting, we may put our findings on a crazy wall, displaying the range of points of view and ideas of the early 1900s.
Finally, for homework students will be asked to choose one of their analysed sources and write a letter to the editor from the point of view of its author. They will also have to write a paragraph on a separate piece of paper (stapled on to the first) explaining why they made the choices they made. Is he the kind of person who would leave facts out? Would she make loaded statements? Why? This gives a more real world application to the silly team exercise at the beginning, and enables me to check for a full understanding of the idea of point of view.
It also prepares them for the next unit, where they will be researching to create their own persona from WWI.
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