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Student-Centered Teaching Methods In the History Classroom: Ideas, Issues, and Insights for New Teachers more by irene laroche25,356

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  Social Studies Research and Practicehttp://www.socstrp.org  Volume 5 Number 2 53 Summer 2010Finally, teacher candidates are struck byhow important it is to give middle and highschool students’ meaningful academic work tocomplete during small group time. Withoutactivities that students find interesting and rele-vant, all the teacher-made rules, regulations,and routines in the world are not likely toproduce learning results. One high school stud-ent teacher created a 5-4-3-2-1 activity wheresmall groups analyzed the distribution of wealth in the world. Students were asked to listfive countries they deemed rich or poor, andthen place a sticky note on a large world mapfor each one. Once all the group choices weredisplayed, the students were asked to generatefour observations about the map and threequestions about their observations. The stu-dents then had to offer two possible explana-

tions for one of the questions before decidingon one explanation that best explained their ob-servation. The students responded positively tothis activity, demonstrating for this teachercandidate that students will do small groupwork that they consider purposeful and mea-ningful. Primary Source AnalysisPrimary source material is the second stu-dent-centered instructional method we discussin our history teaching methods class (Table 3).Written by real people dealing with complexissues and problems of their times, primarysources have a unique capacity to engage stud-ents in the study ofthe past (Schur, 2007;Veccia, 2003). Some sources are essentialdocuments of American democracy such as theMagna Carta, Declaration of Independence,Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Sentiments. Students gain an understanding of the principles of our society by reading and dis-cussing these materials. Other sources (Abra-ham Lincoln’s “Gettys burg Address” or MartinLuther King’s “Letter Fr om a BirminghamJail”) present history as it was lived, from afirst-person point of view that invites interpre-tation and analysis. As one history teacher can-didate concluded:Teaching the „agreed upon‟ history pr e-sented by textbooks is boring and oftentimes unfaithful to history, whether deli-berate or not.Primary source documentsallow us to give the students the sense of „being there,‟ as well as to teach themthat there are many different viewpointsof history that must be taken into consid-eration. …, comparing their students’ res 

 ponses to small group activities versus whole class lec- tures, teacher candidates tell us that student  passivity, not student activity, is a significant barrier to effective instruction.

  Social Studies Research and Practicehttp://www.socstrp.org  Volume 5 Number 2 54 Summer 2010Table 3. Ideas, Issues, and Insights for Primary SourcesStudent-CenteredTeaching MethodIdeas(benefits & accomplishments) Issues(complexities & tensions)Insights(future plans & strategies)PrimarySources First-hand accounts give amore enriched understandingof how life was lived in thepast. They give students thesense of “being there” asevents happenedLanguage in sources can bedifficult for students to read;students become bogged downand frustrated by not justindividual words, but syntax aswell.Provide primary source texts inlarger fonts with plenty of space for students to writecomments and

responses.Primary sources teach studentsthat there are many differentviewpoints that must be takeninto consideration whenanalyzing events.Students may not havedeveloped their abilities todraw conclusions, think critically, and carry on aconversation about what theyare reading or watching.(When students struggle withterms in a reading, stop theactivity and engage in a class-wide discussion).Use stimulating openers to getstudents engaged with sources;for example, use the PetersProjection Map as a way tostart looking athistoric maps.Visual primary sources (maps,photos, political cartoons, art,drawings) engage the interestof many students.Have specific questions forstudents to answer whilereading or after reading aprimary source.Sources offer useful ways toconnect modern dayevents tohistorical ones; for exampleProhibition and marijuanarepeal or the wars in Vietnamand Iraq.Develop an ongoing vocabu-lary list of unfamiliar termsand concepts from sources.As students read primarysources more frequently, theirlevel of comfort increases, asdoes their ability to interpretthe material and draw outimportant information.Preview sources beforehanding them to the students asa way to set the context for thematerial and to identifypotentially confusing languageand concepts.When students struggle withprimary source material, stop areading activity and discuss thesource as a whole class.Invite students to createmodern everyday languagetranslations of sources.

  Social Studies Research and Practicehttp://www.socstrp.org  Volume 5 Number 2 55 Summer 2010Repeatedly in their reflections, teacher can-didates described how primary sources makehistory meaningful for students.“Students donot get the full impact of any event when theyread history textbooks,”stated one candidate.“ All they get are the facts. When a student reads the firsthand account of someone duringany time period, they get a much more enrich-ing understanding of how life was during thetime being studied.”Primary sources also bringhistorical events alive in uniquely compellingways as one candidate found when she taughtabout the Lowell Mill Girls during the earlyindustrial period in Massachusetts:Students can read the factual informa-tion about a time period, but they canalso get the feelings that some peoplehad during the time. . . Students willlearn that some women went to work inorder to get a male family member through school. They get this fact, but they also get the feelings ofthe women.Still, using primary source materials in classraises significant issues for new teacher candi-dates, and for their students as well. Thelanguage of primary source documents can bedifficult to read, as one new teacher candidaterecalled after asking his students to interpretWorld War I propaganda posters. He foundthese documents “bold and exciting, much morecolorful and emotional than text reading,” butsome students found “

the language of images,symbols, etc. on the posters challenging to the point of frustration.”Another candidate put herstudents in groups of three to read and explainthe first five paragraphs from Thomas Jeffer-son’s First Inaugural Address: “I discovered that the students got caught up too much in thelanguage and became bogged down and  frustrated by not just the individual words, but by the syntax the address was written in.” Other candidates noted that many importantprimary sources are lengthy documents so thereis never enough time in a 45- or even 90-minuteclass period for students to read one entirely.Candidates found themselves unsure how todecide which parts of a document they shouldask their students to read.Developing strategies for reading and ana-lyzing primary sources proved to be a puzzlingissuefor teacher candidates. Asking individualstudents to read dense text silently was general-ly ineffective. Students became bored and didnot finish the assignment. Having not read orunderstood the material, the students wereunable to discuss these documents, creatingeven more boredom and frustration. As onecandidate noted after having his students readMartin Luther King, Jr’s “I Have a Dream”Speech: I expected students to understand thematerial without any insight from me. I thought the document was easy to un-derstand, but I don‟t think that is rea-sonable anymore. In the future, I willanalyze each document so every stu-dent has a good foundation and start-ing point.Putting students in small groups to help eachother interpret a document after it has been readaloud can also be problematic. Middle and highschool students often have not developed theirabilities to draw conclusions, think critically,and carry on a nuanced conversation aboutwhat

they are reading. Groups become stymiedby the task of interpretation and efforts todiscuss the material and may end up in argu-ments about personal opinions or beliefs.Despite problems, teachercandidates of-fered the following insights about using prima-ry sources in the classroom. First, continuedexposure to primary source material generatesimprovements in students’ analytical andinterpretive skills. Noted one high schoolstudent teacher, as “students read primarysources more frequently, their level of comfort and their ability to interpret and draw out important information will increase.” 

  Social Studies Research and Practicehttp://www.socstrp.org  Volume 5 Number 2 56 Summer 2010Second, middle and high school stu-dents need specific questions to answer as theyread primary documents. One teacher candidatehad his class, “keep a running vocabulary list so the next time they read a source they will be familiar with the words.”Another suggested,“when students are struggling, stop the readingactivity and begin a class-wide interpretation of the source.”

A third teacher used group work and a real-world scenario to focus on historicalcomprehension andunderstanding of primarysources related to Prohibition: I explained to the students that it was1925 and they are going to have ameeting with their Congressional rep-resentatives to try to influence their vote for or against the following prop-osition:„Should the production, sale,and consumption of alcohol continueto be prohibited under the law?‟ I split the room so that half of the studentswere on the pro side of prohibition and half of the students were on the conside of prohibition. I selected five stu-dents to be our Congressional repre-sentatives. I then gave the students aselection of primary source readingsthat I complied along with a document analysis sheet and told them to taketime to read through and mine thedocuments for three stellar points theycould use for their debate to emphasizetheir position.Third, middle and high school students en- joy creating everyday language translations of primary sources. When students re-state keyterms and ideas in their own words, they gain agreater sense of ownership of the material. Onemiddle school teacher candidate displayed acopy of the Declaration of Independence on aninteractive whiteboard in the front of theclassroom.As his students discussed thedocument and proposed everyday words assynonyms for 18thcentury language, he addedthem above the text on the board for everyoneto see. The result was lively class participationand a broadened understanding of the documentby the students.Finally, students respond when teachers useprimary sources that are not just text-baseddocuments, as one candidate after: Musical lyrics and artistic images aregreat ways to foster critical thinking.When listening to music and looking at images, the information is not alwaysthere for the taking, you have to dig alittle deeper to really understand it. Bylooking closely at each line and asking,„Why do you think this one was writ 

ten?‟  „What is behind it?‟  „What do they meanwhen they sing this?‟   It forces the stu-dents to look in-depth and make an in-terpretation. Just like when I spokeabout having to listen and dissect what an artist is singing, the same is truewhen having tocreate a political car-toon or political poster.Another candidate saw the importance of combining multiple primary sources as part of alesson on the Vietnam War: After reviewing counter-culture and mainstream movements, the students had to interpret them and demonstrate their interpretations by creating “hawk/silent majority” or “dove/hippie” political cartoons or political posters. . . We read an excerpt from [President Richard M.] Nixon‟s Silent Majority speech, looked at cartoons from a counter-cultural perspective, and listened and read thelyrics of protest song.Role Plays and SimulationsRole-plays and simulations are a third stu-dent-centered teaching method highlighted inour historyinstructional methods class (Table

  Social Studies Research and Practicehttp://www.socstrp.org 

 Volume 5 Number 2 57 Summer 20104). As a teaching strategy, role-plays andsimulations encompass a wide range of activi-ties from dramatizing pivotal moments (Consti-tutional Convention of 1787), to re-enactingkey events (1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott), toconducting mock trials (famous Supreme Courtcases). Such activities canbe highly engaginginstructional methods in history classrooms.Many students like to perform in front of anaudience and the opportunity of playing a roleproduces greater involvement and discussionthan when teachers lecture and ask questions.Table 4. Issues, Insights, and Ideas for Role Plays & SimulationsStudent-CenteredTeaching MethodIdeas(benefits andaccomplishments) Issues(complexities and tensions)Insights(future plans and strategies)Role Plays &SimulationsRole-Plays and simulationsprovide fun-filled and informa-tive ways to illustrate themultiple perspectives that arepart of any historical event.Some students are shy orexperience stage fright in frontof the class.Give students sources andinformation about people andevents so everyone hasinformation on which to basetheir roles.Use role-plays to recreatehistorical situations (for example,factory labor for children inEnglish factories can be de-fended or opposed as part of thestudy of the Factory Act).Students may overact theirparts, or become silly ordisruptive, and the role-playthus presents a classroommanagement problem.Go over rules for appropriatebehavior and conduct beforebeginning a role-play orsimulation activity.Students become invested inwhat they arelearning since it isfrom the point of view of historical individuals or groups.Students find it difficult torole-play a famous historicalfigure.Assess preparation as well asperformance in giving gradesfor students. Some studentsmay have understood theirroles, but not performed themwell in class.Use role-plays to teach otherwiseabstract ideas or

concepts (forexample, having students createskits and songs about theeconomic and taxationpoliciesthat contributed to the start of theRevolutionary War).Give roles to groups, not justindividuals, to broaden theactivity.Debrief after a role-play torestate key points andclarifyany historical misunderstand-ings or misinformation.Establish more concrete way of evaluating role-plays thanasking one person to speak onbehalf of the group, such as acombination of oral andwritten responses by allmembers of the group.Use short (one to fiveminutelong) role-plays and simula-tions to illustrate a particularconcept or event.

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