Portals to The Past

 

It’s no surprise to me that teaching with tangible artifacts is an extremely motivational and thought-provoking teaching strategy. When I was in elementary school, my class went on a field trip to a historic house from the American Colonial period. I remember seeing and touching hard-tack and other artifacts that were passed around before my class explored the property. We participated in an activity that involved marching with wooden muskets from the American Revolution. At the end of the field trip, we were paid with replica currency from the time period. Today, that small, yellow copy of a colonial 5-shilling note sits in my dresser drawer along other replicas I have made myself! Next to my desk, mounted to my wall is a display case which holds real musket balls, a mini ball from the Civil War, my Grandfather’s Cold War army patches, medals and so much more! When I was about 9 years old, I started collecting coins, stamps and currency. So, I think it is reasonable to conclude that no one understands the excitement that real artifacts bring more than I do!

The bottom line is that artifacts inspire curiosity and an appreciation for different people and time periods. In my opinion, nothing connects us to the past better than artifacts do. They show us how studying history is like travelling to a foreign land. This is precisely why they are perfect tools for an inquiry lesson. As a future educator, I plan to use objects and artifacts often. But I believe the learning theory behind artifacts is incomplete. The truth is that hands on IS minds on learning. According to the theories explored in Building literacy skills across the curriculum: Forging connections with the past through artifacts, the best theoretical approaches to instruction using artifacts include to many traditional tools. One of the strategies begins the lesson by breaking students up-into groups to analyze small artifacts. Their task is to draw as much knowledge as they can be observing. Once this phase of the lesson is over and done with, we regress right back to research in the computer lab (Fuhler, et. al., 2006). To be blunt, education relies far too much on screens and the internet. As a future educator, I would use an artifact to inspire motivation and curiosity in my students by kicking off the unit with an artifact bag. The next phases of my lessons would be quite different by using books which is discussed in the article as an effective cross-curricular tool. My students would learn how to study history the same way real historians do. I would teach them how to look up books that may be connected to their artifact. From there, they could find other titles and sources that could lead to even more information.

I went through this process myself as I conducted my professional research for a previous blog about the German Me-262 which will soon be published in World at War Magazine later this year! I began my investigation in Washington D.C. several years ago at the National Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. There, I was able to spend time with an authentic Me-262 that was captured and brought to the U.S shortly after WWII. I read several secondary sources (books) with different historical perspectives which I cross examined for discrepancies. Within those books, I found leads that took me to primary sources written by the pilots who flew the 262. I also read a segment from the autobiography of Albert Speer who had an interesting part in my story. I learned to examine certain key details in historical photos which were enclosed with all the research I had read. This is the process I would have my students follow with few exceptions. One exception includes being able to access documents from the national archives over the internet about a particular moment in history. Another is using the resources on the Ellis Island website since they carry only original records of individuals who passed through. The only drawback to this however, is that those resources are available for a fee. Now that I think of it, the best inquiry lesson for teaching history is a family tree project. Using artifacts, photos and original documents, the students could find clues and investigate their roots. In that case, students would be using artifacts to help them fill in the ancestral gaps in their family tree. They would be given the option of a presentation, written report or flip grid video. If the student had another idea for completing the assignment, they would simply have to pitch it to the instructor for approval. Providing students with choice is a fundamental part of any lesson. I also believe that a project about family history includes and validates students from all different cultures and backgrounds.

As a future educator, I would use objects from the current times and have my students create a time capsule they could bury and excavate in the future. I believe this would be a great lesson about continuity by showing how things change over time. I would also design a project that would involve the students creating their own artifact! This is an application of the highest order of thought represented in Bloom’s taxonomy. Such a project would conclude a topical unit by having students APPLY their knowledge and to CREATE something original. To conclude, I believe that teaching with artifacts is the best approach. However, let’s try to remember that an artifact can be something original OR something that students create. That is how educators can turn on the minds of students and instill a lifelong love of learning and curiosity.

Citation

Fuhler, C. J., Farris, P. J., & Nelson, P. A. (2006). Building literacy skills across the curriculum: Forging connections with the past through artifacts. The Reading Teacher, 59(7). https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwC7OGFCEPfydmZyOVREOXNDSUE/view.

Theory vs. Practice

 

It’s one thing to study learning theory but it’s another to put it into practice on real students. As an educator in training, I will discuss the direct instruction theory which I studied and attempted to apply during my fieldwork experience. The truth is theory always seems to make sense until we apply it in real-world situations. As an educator in training, I spent a considerable amount of time learning about the direct instruction theory. Although before my eye-opening application of this concept, I had my own perception of what it was and how to use it.

For me, direct instruction was always delivered through a lecture where I could inject humor and thought-provoking questions into the lesson. In my professional career as a historian, I like to establish a dialogue with my audience as I teach. Engaging them in a conversation causes them to be active learners. Let’s be brutally honest with ourselves, lecture can become boring, dry and dull very quickly without any creative measures added to it. In theory, direct instruction is meant to be a teacher-controlled strategy where the students function like sponges. But, does a sponge think? No! In my professional opinion, active learning takes place when students are engaged in active thought with the instructor. Teaching students how to be perceptive and deep thinkers is one of the most important things an educator can accomplish. For me, the only way to accomplish this with direct instruction is to betray the nature of the theory by teaching students to form concepts and definitions in their own words rather than spoon feeding one that has been pre-packaged for obedient robot-like thought.

The theory of direct instruction calls for repetition and automation which means the students should be able to repeat content they have been taught. However, this does not mean at all that they will truly learn the nature of the content taught. In our teaching of literacy, word callers do not understand what they have read. The same can be said for students who are taught to simply echo what they are taught in class. From here, it is reasonable to conclude that students who recite and echo content have not truly learned anything. If we take a look at Bloom’s taxonomy of higher-order thought, we will notice that memorization is located at the bottom of the pyramid. That is because it represents the lowest level of thought and does not give the student the understanding to interpret, demonstrate or create something original. Creativity is represented at the top of Bloom’s pyramid because it is the highest level of thought and understanding. In my professional opinion, creativity is the best demonstration that learning has occurred. The logic is simple. If a student understands content deeply enough, they will be able to apply it and create by drawing from their knowledge. For example, if a student can take a spoon-fed definition of a concept and interpret it in their own words, that student has learned.

If we take things one step further and recognize that in our diversifying classrooms, pre-packaged one size fits all concepts and definitions simply will not do the job. The truth is that times have changed and educators must validate all perspectives. This is very important when teaching Social Studies since there are multiple perspective about the same event or time period. For example, an American Indian student will not feel validated by the European lie, that is, the story of the first Thanksgiving. The bottom line is that we must encourage thought instead of the recitation of words or the memorization of manufactured concepts for a standardized exam. Automation, in my professional opinion, is not learning. If we return to my example from my professional lectures, I can safely assert that engaging the audience in thought as I feed them information is a better way of delivering direct instruction. As I deliver the information, I give them the tools to answer my thoughtful questions. In addition, since the audience is aware that I will call on them to respond to prompts, they pay attention. As a result, all my students have walked away from my classes and lectures having truly learned something.

Before I began my graduate education to be trained as an educator, I had no formal training. But I did have experience. I taught an 8-week class at Vassar College that I designed from scratch. I delivered my content through lecture, slides and prompts. I discovered that engaging my students in active thought resulted in learning. I felt surprised to learn the true theory of direct instruction and now after comparing my previous execution with the theory I have learned I believe that my own method is more effective. For most students, the situation would be reversed but for me, teaching has always been my dream and always is a long time to create a vision for the best ways to create the best learners. To conclude, I disagree with the existing theory of direct instruction but as a graduate student, I will humbly seek to learn more about why it is what it is. I believe that learning more will assist my efforts to re-invent how direct instruction is implemented in my classroom and my career.

Cross Curricular Geography

 

Until this point in my graduate study of education, I never associated the study of geography with social studies. Rather, I regarded it as a separate discipline. Not only have I learned it’s true place in academics but I have come up with excellent cross curricular methods of teaching geography. As an aviation historian, I have studied in great detail the navigation methods of WWII pilots over both land and sea. One afternoon, I found myself studying the methods of teaching geography as a graduate student and a neuron fired a lesson plan which I will elaborate on in this blog.

The story begins with a lecture I gave at the Cornwall Public Library about the battle of Midway. I was curious about how the naval aviators found their way navigating a battle field that consisted of nothing but wide-open ocean. In my study, I discovered how they used navigation by radio, the position of the sun, waypoints and something else called dead reckoning. Dead reckoning is easily the most complicated and sophisticated method of navigation. It requires calculation of wind speed, course plus the aid of waypoints. It requires a lot of skills and training because with dead reckoning, a small error could cost the entire bombing mission. Navigators had to be trained in calculating the time delay and drift caused by a cross-wind to keep the aircraft on course. Other bomber pilots used tools called sextants and used the position of the sun to determine their location.

So, what does all this history have to do with the perfect geography lesson? Well, the answer is using this history to build a simulation lesson. This would be a cross-curricular lesson between history and geography where the teacher would create a target destination for a simulated WWII bombing mission. The students would learn only the basic concepts of dead reckoning to find their way to the target on a map. The teacher would provide the situation indicating head-winds or cross-winds, the location of the target and so on. An enthusiastic instructor could dress up the lesson with historical photographs and displaying maps on the smart-board. A teacher could even take this lesson one step further and mold it into a cooperative lesson. The instructor could divide the class into small groups, each group would represent a bomber crew, and t he students within each group would split the responsibilities of navigating to the target. This lesson would incorporate all aspects of geography and since it is an interactive lesson with complex and tasks requiring lots of thought, I believe it would be a home run for any social studies teacher.