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Interesting article and video showing teacher modeling/thinking strategies (though not specifically named) and student discourse in a history classroom.

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February 2017 | Volume 74 | Number 5
Literacy in Every Classroom Pages 82-83

Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey

These teachers apprentice students into thinking like historians.

Joanna Schaefer and Javier Vaca often combine their two history classes so that students can observe how historians wrestle with ideas. As Ms. Schaefer says, "When Mr. Vaca and I are in the room together, we can have a conversation that's similar to what historians really do. We consider different perspectives and respond to the statements that the other person makes. It's really a give-and-take. We hope that as our students experience this, they'll naturally start thinking like historians on their own."

In the video that accompanies this column, we visit the teachers' combined 11th grade classes and observe as they demonstrate for students how historians explore primary sources. As part of this lesson, the students examine three documents related to the struggle to obtain voting rights for women in the United States in the early 20th century. The two teachers model their analysis of the first document (an advertisement depicting the vote on women's suffrage as a choice between "the home or the street corner for women").

Students collaboratively read the second and third documents: a 1912 article from an anti-suffrage newspaper, The Woman's Protest Against Woman's Suffrage; and congressman John A. Moon's speech in the House of Representatives on January 10, 1918, in which he played on both racist and patriotic sentiments to oppose suffrage. By the end of the class, students are ready to write with a new understanding of the views that were mainstream at a specific point in history.

Ms. Schaefer and Mr. Vaca are demonstrating a powerful strategy for teaching disciplinary literacy-teacher modeling. To make the most of this strategy, teachers need to do two things: understand the specific aspects of thinking in their discipline, and make sure to turn the thinking over to students.

Understand the Thinking in Your Discipline

As several articles in this issue have noted, thinking like a historian is different from thinking like a scientist, a literary critic, a mathematician, an artist, or a fitness expert. As teachers model, they should consider these differences and plan for students to be apprenticed into the specific thinking of their discipline. For example, when analyzing literature, professionals look at such elements as

* Author's craft (the choices an author made, including genre, type of narrator, and literary devices).

* Theme (the underlying message or big idea that indicates the author's belief about life, as well as how this message relates to universal themes that transcend culture and language to explore the human experience).
Historians, in contrast, are more likely to engage in such cognitive practices as

* Sourcing (examining who produced the document and how that source affects the document's viewpoint and reliability).

* Corroborating (reading across multiple documents to identify points of agreement and disagreement).

* Contextualizing (considering the document in historical context, including when it was written, where, and what else was happening at the time).

Ms. Schaefer and Mr. Vaca focus on two of these disciplinary practices as they model how to think like a historian: sourcing and contextualizing. They also demonstrate more general literacy tools, such as annotating and asking questions. As the students work collaboratively, they engage in the same processes their teachers used, but with different texts. Over time and with practice, discipline-specific thinking becomes a habit.

Encourage Students to Think Along with Teachers

Teacher modeling should not become a teacher monologue. Rather, students should be encouraged to think along with their teachers and periodically contribute to the discussion. You'll notice that Ms. Schaefer and Mr. Vaca model for a few minutes on one short piece of text, and then provide students with a chance to engage in collaborative conversations about two other pieces of text. As students read and discuss the new texts, their teachers move from group to group asking clarifying questions, pressing for evidence, and checking for understanding.

Their lesson would have been very different had the teachers chosen to model their thinking about all three pieces of text. In fact, it would have been boring. It would likely not have resulted in students learning more about the disciplinary aspect of history, much less the reasons that many Americans once believed women should not vote.

The modeling these teachers provide for their students is brief, focused, and relevant. They hold their students' attention while they share their thinking. When this type of disciplinary thinking aloud becomes part of the classroom routines, students come to know that they'll get a glimpse inside the thinking of their teachers, but will then be expected to try these types of thinking for themselves as they learn.

Apprentice Historians

Of course, modeling is just one instructional strategy that teachers need to use to help students become disciplinary thinkers. Students need to be engaged in a wide range of complex tasks that require them to apply what they've learned, both in terms of generic literacy skills and more disciplinary-focused skills. Having said that, we believe that modeling is an important aspect of students' disciplinary learning because it provides them with opportunities to be apprentices as they read, write, discuss, and think about the wide range of ideas and opinions found within the study of history.

Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey are professors in the Department of Educational Leadership at San Diego State University and teacher leaders at Health Sciences High and Middle College. They are ASCD authors, and their work inspired ASCD's FIT Teaching® program.

KEYWORDS

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Modeling Disciplinary Thinking - Educational Leadership

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February 2017 | Volume 74 | Number 5 Literacy in Every Classroom Pages 82-83 Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey These teachers apprentice students into thinking like historians. Joanna Schaefer and Javier Vaca often combine their two history classes so that students can observe how historians wrestle with ideas.

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7th grade--for planning an inquiry study. This is from a organization in Canada similar to the PEBC, focusing on inquiry. Great writing on inquiry to explore

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Programs of Study issued by the province, often referred to as the curriculum, state what is to be learned in terms of student outcomes; however, the depth of knowledge and what students gain is up to the teacher.

Teachers can experience a huge amount of pressure to cover all the outcomes in a Program of Studies. Sometimes, the content is out-of-date. Sometimes the outcomes are not written in increasing levels of complexity, i.e., more difficult to master disciplinary concepts are interlaced with more simplistic concepts or even facts. Teachers may need to spend time reorganizing a Program of Studies to ensure it maps well onto the inquiry study and that concepts that are central to the discipline are addressed in depth. There is great potential for teachers to be innovators and agents of change. Teachers can become leaders who collaborate to change system constraints that are less than ideal .

On the other hand, when educators see their job as simply covering a Program of Studies, student understanding is not front and center. Superficial coverage of many topics does not help students develop key competencies such as critical thinking, cooperation, and the ability to solve problems, create opportunities and manage information. When curriculum is 'a mile wide and an inch deep', it does not allow learners to see connections among the things they are learning. Deep understanding comes from being immersed in a subject for a long period of time. And during this time, as our understanding of a topic increases, the topic gets better and better, richer and richer, more and more constituted by hidden histories and ancestries and voices that had been forgotten or ignored .

Is there time for inquiry?

Inquiry is not something piled on top of student's regular work. When designing an inquiry ensure students have a range of opportunities to acquire and demonstrate understanding. When teachers hold a strong command of the various Programs of Study they find they can design learning and address key concepts and required outcomes without having to create specific lessons and activities for each one. Don't forget, the freedom that teachers have to adapt their instruction and assessment to the unique needs of their current students is an essential cornerstone for success .

Sometimes teachers worry that designing an inquiry means they need to ignore the Programs of Study. Nothing could be further from the truth. In order to work with a Program of Studies in powerful ways, they have to know it inside out.

A well-designed inquiry study should map directly to the outcomes teachers are required to address. This provides teachers with the confidence to address what is required by the Program of Studies and also what is required by the discipline or disciplines that guide the inquiry.

How to do it:

There are four places in the design process where you work directly with the Program of Studies:

Take time to write down the general, or high-level learner expectations or outcomes your topic will address. This will act as a roadmap. They are the fundamental concepts on which everything else will hang.

Make sure you are selective about what this inquiry will focus on. It's easy to get overwhelmed with large numbers of small outcomes. You don't have to cover every possible curriculum outcome with every project you design. Chances are good that if you pay closest attention to the major outcomes, you will address smaller curriculum details even more effectively as you go along.

Structure tasks and activities that develop the fundamental understandings. This is the place where you will also pay close attention to the more specific outcomes. Do your tasks and activities build those specific competencies as well?

Find ways of assessing whether students have learned what you identified as fundamental.

References

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Programs of Study issued by the province, often referred to as the curriculum, state what is to be learned in terms of student outcomes; however, the depth of knowledge and what students gain is up to the teacher. Teachers can experience a huge amount of pressure to cover all the outcomes in a Program of Studies.

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8th grade was interested in assessment ideas both formative and summative. This is a post from Choice Literacy.

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Chapter 1 from Strategies that work--example of how it looks in 6th grade and reasoning behind teaching thinking in reading.