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Give our students a voice and show them how to use it.

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Art by Matthew Clark

Sponsored by Listenwise and National Geographic Education

I opened the envelope, unfolded the letter inside and began to read to my class: "Dear Residents of Alchemy Island, I am writing to inform you that a decision has been made to sell the east of our island to a large development company. They plan to use the land to build a vast new resort for people to come on holiday here. It will provide a lot of jobs for people living on the island as well as countless other economic benefits. Part of the Enchanted Forest will be cut down to provide adequate space for this state-of-the-art complex..."

This was a unit of work I initiated early on in the academic year with my new class of 9- and 10-year-olds. To be honest, it felt risky at the time because I was still getting to know them and was in a new teaching role in a new city. I wanted to try it in order to test out a pedagogy that would allow for collaboration and choice.

We had been learning about the fictional "Alchemy Island" for three weeks. We'd used geographical skills to navigate our way around it and science skills to analyze the properties of materials found on the island. The class had already completed some creative writing assignments, responding to fictitious themes relating to the island. Next, I wanted to include a writing unit that would enable us to break out of sitting in rows and work in genre-focused groups.

Alchemy Island had an area of forest. I decided this would be our focus and that they would write persuasively to stop the deforestation of the island. This would enable us to incorporate some critical thinking around the issue of the environment and learn how to write persuasively through lots of different formats.

A few days into the unit, I looked around the classroom and found myself in a rare moment of harmony where everyone was working collaboratively and appeared to be on task. My students were sitting in groups of different sizes from two's to five's, some with TA support, as they got to work on their writing drafts. My role had shifted; no longer 'sage on the stage,' I could be the 'guide on the side' and I began to go from group to group checking in on what they were doing, giving encouragement, asking questions to redirect learning, and supporting with writing models where necessary.

I paused by one pair of students who were writing a speech. They were using an anchor chart to prompt ideas and had already integrated some good speech writing techniques into their writing. "What's the rule of 3's?" I asked. They explained that you repeat a phrase three times at the start of three sentences in a row to add emphasis. They showed me their example; I was so impressed.

Anchor charts help students apply genre-specific strategies to their writing.

Putting students to work on a campaign -whether it be fictional or real-is a powerful way to get students writing persuasively. If designed carefully, campaign projects can be highly engaging, collaborative, authentic experiences, and they can work with a lot of different subject areas. They also create some great rapport as a class through the shared experience.

Let's look at how they work.

Why Campaign Units Work So Well

Campaigns are a great way to get students engaged in social justice issues and powerful writing because:

They relate to real-life situations and problems, which students are always drawn to and find easy to engage with.

You can integrate critical pedagogy, posing questions such as Is this fair?, Is there equality?, or Who has the power in this situation? in order to both inform and prompt critical consciousness.

Students can learn about the idea of using their voice and how we can do that in society when we want to see change. It gives them a practice run in a safe environment and prepares them for any social action they may want to get involved in outside of school.

They provide an opportunity for collaborative learning. Whilst working on their own piece of writing, each student can deepen their learning by discussing and sharing ideas in a group. As they practice model sentences they can listen to each other, give feedback, and inspire one another.

You can differentiate easily. Mixed-ability groups mean that students who lack some content knowledge or communication skills can learn from the talk of the more advanced students. Scaffolding or adult support can also be provided where needed.

They enable students to practice a range of writing styles and genres, then showcase them to each other, thereby giving all students more exposure to different ways of persuading.

Posters are just one of the many writing options students can choose to do for a campaign.

Doing Your Own Campaigns Unit

The following steps are a guide for how to go about planning and implementing a campaign for a class of your own:
Step 1: Look at the topics or themes coming up for the term with a critical lens.
Where is there a natural fit for a social justice campaign? For example, can you see an issue related to climate, gender, ability, poverty, or race that students could get behind for a campaign? Draw up a list and connect it to writing activities that could be taught through it.

Step 2: Clarify the campaign focus or put a short list to the class, discuss it, and then vote on an issue to campaign on.

Providing choice makes learning very meaningful for students because they have been part of the decision process; they can follow their own curiosity and focus on something they are passionate about. Although this time I had decided on the theme-which worked well for me in my first implementation of a campaign unit-providing choice about the cause to campaign on could be even more motivating. On evaluating the impact on their writing once my unit was complete, I felt that allowing students to choose their own writing genre and pairing it with a topical theme had been powerful.
Step 3: Pin down the resources you will need to inspire and support your students in their learning, especially to ensure that they grasp what a campaign is.
Once the theme was introduced by reading out my fictitious letter, we discussed our initial reactions to the news and began to work on our pre-writing. For this we watched clips about deforestation in the Amazon jungle and discussed the impact of it. We analyzed a poster about the many positive uses of trees and created a word bank around the environmental issue of deforestation. I showed the class clips of recent climate change campaigns and demonstrations in our locality to introduce the concept of campaigning. We began to grasp what a campaign is and that any age group can take part.

Early in the unit, it's important to help students understand the different types of writing that can support a campaign.

Step 4: Identify the types of writing your students will be developing and practicing during the campaign and prepare resources for these.
We came up with our list as a class: What kinds of writing could we use to persuade people not to cut the trees down? Or to inform others who might also want to join the campaign? Or to raise awareness of the issue to the Islanders themselves? Ideas included songs, letters, placards, posters, interviews, speeches, and information leaflets.

To support students in their writing, checklists and anchor charts were provided to focus them on what to include in the genre of writing they were working on. We also looked at models of persuasive writing texts and word mats and practiced using persuasive language in draft writing. With each group of students, there is also the opportunity to model the type of writing required by demonstrating model sentences and having them practice their own versions. For example, if they were writing a speech, then modelling the introduction to them helped them get the tone of a speech and get them started.

Provide students with materials to help them understand the kinds of writing they can do for the campaign.

Step 5: Decide what size groups you want and how to manage the logistics of working in groups.
Once the cause is clear to students, options for writing have been provided, and resources to support are in place, students need to choose which type of writing they want to work on. Would they like to communicate their message on a placard to use at a demonstration? Would they like to interview the developers and see if they could persuade them to change their minds? Would they like to write a speech, create posters to raise awareness, or write letters to the Alchemy Island leaders to ask them to stop what was happening?

Each student made a choice and they then moved to sit in a group with those that had made the same choice. I limited groups to 5 and once a group was full it was capped. Those that were still deciding had to take that into consideration. For the students who struggled to decide what to work on, I added them to the smallest groups, where I felt the genre would work well for them or where mixed-ability groups would be enhanced.

Step 6: Plan the progression of lessons over your specific time frame so that you have an aim for each lesson. Out of these you can also pin down your learning objectives for your students.

For example, a progression might be that in the first lesson, you aim to discuss and vote on 3 issues in order to identify a focus for a campaign. In the second you might create a word bank of keywords around the issue from a range of sources. The next day, you introduce new vocabulary for persuasive writing and practice it. In my progression, we worked through a writing process of pre-writing, drafting, editing (with teacher and peer feedback), revising and then publishing. This provided a framework for the writing process and a structure for the progression of lessons.

Step 7: Identify and plan for any specific differentiation or support you will need to have in place for some students.

I found it helpful to have strategically placed Teaching Assistants where some group dynamics were difficult or where students would need support. I planned my sessions when I knew I could have the most adult helpers available. This enabled everyone to be productive.
Step 8: Implement your plan, adapting as you go and providing opportunities for groups and individuals to share their process and learning with the rest of the class at regular intervals.
At several points in each lesson, students read out extracts from their drafted work so that we could listen to and learn from each other. This enabled students to "catch" vocabulary from one another and for those struggling to use persuasive language to hear it and perhaps then be able to implement it themselves. They really enjoy sharing their work and it provided an extra moment in which to give feedback.

Step 9: Present and celebrate the completion of the unit and all that you have learned.

Each group presented their work to the rest of the class. We had a class photo with placards held high and then their work was presented on a display in a corridor for others to see. Some sort of conclusion like this creates a very positive class dynamic and they always relish the opportunity to share their work with each other.

A Priceless Experience

I learned so much from teaching a campaign unit. Afterwards, I was really pleased that my students could, with some support, manage more freedom and choice in their learning and I knew, therefore, that I could integrate pedagogy which promotes collaboration into more of my lessons.

When I run a campaign writing unit again, I would see if I could link our campaign to some authentic social action; for example, posting letters to a similar situation where development would create deforestation, or joining in with a real demonstration in which children were involved. I would also look for a wider audience by doing a class assembly on it or organizing a march around the school for other classes to hear about it.

Seeing my students so highly engaged over several lessons during this unit confirmed to me that choice-as research shows-really does motivate. Furthermore, sitting in groups with people they might otherwise not work with, being able to talk and discuss the task, debating the issue of deforestation and its impact on our planet, may have made their learning more meaningful as well as memorable.

I also discovered that when you provide a shared experience like this, it's a bit like going on a trip: it builds cohesion and rapport among you and creates class identity, which was just what we needed at the start of the journey of learning we were taking together at the beginning of the academic year.

I enjoyed it enormously when, five months later, I was asking an open question in a writing lesson and heard a voice pipe up: "Could we do a campaign?" ♦

You can find more of Jane Currell's writing at Passion for Pedagogy.

Come back for more.
Join our mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration that will make your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to our members-only library of free downloads, including 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, the e-booklet that has helped thousands of teachers save time on grading. Over 50,000 teachers have already joined-come on in.

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Fire Up Your Students with a Campaign Project

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Sponsored by Listenwise and National Geographic Education I opened the envelope, unfolded the letter inside and began to read to my class: "Dear Residents of Alchemy Island, I am writing to inform you that a decision has been made to sell the east of our island to a large development company.

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Remote classroom jobs make more passionate children and enjoyable classrooms.

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Sponsored by Kialo Edu and Kiddom

This might be the perfect time for this topic. At first I just thought it was a neat idea, something teachers could implement pretty easily, something that would be a nice change of pace from what we usually talk about here.

But now I'm thinking this might actually be the thing that helps wake up a lot of our remote and hybrid classrooms from the white-knuckle, just-get-through-it mentality many of us have settled into as the '20-21 school year grinds through its second half. Just maybe.

I'm talking about classroom jobs, the tasks we assign to students to help keep our classrooms running. This is typically something we associate with face-to-face classrooms during normal times, but I was absolutely delighted -and I don't use the word 'delighted' every day-to learn that not only is it totally possible to assign jobs to students in remote classes, the jobs can make those remote classes really, really enjoyable. On top of that, they'll help students discover and develop passions and talents they can take with them well beyond your class.

When I was a middle school teacher, I didn't do much with classroom jobs. I was too much of a control freak, for one. The other reason was because it wasn't really a part of middle school culture. Elementary teachers are fantastic about assigning jobs to students, but as kids get older, teachers use these kinds of systems less and less. As a result, secondary teachers often work themselves to the bone, doing everything themselves as their students, ironically, grow more capable of taking on responsibilities every year.

Now that I have talked with Thom Gibson about this topic, I wish I could go back to the classroom so I could put some serious effort into establishing a robust system of classroom jobs. Gibson is a middle school STEM teacher from Austin, Texas. He has basically mastered the art of managing a whole program of classroom jobs, and he's made that process work for remote learning, too.

Thom Gibson

In our conversation on the podcast, we talked about why setting up students jobs is such a good thing to do, how to troubleshoot common problems with a jobs system, and what some of Gibson's favorite classroom jobs are-once you hear some of these ideas, I know you're going to want to try them.

Why Setting Up Classroom Jobs is Worth the Effort

It builds positive classroom community and culture. "Students feel like they are actually contributing in a meaningful way that is helping you as the teacher or helping their fellow classmates with something," Gibson says.

It gives students opportunities to explore interests and develop talents. Gibson started to see more value in classroom jobs when he had students create things that could be shared with a wider audience, like podcasts, newsletters, and art. "I started seeing an opportunity to tap into the students' interests with these class jobs as opposed to just getting something done for me."

It lets students learn job application skills. In Gibson's class, students aren't just given the jobs; they have to apply for them. So they gain experience with the job application process.

A Few Cool Job Ideas

Classroom jobs have really evolved past board cleaner and line leader. Gibson has compiled a list of over 25 unique student job titles. Here are ten to get you started:

1. Podcaster: Produces a regular brief podcast on a topic of interest to students, using tools like Soundtrap or GarageBand to make it happen. To keep it manageable, Gibson recommends only having students do one podcast per month, and keeping each episode under 3 minutes.

2. Athletic Trainer: Sets a timer for the middle of a class meeting to lead students in a movement activity, whether students are in the room or in a video meeting.

3. DJ: Plays music for 5 minutes before class. This can be done through the videoconferencing platform if you are remote.

4. Motivational Speaker: Records a one-minute Loom video each week reflecting on a motivational idea or quote to share with the class.

5. Visual Display Artist: Creates posters for in-person class or graphics to be used online for remote learning.

6. Zoologist: Cares for the class pet (or their own pet in remote learning) and lets the rest of the class check in once a week to see how the pet is doing.

7. Tech Guru: Sets up the teacher's classroom tech and helps other students with tech in-person, or troubleshoots and provides help to other students through screen sharing during virtual learning.

8. KonMari Organizing Specialist: Keeps classroom supplies organized. This one works best in an in-person setting, but many teachers probably also have online spaces that could use help with decluttering.

9. Assistant Grader: Helps the teacher with grading. In person, this student would highlight mistakes on assessments for the teacher to look at later. Virtually, this student could assist with some online grading and notify other students when assignments are missing from online platforms like Khan Academy.

10. Tutorial Creator: Makes YouTube tutorials for all kinds of tasks that other students need in the classroom.

Making it Work: The Logistics

A system like this doesn't just spring up out of nowhere; it requires organization and maintenance. Gibson shared a few key components of how his jobs program works:

Job descriptions are provided ahead of time. Students first get a chance to look at all job listings, which include a description of each job along with notes on what personality types would be a good fit.

Students apply for jobs. Gibson has found that this maximizes student buy-in. In the application, students choose their top three jobs and explain why they'd be a good fit.

Job holders get checklists. After students are "hired," (and multiple students may be hired for the same job), they are given job-specific checklists of responsibilities, including when their job is performed, how often, and how to do it.

A teacher's assistant keeps it all together. Although it was not mentioned in the above list, it is essential to have a teacher's assistant whose job it is to remind everyone else to do their job. Gibson recommends looking for "super type-A" students to fill this role.

Teach the jobs like any other curriculum. Students will need practice and feedback to do the jobs right. If a student isn't doing their job correctly, "Make them do it again," Gibson says, "not as a punishment but just as a way of, okay, so now let's try it again."

At a time when we are all hungry for human connection, when classrooms feel more fragmented than ever before, when we sometimes go days or weeks without talking to each other, adding classroom jobs to the mix could be the breath of fresh air we need for our schools. They will give students a new reason to show up, to participate, and to stick around, because in a meaningful way, the classroom will become theirs again.

Learn More from Thom Gibson

Gibson's free course, Essential Student Jobs for the Middle School Classroom of Tomorrow, can be accessed here. His paid course, How to Teach Kids About Money Plus, is here.

Follow him on Twitter, on Instagram, or on YouTube.

Come back for more.
Join our mailing list and get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration that will make your teaching more effective and fun. You'll get access to our members-only library of free downloads, including 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half, the e-booklet that has helped thousands of teachers save time on grading. Over 50,000 teachers have already joined-come on in.

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It's Time to Give Classroom Jobs Another Try

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These fresh ideas for student jobs will invigorate your classroom and get you and your students excited about school again-even if you teach remotely.

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We need to update the way we teach Math on order for the kids to learn.

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Jo Boaler has spent a lot of time thinking and writing about anxiety-math anxiety, in particular-and its impact on kids' learning trajectories.

Mathematics, she writes in her 2019 book, Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead, and Live Without Barriers, is the subject "with the most damaging ideas held by teachers, students, and parents." It's one of the few academic subjects in which multitudes of students, early on, decide they're not cut out for it: We're either a "math person" or we're not. That notion tends to stick well into adulthood. "It is difficult to know how many people walk around in society harboring damaging ideas about their math ability, but I estimate it to be at least half of the population," she writes.

Boaler, a professor of mathematics education at Stanford University, a best-selling author, and the cofounder of the math education site youcubed.org, has spent decades thinking about how to undo the damage. Her work, closely aligned with Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck's research on growth mindset, explores what Boaler calls "our most harmful and persistent ideas about innate ability." She's a vocal proponent of changing the way we assess mathematics and modernizing the math curriculum-especially in high school-so that it's more engaging, more inclusive, and more likely to prepare kids for the modern workforce.

Critics argue that by insisting on math as a joyful, creative exploration, we're doing kids a disservice, and that by reducing or eliminating memorization and math drills, for example, we're setting kids up for a lack of mathematical fluency. But Boaler says that she's got no quarrel with things like math facts and that teachers should help kids develop these-not by "emphasizing facts for the sake of facts, or using timed tests, but by encouraging students to use, work with, and explore numbers," a process that ultimately builds critical number sense and reinforces math facts in a more organic way.

I sat down with Boaler recently for a Zoom discussion about mathematical freedom, anxiety-producing teaching practices, and the systemic changes she says are critical for modernizing math curricula.

Sarah Gonser: In your book Limitless Mind, you say that learning is about identity. Can you explain?

Jo Boaler: Well, we know that when people learn, it's not just about an accumulation of knowledge; it's really about changing who they are as people.

And we've found over the years that the traditional approach to teaching maths-I'm just going to show you methods; you're going to accept them and use them-is incompatible with the identities kids want, particularly around adolescence. Kids want to have their own ideas; they want to be respected as thinkers; they don't want to just be given information that they simply reproduce.

They see it as a subject area where they can't be their full selves, and it's a large part of why people drop out of maths.

Gonser: It's also a subject that causes a lot of very real anxiety. Why is that?

Boaler: I would say it comes from a few different things: It's a subject that is heavily tested; it's a subject that's often taught as right and wrong answers; and there are these widespread myths that you're either born as a math person or you're not. Somehow, you have the right brain, or you don't.

There's lots of micromessaging in classrooms that might get kids to think they can't be successful. Speed is very much at the heart of it. If you ask the class a question and then take the answer from the first kid who raises their hand, you're sending the message that you value speed. And we know that professional mathematicians are not fast; they're some of the slowest thinkers.

Finally, we have stereotyped ideas about who can be good at maths. So if you're a woman or a person of color, you're dealing with that pressure. If you have fixed ideas about who can do maths, a fixed mindset, then that stereotype can really take root.

Gonser: So how can we slow it all down and avoid making math class a place of stress and anxiety?

Boaler: I think a big part of it is A for L-Assessment for Learning-I just think that's so critical. It changes the whole culture of classrooms for kids.

If we assess kids by giving them diagnostic feedback, not grades, and ask them to do their own reflection so that they're able to see themselves progress on this journey-everything changes when assessment is like that in classrooms.

But we also want to change the way content is taught. Kids don't need lots of short questions with one method and one answer. It can be open questions that students think about creatively and visually.

Gonser: You're also an advocate of encouraging struggle and mistakes in classrooms. In Limitless Mind, you describe high achievers who work "at the edge of their understanding, making mistake after mistake in difficult circumstances, correcting mistakes, moving on and making more mistakes." In the classroom, why is that important?

Boaler: The best times for learning are when you're struggling and finding things difficult; that's when your brain is on fire with activity. I think it's really important to share the value of struggle with students. When I teach, I say to students, "I want you to struggle, because that's really good for you." I think it's freeing for students when they know that's a goal. And I think you should keep sharing that, reinforce it during every lesson.

It's really going to involve changing how we assess kids. If kids take a test and they're penalized for making mistakes, that's a counter message-and studies have shown that this mixed message is worse than no message at all. Don't tell them that struggle is good if you're going to mark them wrong when they struggle.

I think it's important that we always let kids resubmit work. And if you're using grading-I'm not a fan of grading myself-but if students don't do well the first time, to allow them to work on it again sends a great message that learning and struggle are valued.

Gonser: Let's talk about broader, more systemic curricular changes. You're a prominent voice in the conversation about re-sequencing math curricula so that it's more than a gateway to higher-level mathematics. What's changed in our world to make this so urgent?

Boaler: Well, we need to modernize not just how we teach it, but the actual content we're teaching in classrooms. The content we teach in maths was created around the 1800s and really hasn't changed since then. It was created at a time when we needed kids to be calculators. And so learning arithmetic, calculating things quickly-that was important.

But the world has changed dramatically. In high school, in particular, we're teaching a wide array of methods for kids to do by hand that they'll never use in their lives again. You will never go into a workplace and have people, by hand, go through synthetic division. So we're spending too many hours giving kids this outdated content that they're so turned off by. For what reason?

Gonser: What should we be teaching instead?

Boaler: So I'm very excited about bringing data science into mathematics. I am one of the five writers of a new framework in California where we are highlighting data science as a really important part of maths.

Now, it's hard to do that because the Common Core Standards really didn't include data science, and they need to be updated. But what we've done is try and bring a data science perspective to the current standards. This data science initiative is very exciting, not only because it gives teachers of all grades interesting content to work with, but it also helps kids become data literate, which is something they really need in this world.

There are more data points in the world than there are stars in the galaxies right now; the world is filled with data. So even little kids need to prepare to become data literate.

Gonser: You're also leading the charge on changing the high school math sequence, streamlining the algebra-geometry-algebra sandwich so there's room for a data science class-can you tell me more about that?

Boaler: In the high school years, something very exciting is happening. For generations, really, there's been this race to get to calculus because it can get you into college.

It's built on a very inequitable system. Because there are so many courses before calculus in middle school and high school, it's effectively meant we're pushing kids out of the calculus track in sixth grade, which is awful. The content is also not very up-to-date and not very engaging.

There's recently been a dramatic change in California: The UC and Cal State systems will now accept data science as a third-year course instead of Algebra 2. This is amazing and important because Algebra 2 is a course that is the end of the road for most kids, and now they can take data science instead.

Gonser: Why is Algebra 2 the end of the road for so many kids?

Boaler: Because it's so procedural and uninteresting that the vast majority of kids, after they've done Algebra 2, don't take any more maths. Data science is completely different. As we're rolling it out, we're communicating: This can be a course in high school that any student can take. You don't have to be advanced in middle school, and yet it can lead to a high-level STEM career. I see that completely changing who ends up going into STEM.

Gonser: What do you say to critics who argue this is a change that will water down the curriculum, make it less rigorous?

Boaler: It's totally rigorous, actually. Mathematics is a very broad subject. There's no reason that we should say, "Let's just value this part, which is calculus." The mathematics of data science involves matrices and probability and statistics and linear algebra-which is beyond what's often taught in calculus.

Gonser: My last question comes from an Edutopia reader, a teacher, who asks: "What's your greatest piece of advice for early math educators?"

Boaler: My biggest piece of advice is to really spend time trying to change kids' mindsets and ideas about themselves, because that will pay huge dividends. If you encourage struggle, if you remind kids that they can learn anything, we now know there are no limits to what people can learn.

Kids should know that if the kid next to them is solving something more quickly, it doesn't matter. We know that kids enter school with a growth mindset, and that drops with each passing year. And part of that is kids looking at other kids and thinking, "Oh, they can do it better than me." We have to counter those ideas and couple that with math that's open and creative. When you do that, things change.

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Every child possesses vast mathematics potential, says Jo Boaler, Stanford University mathematics professor and best-selling author-but for them to access it, we need to rethink how we teach math.

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Teaching history in a diferent way

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Asking students to examine their own possessions from the perspective of a historian in the future helps them sharpen their analytical skills.

Social studies students regularly consider the past through its written and material culture, whether that means diving into daily life in colonial America through letters or examining ancient coins to better understand the spread of the Roman Empire.

Students can learn a lot about the work of historians by applying this approach to items from their own daily lives. I've found that if I remind my students that in the future, our lives and culture will be reconstructed in a similar fashion, they're intrigued, and if I challenge them to imagine what a student 100 or 200 years from now might infer when examining a contemporary artifact, they're keen to get to work.

It might seem like an unorthodox approach, but again and again, my students have analyzed their own artifacts within this historical framework and have been pushed to think in new ways, both creatively and conceptually. This activity fits into a variety of curricula, as it gets students to practice evaluating artifacts so that they can make hypotheses about a society from its material culture and weigh how different interpretations of historical objects can shape our understanding of the past.

Step 1: Explain What Artifacts Are

"An artifact," according to National Geographic, "is an object made by a human being. Artifacts include art, diaries, tools, and clothing made by people of any time and place."

When you introduce this activity to your students, emphasize to them how many objects fall under the umbrella of "artifact." Musical instruments, written material, kitchenware, school supplies, jewelry, and athletic apparel are all artifacts.

Students can benefit from looking at examples that underscore how historians can draw important conclusions from virtually any example of material culture. Point students to artifacts in museums, such as those on display in the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Ancient Greek pottery and Egyptian sarcophagi are artifacts, but so are the objects housed at the National Videogame Museum, the Las Vegas Neon Museum, and the International Banana Museum, which boasts "25,000 banana-related items and pictures."

Step 2: Share How to Analyze Artifacts

Once students are comfortable with the definition, review how historians and archaeologists analyze artifacts.

Who used it? List reasons you think so.

What was it used for? List reasons you think so.

What does this tell you about the people who made and used it?

What does it tell you about technology at the time it was made?

The National Archives encourages students to first decide what an artifact is made of before asking a series of questions that include the following:

Ask students to choose an artifact from their personal life. They can bring it to school or submit an image if you are teaching remotely.

What is its significance?

How does it exemplify the culture of 2021?

What does it suggest about society in the early 21st century?

What does it say about the technology of 2021?

The next part is the hardest and takes some imagination. Ask students to pretend they are a researcher, archaeologist, or student in the future conducting a detailed analysis of the artifact in question, and have them answer the following questions about the artifact:

Assign a writing response in which students must make evidence-based conclusions.

Ask students to peer-edit another student's conclusions, paying close attention to the way claims are supported.

Evaluate how differing interpretations of the artifact could shape the way history is made.

Consider what the artifact might say about belief systems, commerce, technology, or social organizations.

This exercise demands that students make several cognitive leaps. First, they must consider what life might look like many years from now. Second, they have to analyze their own artifact as a person living in the future they envisioned. What would that person think of the world in which we live? Tie this to the curriculum in the following ways:

Step 4: Analyze Artifacts Together in Class

Once students have gathered and analyzed their own artifacts, I ask them to share the artifacts with the class (physically if we are in a classroom or via an image uploaded to the discussion board if I'm teaching remotely) and task them with analyzing another student's artifact in the same way they analyzed their own.

As I review the images and comments in real time, I call on students to further explain what their own artifact says about society or to elaborate on their analysis of someone else's artifact. When I wasn't teaching remotely, I also took my class on a walk around the school and had them analyze everyday objects, such as posters in the hallways, signs for upcoming school events, trophies, murals, and classroom resources, with the eye of an archaeologist seeing them for the first time.

A few of the everyday objects my students have identified as their artifacts were a family photo album, a school-issued iPad, and a Christmas tree, which led their classmates to make inferences not only about the student to whom the artifact belonged but about the larger society and culture. These discussions ranged from the technological proficiency and socioeconomics of a school capable of providing one-to-one devices to what a Christmas tree might tell us about religious or secular customs.

In a virtual setting, analysis of artifacts can serve as an opening or closing activity (for the latter, use it as an exit card or a final discussion post). To abbreviate the exercise, ask students to answer one or two prompts about a contemporary artifact and make inferences about their own culture from a different point of view.

The activity can even tie into current events. We have posters at school asking students to "wear a mask." Share something like this with the kids. If a researcher encountered this artifact in a museum years from now, what would they think?

When working with artifacts, consider incorporating David Macaulay's Motel of the Mysteries, a humorous children's book about an archaeologist in the future who discovers an American motel room from 1985 and tries to understand its artifacts (he assumes that the TV, for instance, is an altar).

To encourage high-level work and accountability, use a rubric with clear objectives. For example, you might ask for analysis that includes making an inference regarding technology. Do your own analysis and show the class, or share exemplar work so that students know what is being asked of them. The templates offered by the National Archives and the Library of Congress also help students stay on track. To discourage students from giving a superficial analysis, provide them with specific questions to answer or learning objectives to meet.

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How to Engage Students in Historical Thinking Using Everyday Objects

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Asking students to examine their own possessions from the perspective of a historian in the future helps them sharpens their analytical skills.

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Helping your students through math problems

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Well-designed word problems give elementary students a tangible context for understanding math concepts.

"Danny has 564 tomatoes. He then buys 623 carrots. How long will it take him to get home?" This scenario is what many people picture when we mention word problems. Many educators think they're taboo. Some argue that many students can't access the content because of the reading, and the problems themselves can be culturally inappropriate. All of these ideas can be considered valid if the word problem isn't created or executed correctly.

As a special educator who has worked in urban and rural schools, I have always had a love-hate relationship with word problems. I used to be one of the teachers who would claim, "I'm trying to assess their math reasoning, not their reading skills." I had difficulty realizing that the story problems can give our students a tangible context to connect to in order to understand the concept that we're teaching. This context is essential when introducing our students to more abstract content for the first time.

I remember working with a group of third graders at the beginning of the school year, talking about a simple arithmetic problem, 25 + __ = 50. These students had been shown that 25 + 25 = 50, but they were confused about why the blank was in the middle of the problem. Once I created a story problem about placing hot chocolate packets in containers for a class party, the students immediately had light bulbs flash over their heads. They then drew out a representation of the problem and figured that they needed to keep adding to 25 until they got to 50. I have realized that we give mostly numerical problems rather than conceptual word problems. It's like we're offering the students directions on how to get to a store without showing them the landmarks that they need to reach their destination. No wonder they become lost in the steps, and our instruction becomes more of a checklist instead of practicing critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Creating the just-right word problem is somewhat of an art. Luckily, just like an art project, word problems don't need to be perfect.

3 Keys to Creating Compelling Word Problems

1. They need to be relatable to the students. This might sound like a no-brainer, but I see so many word problems that are like my example from the very beginning. Too often they talk about excessive quantities of things or about a topic that the students can't relate to. When crafting a word problem, we need to make sure the students can connect to or picture what's going on. This comes from knowing your students and their interests. In my classroom, Pokémon cards and bags of slime are the most popular things. So when we create word problems and use these topics, the students have an interest in the story and can visualize what's happening. They especially love it when you use their names to make them the star of the word problem.

Because we are working on very abstract reasoning topics, the students need to have something real to cling to, helping to ground them to reality as they work through the task. Without being able to relate to the problem, we will likely lose them, and they will just pick an operation at random and try solving it that way.

2. The word problems need to be solvable. The problems don't need to be overly complicated; a simple problem that requires critical thinking will do the trick. Many standardized tests will create tricky verbiage when giving word problems and claim that this makes the problem harder to solve. In reality, if we just make the wording more complex rather than making the situation more thought-provoking, all we're doing is frustrating our students and not challenging them to think.

3. The word problems need to be open-ended. The final thing a functional word problem needs is to be open-ended. "John has four cars and then gets four more. How many does he have now?" is boring and quite simple. Though this will challenge some students for a short time, it does not make any student think critically, and there are limited entry points our students can solve.

By simply rephrasing the question, we provide a task that makes our students think critically about what's going on in this story. "John has four cars. His brother gave him some more, and now he has eight. How many did his brother give him?" This problem allows for many entry points and opportunities to try a variety of strategies while challenging students to think abstractly through mathematical reasoning and number sense.

As educators, we need to be vigilant about the tasks and word problems we create. While reviewing possible word problems, we should ask ourselves, "Is this word problem interesting? Is it solvable? Is it open-ended?" If the answer to any of these questions is no, consider reevaluating the problems through a critical thinking lens, making them more effective and beneficial for your students.

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3 Tips for Creating Math Word Problems That Boost Critical Thinking

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Well-designed word problems give elementary students a tangible context for understanding math concepts. "Danny has 564 tomatoes. He then buys 623 carrots. How long will it take him to get home?" This scenario is what many people picture when we mention word problems. Many educators think they're taboo.