Tip of the Week – Foldables

Foldables are 3-D paper constructions that allow learners to record and process new words and concepts in a hands-on and kinesthetic way. There are multiple forms of foldables that can be used as part of social studies instruction.

One simple foldable is called a Five Tab, a mini-booklet that provides a way to organize five different sub-topics. Let’s give it a try!

• Start with three pieces of paper. These could be basic white, colored or heavy stock paper. (Using three different colors works best as long as the colors are not too dark.)
• Take the first piece of paper and fold it not quite in half long-wise. (Elementary teachers will know this as a “hotdog” fold.)
• Make the back part of the fold about an inch longer than the front part so that the back part sticks out a bit. Kids will be labeling this “tab.”
• Take the next piece of paper and do the same thing. The difference is that you fold this piece with about two inches sticking out for the tab.
• Take the last piece of paper and fold again. This time leave about three inches from the bottom for the last tab.
• You put them all together by sticking the first page into the second and both of those into the third. You now have six flaps that can be used to hold information.
• Staple or glue the edge to hold all the pages together and label the top flap with your title. An example might be “Turning Points of the American Civil War.”
• Students could then label each of the remaining five flaps with different turning points such as Antietam, Gettysburg, Emancipation Proclamation, Vicksburg and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address.
• For each flap, kids now have two sections (upper and lower) to include definitions, maps, quotes, short bios – just about anything that you want.
• You can add/subtract pages or fold along the short side instead of the “hotdog” fold.

Kids can add content to the foldable throughout the unit and use it as a review tool.

A couple of suggestions:

• Use bright paper available at office supply stores such as Office Depot or Staples.
• Glue sticks make for less mess and less wrinkles.  Wet glue makes for longer lasting strength.  Choose what works best for you and your students.
• Make an example yourself and model for your kids how to make the foldable.

A few handy sites (tons more can be found by doing a simple Google search):

• US History Foldables
• Foldables

Samples:

• Foldables
• Pictures of Foldables

Have fun!

Tip of the Week – PERSIA graphic organizer

Today’s tip focuses on helping kids to organize basic information about a specific topic, country or period of history. An acronym called PERSIA, this simple graphic organizer breaks down general knowledge into six broad human concerns and over-arching questions:

• Political: Who is in charge?
• Economic: How do we make a living?
• Religion: What do we believe?
• Social: How do we relate to one another?
• Intellectual / Arts: How do we learn? How do we express ourselves?
• Area / Geography: How does where we live impact how we live?

When students are asked to study a time period in history, they sometimes have difficulty organizing all the seemingly unconnected facts about different people, dates, events, and issues related to that time period. The PERSIA approach is one way to organize how the people lived in a society at a certain time in history and so help students to understand that culture.

By considering in turn different dimensions of a historical period or event, students probe deeply into the many facets and implications of the past. Because of the depth of resources available online and in print, students can easily find evidence to support their investigations into all six of these areas. Shmoop, Wikipedia and the World History Resources page at Social Studies Central are a few of the online tools that may be helpful.

(Download a pdf version here.)

You can also help students break each broad category down by providing the following specifics:

Political

• Structure
• War
• Treaties
• Courts/Laws
• Leaders
• Popular participation
• Loyalty to leader

Economic

• State control on trade/industry
• Agriculture/Industry importance
• Labor systems
• Levels of Technology
• Levels of International Trade
• Gender and Slaves
• Money System

Religion

• Importance on societal interaction
• Holy Books
• Beliefs/Teachings
• Conversion – role of missionaries
• Sin/Salvation
• Deities

Social

• Family order – patriarchal, matriarchal
• Gender Relations – role of women, children
• Social Classes – slavery
• Entertainment
• Life Styles

Intellectual/Arts

• Art and Music
• Writing/Literature
• Philosophy
• Math/Science
• Education
• Inventions

Area/Geography

• Location
• Physical
• Movement
• Human/Environment

Need something simpler for younger kids?

Go with just the PEGS – Political, Economic, Geographic, Social – and back off a bit on your expectations for specific information.

Have fun!

Tip of the Week – Red Light, Green Light!

Create a classroom set of laminated green, yellow and red cards. The set could be as small as traditional playing cards or as large as you want. (Personally, I would probably make them monster size just for fun!)

How to use them?

• Hand them out to students before a large group discussion and periodically call for a vote on an issue by asking for a simultaneous show of cards. Red = disagree, green = agree, yellow = not sure or need more information. Use this information to create groups for debates and research.
• You could use them during group activities to help monitor progress – green means “we’re finished and ready to move on,” yellow means “we need one more minute” and red would mean “we need some more time.”
• Try using the cards as a simple form of the much more expensive clicker system. Develop a short list of questions – these could be true/false, yes/no, three answer multiple choice – and have kids respond with their cards.
• I’ve talked about Exit Cards as a great feedback strategy. Use the green/yellow/red cards as quick check of a wide variety of things at the end of class. Homework done? Understand the lesson? Ready for the test tomorrow?
• Monitor understanding with the cards as you progress through a lecture, lab or demonstration.
• Train your kids (especially your special ed kids) to use the cards to indicate that they are having trouble with independent practice activities during class. A red card could be used to quietly ask for help and a green card might indicate that the student is ready to help others.

Play with the strategy for a bit and I’m sure you’ll come up with some of your own great ideas for the cards. Have fun!

Tip of the Week – Six Hat Thinking

Essentially, Six Hat Thinking is about improving communication and decision-making in groups. It’s a strategy devised by Edward de Bono that asks students to change the way they think about a topic by looking at the problem through a range of different “thinking hats.”

• White hat thinking focuses on the information available and needed.
• Black hat thinking examines the difficulties and problems associated with a topic.
• Yellow hat thinking focuses on benefits and values.
• Red hat thinking looks at a topic from the point of view of emotions, feelings and hunches.
• Green hat thinking requires imaginative, creative and lateral thinking about a topic.
• Blue hat thinking focuses on reflection, metacognition and the need to manage the thinking process.

The colors help students to see six different perspectives and to convey something of the meaning of that perspective.

What is its purpose?

Students learn to recognize that different thinking is required in different situations. The strategy also encourages listening skills, group dynamics and improves decision making.

How can you use it?

Consider an issue or topic which you would like your students to explore. For example, you may want your kids to discuss the financial compensation of Japanese-Americans interned by the US government during World War II.

Explain what thinking is required for each of the hats. Arrange your kids into small groups of six and assign each student a “hat.” Younger kids (and even high school students) enjoy actually wearing the hat so come prepared with a variety of hats in appropriate colors. Encourage the students to ask themselves a variety of questions:

White hat – what are the facts about the internment and possible compensation?
Black hat – what are the negatives about possible compensation? What might happen without compensation?
Yellow hat – what would be gained from compensating Japanese-Americans?
Red hat – how might the possible compensation make us feel?
Green hat – are there other solutions besides compensation?
Blue hat – what might improve the process of compensation?

After sharing their findings within their own groups, have the groups report back to the whole class about the types of ideas generated.

How can I adapt it?

Six Hat Thinking can be applied to many situations in which brainstorming, problem solving, creative and lateral thinking are required. This strategy can be a very useful tool in reviewing a range of texts or even creating a character profile.

Have fun!

Tip of the Week – Read, Cover, Remember & Retell

I ran across this reading strategy last summer working with some elementary social studies teachers and thought it made a lot of sense. I just haven’t gotten around to sharing with you. Try it and let me know what you think!

Read, Cover, Remember and Retell is a way of building comprehension that you can use for any type of text and any age or reading level of student.  It is important to choose a text the student can read with little or no assistance.

Basic steps:

1. Students select a small amount of text on a page that can be covered by their hand.  This amount can vary from two or three sentences for 1st or 2nd graders to one or two paragraphs for older students. (The text can be print or online.)
2. The student then reads the selection aloud to a partner or silently to themselves.
3. After reading, ask them to cover the text again with their hand and think about what they read.
4. They should then share out what they read. This can be to you, with their partner or with a small group. Your younger kids will need to sneak a peek now and then. No big deal. The idea is to get them to begin summarizing and remembering what they have read.

Feel free to ask questions they can answer from what they read to help them remember.

The Read, Cover, Remember & Retell method encourages the reader to slow down, read for meaning and to focus on what they read.  This will increase their comprehension and long-term retention. I’ve seen teachers successfully use this strategy with all types of text ranging from expository to narrative to technical.

Have fun!

Tip of the Week – Book Bits

Activating prior knowledge and hooking kids into content are two great ways to increase student reading comprehension. The Book Bits strategy helps us do both. In Book Bits, sentences or phrases from a specific text are shared with the students in advance of reading the text. The text can really be just about type – a textbook, non-fiction, novel, short story, web site, some have even used it with audio and video clips – though it seems to work best with fiction.

The Book Bits strategy is designed to:

• arouse student curiosity about text to be read
• stimulate thinking about the text
• access prior knowledge and experience
• assist students in making predictions
• promote interest and motivation in reading the text, and
• build schema for constructing meaning

How to use it

1. Select important phrases or sentences from the text that are significant and write (or type) each of them on a slip of paper. These are your “book bits.” The sentence should reveal just enough to support text understanding, but not so much that they limit thinking. There should be as many book bits as there are students in the group.

2. Give each student a book bit. Ask each student to think about his/her book bit and begin predicting how their book bit might relate to others.

3. After the students have read their book bit, they move about the room and read their book bit with at least 4-5 others. It usually works best to set a time limit. Students should not discuss the book bits – all they should do is read their book bit to their partner and listen as their partner reads theirs. (Playing music during this mingling period helps encourage conversation.)

4. Once students have had the opportunity to hear most of the book bits floating around, they return to their seat. Ask your kids to do a quick Think-Pair-Share, trying to predict what the text is about based on the different book bits they heard. You may want to give specific instructions to think about characters, plot, setting or cause and effect. Some teachers have combined strategies and provided their kids with copies of the History Frame graphic organizer to help them arrange their thinking.

5. After completing the quick Think-Pair-Share, have students discuss their ideas with the entire group. Post their thinking on your bulletin board and refer to it throughout your instructional unit.

Source: Yopp, R.H. and Yopp, H.K. (2001). Literature-Based Reading Activities, 3rd ed. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, p. 33.