A lively debate and the founding of Jamestown

Our 4th grade social studies curriculum is American history from Jamestown and Plymouth through the end of the American Revolution. My partner and I seek to infuse social studies with the big ideas of history, and immerse our students through simulations, videos, writing journals, and problem-solving activities. I previously wrote about one of these activities, a history/geography investigation.

Social studies topics also overflow into other subjects, including reading. Our reading curriculum is based around self-selected reading, with some parameters, but our read-aloud books are mostly historical fiction related to American history.

The first novel we do as a read-aloud is Blood on the River by Elisa Carbone. We meet Samuel Collier, who came to Jamestown on the first ships. In this fictionalized version of Samuel, he is a orphan who is indentured to Captain John Smith. We follow the progress and problems of Jamestown through Samuel's eyes up to the winter that became known as "The Starving Time." It is an engaging story as we watch Samuel grow from an angry young boy into a thoughtful, capable young man.

As always when we have a read-aloud, I can tell that some children are not paying attention, are not engaged in the story. We have vocabulary assignments throughout the book and each student has a copy of the book. We discuss as we go along and recap each day. I remind them that there will be a test at the end. Sometimes I have had the class hold a debate on the pros and cons of the founding of Jamestown.

This year I decided to tweak the debate process, basing my new structure on an activity I participated in at the Teacher Institute at Colonial Williamsburg. Rather than having everyone consider all the viewpoints on interested parties, I assigned roles. The class was divided up into Original Colonists - Gentry, Original Colonists - commoners, New Colonists, the Virginia Company investors, and the Algonquian people. The time was right after the Starving Time, when a ship arrived with supplies and more colonists. Each group had to decide how they felt about Jamestown and whether it was a good or bad idea. We had a brief whole group discussion to help everyone remember key points from the book.

After planning an opening statement, each group had a chance to present it to the whole class. The Original Colonists went first. This group had decided to combine gentry and commoners into one statement, though in reality they had different goals and experiences. They were also the first finished with their statement, which was very short. Jamestown was a good idea because they were able to get land and maybe get rich. The other three groups made more lengthy statements, backed up with evidence from the book and history. The new colonists accurately expressed their lack of concern over relations with the Algonquians. The Virginia Company spoke at length over their expectation of seeing their investment pay off. The Algonquians were the most passionate though. They argued against Jamestown, saying that not only were they treated unfairly many times, but that the English did not understand their point of view.

After this first round of statements, every group was eager to make more points, including the original colonists, who, without any prodding on my part, saw how lacking their first statement was and worked to make up for that. After the second statements, the whole class was practically leaping in the air wanting to continue, so we kept going around until we ran out of time!

I loved this lesson because the kids were so involved, so busy thinking about what they had learned. It made history come alive for them and had them thinking from various perspectives. In addition, after the final test on the book, most of them said that the debate was the biggest help in approaching the test. I will explain the test in the next post.

Nine Dots

It's a new school year and a second year of Creative Problem Solving/Design Thinking. We started out with some of the same activities last year's class did, from the CPS book Big Tools for Young Thinkers. The class enjoyed the activities, made a strong start on collaborative brainstorming, and dipped their toes into out of the box ideas.

Then I read a reference to the classic Nine Dots puzzle, which I was already familiar with,  and decided it would be a valuable learning experience for my students. If you haven't come across this wonderful little nudge to thinking literally outside the box, here it is:

The challenge is to connect all nine dots with four straight lines or fewer, without lifting the pencil from the paper.

I first asked if anyone had ever done this puzzle, since 4th graders have a habit of bursting out with what they know, even if you don't want them to tell everyone else at that particular moment. One boy had done it before, so I had prepared in advance with some hands-on puzzles. He very happily took on a brick arrangement challenge, using variously shaped bricks and following a design challenge on cards.

As soon as I put the nine dots up on the Smart Board and explained the parameters and the goal, one boy said, "I see how to do it already." I answered, "Great! Show me on paper." I handed out a sheet with three copies of the nine dots, so students could easily try more than once. There was a lot of excited discussion, and quite a few questions for me as I walked around, mostly clarifications of the rules. No, a curved line is not allowed; no, you may not pick up your pencil; yes, ALL the dots have to be included on one of the lines, when you turn the corner that is the start of a new line.

After 10 minutes or so, none of them had succeeded. (And my young man working with the bricks had been paying interested attention but not saying a word!) It was time for a clue, so I referred to our CPS "rules," which include "think outside the box." This created a buzz, but no actually  going outside the box around the dots that each of them had created in their minds. The student who said he knew how to solve it at the beginning still had not succeeded.

Running out of time, I told them I would give them the solution. The young man already in the know asked if he could put it up on the board, and so we all watched as he drew lines, continuing outside the box, to connect all nine dots in four continuous lines. There were many gasps and "oh!"s.

On to the next challenge, reminding my class to Think Outside the Box!

If you would like the solution to this puzzle, Wikipedia has an article about it.

Design Thinking Opportunity!

I started my design thinking journey by reading the book Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All by Tom Kelley and David Kelley. At the time I was looking for ideas on creativity and how to foster it. I was excited to learn about the design thinking process, which I had not heard of. You can read my post about it here. The Kelleys are partners at IDEO, a design and innovation firm. IDEO, along with the Riverdale Country School, now has formed The Teacher Guild, an online community with the purpose of exploring education issues through the design thinking process. It is modeled on OpenIDEO, an online platform that tackles large, difficult problems by inviting all interested parties to participate in the process.

The Teachers Guild's first 10-week collaboration is going on now. The question is "How might we create rituals and routines that establish a culture of innovation in our classrooms and schools?" This collaboration is in the Discovery phase in which members contribute ideas, thoughts, and resources related to the question. Everyone can contribute, comment, and "applaud" others' ideas. The next phase, which starts soon, is Ideate. Participants will share and try ideas that address the question. The Evolve step continues the design process with feedback, then in Select participants vote for their favorites. The most popular solutions are announced followed by a reflection piece. The staff at The Teacher's Guild works offline in between some of the steps. Then a new problem is posted. The process is thoroughly explained on the website.

In the current Discovery stage, many people have posted. It is exciting to read so many ideas all aimed at helping solve a problem. There are ideas about question asking, mindset, failure as a positive force, physical classroom set-ups, and many more. My posted idea was creating a positive, supportive classroom atmosphere where students feel comfortable taking risks. There are also many comments posted on the ideas. It is a positive, energetic community!

I'm excited about interacting with other teachers interested in design thinking. I'm also happy to have an opportunity to experience the process, going through the steps with other teachers. My goal is not only to be able to use the design process myself, but to teach it, in a simpler, shorter form, to my students.

Sound intriguing? Check it out at teachersguild.org!

Searching for excellent biographies for kids

I am searching for excellent biographies written for upper-elementary age children. I seem to have many examples of less than excellent biographies. I'm hoping readers of this post will offer some suggestions.

I would like to find this type of biography to use both as mentor texts and for research purposes. One of the writing projects our 4th graders do is a research project on a subject related to the American Revolution. Many of the students choose to research a person and write a biography. Over the years as I have read more biographies written for adult readers, I realize the limitations of many of the children's biographies about those same people. Some are not accurate, or not complete. Some are just not terribly interesting to read.

I am a fan of the blog Two Writing Teachers, and when I read this post on "Teaching Authentic Information Writing," I realized the ideas applied to writing for children, as well as teaching children to write. The post is about a presentation by author Ralph Fletcher, on how to help young writers find the story in their nonfiction topics to create lively written work with a personal voice and without getting trapped into reciting a list of facts. This is exactly the type of writing that many authors of new biographies and books about history, such as David McCullough's and David Hackett Fischer, to name just two, are writing now. They are fun to read, as opposed to what I remember from when I was in school.

In our research project, we require each student to read at least two sources on his/her topic. One source is usually a below grade level book that can be read quickly to get an overview of the person's life. I like the books of David Adler (A Picture Book of...) for this part of the research. The second source is usually a chapter book. The purposes of the second book are to find more details and to learn about the importance of using more than one source. It's always interesting when students find discrepancies between sources and need to decide how to handle them.

I am therefore looking for strong examples of biographies for younger readers. I collect books about the American Revolution for this project, but I would love to have excellent biographies for my class library a to use as mentor texts and to inspire my students to read more nonfiction. If you know of biographies that fit my description, please leave a comment giving the title and author. Thank you in advance!

Mission Geography with NASA

I am a big fan of  NASA's educational materials. I wrote previously about using a lesson from Mission Mathematics as part of problem solving in math. NASA also has an excellent geography curriculum, Mission Geography, which is available free on the NASA website.  They have created different curricula for grades K-4, 5-8, and 9-12. Teaching a gifted 4th grade class, I have used units from both the K-4 and 5-8 bands.

My class has just completed Investigation 1 in the unit "Mars and Earth - the Quest for Life." This is part of the 5-8 units. Investigation 1 is "Where do we choose to live and why?" This is a question our 4th graders have been exploring for the entire school year in Social Studies, beginning with the early English colonies. In an earlier blog post I shared the lesson plan from Colonial Williamsburg in which students are charged with examining the characteristics of several potential settlement sites, ranking them according to different criteria, and defending their choices of site. Later in the year, we saw the importance of waterways as transportation in the French and Indian War. We noted in colonial times leading up to the Revolutionary War that the colonies were all on the Atlantic coast and the major cities were all ports.

"Where do we choose to live and why?" reinforces these aspects of geography in history and brings the ideas into the present. In the first activity, Students are introduced to the concepts of patterns, dispersion and density in populations. Then students are given a satellite photo of New England at night, so what you see are the lights of human activity. The photo is not identified, so the first task students have is to identify from it was taken, what time of day it was, and what it is. There are a number of questions to answer about what can be seen in the photo, including, what are the completely dark areas (water), what patterns do you observe, and finally, what cities, water bodies, and other features can you identify. In my experience using this for a few year now, students usually need some scaffolding in understanding the concepts of pattern and dispersion when talking about human population, so I give additional examples beyond what Mission Geography offers. I also have students work in partners to have someone to discuss the questions with.

In the second activity, students receive a photo of the continental United States (and parts of Canada and Mexico), but it has been turned into a puzzle, being cut into eight rectangles. Their job is to reassemble it using their mental map of the country, with the night lights of cities as the guide. Most students can easily identify the east coast, and often California and Texas with the Gulf of Mexico The center of the country is the challenge. At this point I encourage students to use an atlas, look for the major cities, and assemble the country from those clues. There is a more extensive set of questions to answer after putting the country together. Some questions ask students to think about why there are no cities in parts of the continent. Using an atlas, they discover that the more empty portions of the country are mountains and deserts. They also use a plastic overlay and markers to outline the U.S. and highlight certain features. This is always a popular part of the activity! I collect the clear plastic from the ends of laminating to use as the overlays.

So far these activities have been a cooperative effort, working with partners, and then discussing answers as a whole class. The final activity in this section is applying everything they have learned to determine where people would settle on an unidentified satellite photo of Australia. This photo is a color image designating elevation. I have been disappointed in past years when I taught this lesson because my students had difficulty in successfully picking logical places to settle. They would often pick a place in the middle of Australia, rather than the coastlines, even though we has been discussing this for most of the school year. I decided that part of the problem was with a lack of scale. Though many of my students recognized that it was Australia, they didn't have a clear idea of how big the country/continent is. So this year I gave them the area and the distance north to south and east to west. Another possible issue is the color code for elevation uses a deep green for the lowest elevation, which may give a mistaken impression of lush forests. Students had frequently chosen the center of Australia as a good place to settle, while in reality is is about a thousand miles from the coastline and a desert. This year I went over the color code carefully.

I had students begin work alone and after about 15 or 20 minutes offered them a chance to partner up and share their ideas. This gave me time to walk around checking on understanding and misconceptions before they worked together. I was very pleased with the results of these tweaks. Almost all of my students demonstrated understanding of what people look for in a settlement, as well as the types of places people tend to live.

NASA's Mission Geography gives context to geographical concepts and allows students to apply them. Students are required to think and use what they know. There are many more units than the ones I use - I wish I had more time to teach geography!

The Pencil Problem

It seems that pencils are always in high demand in my classroom. Where do they all go? I start the year with 18 pencils per student and sometimes by the end of April, I have none left.

I decided to do another Quick Challenge on this issue to see what my 4th graders could make of it. I had some ideas about what was happening to the pencils, but since I had learned so much about lunch from the last Quick Challenge,  I didn't share any of my thoughts.

We started by partnering up and brainstorming together what some of the problems were. I stressed that they were only to think about the problems, not figure out solutions. Then we collected them all on the white board.

As you can see, they came up with quite a comprehensive list. Next, I asked them to choose one of the problems, or more if they thought they were connected, to come up with some solutions. I suggested they choose problems that interested them or that they thought would be fun to solve. The solutions were pretty straightforward. The erasers on the ends of the pencils get used up quickly, but they can use a separate eraser instead. Students could write their name or initials on their pencils. (I though this was a bit extreme, but several of them did this.) There were a few pencil hoarders in the class, who had more pencils in their desks than they could possibly use. One of them came up to me privately and asked if he could return some!

We didn't take this too seriously and had some fun with this problem. The activity reenforced the idea of taking time to examine the problem, and only after determining the cause(s) to move on to exploring solutions.

Problem solving in Geography and History

Geography is another area that lends itself to including problem solving. There are many essential questions that elementary students can consider while they're learning basic ideas of geography.

In our 4th grade social studies we explore the early British colonists and Jamestown and Plymouth before moving on to later colonial times and the American Revolution. We look at exactly what the settlers at Plymouth were looking for in a site for their colony and what circumstances led them to pick Plymouth. Then we contrast that with the decisions that the settlers of Jamestown made about their location. Neither group made the ideal choice. The Pilgrims were very pressed to find something before the winter weather grew even worse. The Jamestown settlers were being directed long distance from England by investors who were mostly concerned with finding gold.

I had the idea that we could incorporate geography by having students use a map of the Plymouth area to decide on a settlement location. They knew that the Pilgrim were looking for a spot with a high hill for a lookout over the ocean, flat lands for growing crops, fresh water, a nearby forest for both hunting and lumber, and a deep enough harbor for ships. Students had to apply their knowledge of map scale in choosing a location, and note the lakes and streams in the area. The other three criteria, however, were not apparent on the map we used.

Then, I attended the the Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Institute and came home with so many wonderful teaching activities! One of them was a geography activity with a scenario set in 1630. It included all the concepts we wanted our students to deal with in their problem solving. They need to evaluate the conditions and connections of five possible settlement sites. The map is a made-up location. Each of the sites has advantages and disadvantages, so there is no correct or easy answer. Students have to think about what the settlers' goals in starting a settlement are, as well as what the site is like (conditions) and what is nearby (connections). This is the map from the activity:

We have the 4th graders work in small groups on this activity. There is always a lot of discussion. They are asked to rate each site for both positive and negative aspects, and to pick the locations with the best conditions, worst conditions, best connections, and worst connections before deciding upon the best site to build a fortified town in 1630.

I have not been able to find this activity on the Williamsburg teacher site, but I found two versions when I did a Google search. They are both a little different than the version I have, having been adapted for specific teaching situations. They can be found at Conditions and Connections Near Jamestown and Geography Activity: Conditions and Connections.

Another wonderful source for geography curriculum that requires problem solving is NASA. I will post about those activities later.