Thematic Planning and Teaching

Last night's #inquirychat focused on the concept of thematic teaching. One of the points that is on my mind has to do with the extent to which a thematic approach is at odds with a chronological approach. I am not sure this is the case, though in the chat it appeared to be expressed as such.

I should probably start with some definitions.

During last night's chat, I defined a theme as a recurring, organizing idea. I then proceeded to define themes as big questions, particularly questions focused on disciplinary concepts. In the course of the chat, words such as justice, equality, and nationalism were all mentioned as possible themes.

For me, it is always helpful to think about the non example. What does a teacher who is NOT teaching thematically doing, or not doing?

Let's picture them opening up the textbook and talking about the French Revolution, section by section. And then students are tested. Traditional history teaching personified. I do not consider this thematic teaching because there is no attempt to tie the material to larger ideas or themes. If we think about how a textbook is organized, it is often around events. For example, the Western Civ textbook my school uses has the following sections for the French Revolution:

The first section is organized in the following way:

Section 1- Revolution threatens the French King

Sub topics

Old Regime

The Forces of Change

Revolution Dawns

A Great Fear Sweeps France

The textbook is presenting the French Revolution the way most textbooks do, as a series of events. The book is telling a story. It is not simply a list of facts. So, to that extent, there are unstated themes ( I will talk about this more).

What about the theme of revolution? Would that work here?

It seemed from the chat that some conceptions of thematic teaching would look like this:

Unit Theme= Revolution

Examine the use of the word revolution, as it has appeared recently in the news.

Study French Revolution

Study Russia Revolution

Notice that in this formulation the teacher appears to jump from the French Rev to the Russian Rev. I do not think this approach works, at least for me. And I do not think that thematic teaching has to look this way.


More tomorrow...

Planning for Historical Thinking

Blog of Month February- Planning for Historical Thinking

Since the summer, I have spent many hours thinking about and discussing what I want to do more of in my history class. After thousands of tweets and many blog posts, now is the time for me to focus on specifics, to focus on what exactly I want to do in my classroom that is different from what I have done in the past. The History Blog Circle is an attempt to collaborate with others who are at various stages of a similar process, a process that at its core focuses on teaching students how to think like historians.

Starting last month and continuing indefinitely, I will continue to dig deeper as I explore what it means to think like an historian and how to set up a classroom that emphasizes this approach to teaching students about the past, present, and, I suppose, even the future.   

When I try to imagine change, I have found that sometimes it is helpful for me to start by defining what I don’t want to see. From there, I am often in a better position to conceptualize and articulate my vision, where I want to go and how I am going to get there. For the time being, that is going to be my approach with historical thinking. What are classrooms like where historical thinking is not occurring or only rarely occurs? And what can I do to avoid creating a classroom like this?

Students are quiet. Lots of teacher talk. 

I start with a basic assumption: When students are not writing or talking, I am severely limiting my opportunities to get them thinking about the past, to teach them specific historical thinking skills, and, in time, to assess their thinking, providing the feedback that is essential to help students become historical thinkers.

That is not to say that when I lecture students are not thinking. What, though, are they thinking about? I suspect that more often than not when we are talking, or ‘lecturing’, the chances that students are actually thinking about the topics we are discussing are often quite small.  If we cannot get students thinking aloud or on paper, then we cannot do much teaching. The best we can say that we are doing is talking; we are not teaching.

Assignments need to emphasize more than regurgitating content

Even a student with exceptional memory is not really learning much of value if all she can do is repeat what her teacher or her textbook says. As Grant Wiggins repeatedly reminds us, remembering is not understanding. Expecting and accepting recall of information as the main evidence of learning signals to students that the learning we value is primarily the learning associated with remembering, as opposed to understanding.

If superficial learning is the goal, then, indeed, little understanding is needed for students to demonstrate that they can remember content well enough to spit it back on a test. Knowing this, it is essential for me to consciously get students thinking on paper or out loud in class. Only then, can I push students to evaluate their thinking, the thinking of their classmates, their teacher, and all of the texts, written and unwritten, that we encounter in class.

Units and Lessons Need to Revolve around Questions

The Stanford Historical Education Group (SHEG) does this well. @William ABerry11 also discussed this in his post. I am still learning the best way to incorporate the SHEG model of lesson planning into my routine since the vast majority of the existing SHEG lessons do not connect to my Western Civ course.  When examining the SHEG lessons, you will notice that every lesson has a central question at the top the lesson plan. This approach, I think, is superior to structuring a lesson around a series of learning objectives, as many of us were taught in college when we first learned how to lesson plan.

I have noticed that the SHEG questions are usually fairly limited. They do not carry over into multiple lessons, the way that one of Grant Wiggins’ Essential Questions (EQs) does. I am also pretty sure that many of SHEGs questions revolve around why and how questions, as opposed to should or would questions.

As long as you are not attempting to build a lesson around a closed ended question, then this approach should work for you.  The bottom line here is that we set students up to construct a response to the lesson’s central question, requiring them to defend their position and support it with evidence derived from their analysis of primary and secondary sources.

How I have typically planned

Throughout my career, I have never planned my units and lessons in ways that are aligned with the best practices spelled out by Grant Wiggins and SHEG.

I like that Wiggins focuses on student understanding and transfer. He is eloquent in his articulation about why teaching discrete facts and isolated details is not meaningful. When I think about my history class, I have generally been content with teaching students information. When planning, I have typically started by making decisions about what I want to tell, or ‘teach’, students in class.

 In recent years, with the advent of department tests, my planning has revolved almost completely around the department tests. I have decided what to tell students by looking at the test. This is not what a good history teacher does. In fact, this is not what a good teacher does. What, then, do good history teachers do?

I have to decide what big ideas and essential understandings I am going to focus on in class.

I have been reading Grant Wiggins’ text Understanding by Design, where he discusses how teachers can teach students in a meaningful way, as opposed to providing them with superficial instruction that for all intents and purposes is a waste of time.

Wiggins emphasizes teaching for transfer, teaching students to use the concepts and skills they learn in your class in new and varied situations. Wiggins asserts, and I agree, that this type of deeper, lasting learning is not common.

Why? Wiggins premise is that it is not common because of how teachers teach. And, to tie these comments back to this month’s topic, how teachers teach is connected with how they plan their units and lessons.

If I am honest, I do not plan to teach for understanding, in the manner discussed by Wiggins. What do teachers who plan and teach using UbD principles do? What do they do that I do not do?

More to come…

Step 1: I am no longer using the term 'Unit'.

     The term itself, 'unit', appears innocuous. After all, it simply means a chunk of material that is grouped or unified. It is a term that most of us have been hearing since our first day of kindergarten. Why, then, am I choosing to focus on the concept of a unit, as I begin transforming my classroom approach to history?  

     I am not sure when the term unit was first used in an educational setting, but the word instantly makes me think of textbooks. Textbooks, in many ways, immediately reduce the chances that a history teacher will create a classroom environment where inquiry is valued over regurgitation history (RH).  

     What do textbooks do? A text breaks information down into discrete packages. A text often consists of two dozen units. And each unit is broken down further into a dozen or so sections.

     As soon as we allow ourselves to embrace a textbook approach to history, we begin a process that inevitably moves us far away from creating meaningful history classes that embrace the thinking skills and epistemological attitudes that are associated with the discipline of history. 

    Throughout my career, I have thought of the courses I teach in terms of units. In my Western Civ class, for example, I teach 6 or 7 units, including units on the Industrial Revolution, French Revoltuon, and World War I. 

    By embracing a textbook, unit-centric approach to history teaching, I have allowed myself to fall into the trap of viewing content as something that is delivered to students in a variety of ways, such as through lectures, powerpoints, worksheets, and video clips.

     Teaching for regurgitation creates a learning environment where students are passive, intellectually detached receivers of content. In this setting, content often appears to students as inert and without meaning.

     Thinking of content as units that I deliver to students is a mistake, likely a fatal one if my overarching goal is to cultivate historical thinking skills among my students.

     Units, in regurgitation history classes, often end with a test that attempts to measure student acquisition of factual knowledge. A looming end of unit test creates pressure on a teacher to teach all of 'the facts' to students so that they can have success on the end of unit test.

     Well intentioned teachers, often obsessively, consider the following question: "How can I ensure that all of my students learn the facts that they are going to be tested on ?" 

     We need to reconsider this approach to teaching and testing.  And, beginning in Sept, I am going to stop using the term unit, replacing it with the term investigation. 

     Obviously, replacing the word unit with investigation means nothing if this change is not accompanied by numerous other changes. Nevertheless, I think this change captures something important about the change in philosophy that I am embracing. In the coming days and weeks, I will connect other, more substantive, changes to the concept of an investigation. 

UNIT= Usually Not Inquiry Teaching