The Week That Was In 505

This week we continued the Early Republic Unit (I feel like this is a constant blog now). Between field trips, remote days, and snow – this 5-6 week unit is now moving into 7 weeks. Part of me want to end the unit now and move on, another part of me wants to finish it out and tinker with some new lessons. This week we lost Monday due to a field trip to a vocational school. Therefore, we had Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday for the Louisiana Purchase.

The Louisiana Purchase focus is building some background knowledge and then understanding how Federalists and Democratic-Republicans viewed the purchase. Here are the I Can statements I created:

I can identify the Louisiana Territory.
I can explain why Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory.
I can identify why the Louisiana Purchase was controversial.
I can analyze the Louisiana Purchase from multiple perspectives.

Monday – Field Trip to a Vocational School

Tuesday – Number Mania and Fast and Curious

Wednesday – Thin Slide, CyberSandwich

Thursday – I stopped the CyberSandwich and did the Research Protocol.

Friday – Field Trip

Tuesday

Tuesday was a background knowledge building day with the Louisiana Purchase. I started class off with a Fast and Curious with the following 1st rep scores – 71%, 46%, 52%, 68%, and 45%. This Fast and Curious was 8 questions and focused on Thomas Jefferson, basic Louisiana Purchase knowledge, and questions about Federalists and Democratic Republicans. All questions tied to my I Can statements listed above.

Following the Fast and Curious was a Number Mania. I found an article on the Louisiana Purchase and included lots of numbers into the article. I framed the Number Mania by asking the students to retell the story of the Louisiana Purchase. They were to include 4-5 numbers and facts, a title, organize the information, and be creative. The students read for 10 minutes, highlighted numbers and important information, then they created their infographics. Here are some examples:

After 20 to 25 minutes we switched gears to another Fast and Curious. The results were as follows: 88%, 68%, 82%, 83%, and 75%. Two things stand out to me after looking at the percentages – I didn’t get a higher percentage raise than I normally do with a CyberSandwich, and the highest percentage (88%) was the class that did a Thin Slide first. I had to cut out the Thin Slide because the Guidance Counselor stopped in to hand out scheduling information for high school. This set us up for another Fast and Curious try on Wednesday and extending our knowledge on Federalists and Democratic Republicans’ thoughts on the purchase.

Wednesday

We began Wednesday with a Thin Slide and this prompt – “What was your biggest takeaway from the Louisiana Purchase?” Students had 3 minutes to include 1 word and 1 picture. Then I had students use their Number Mania to construct a paragraph on their slide or in the speaker notes.

I gave students 3-4 minutes to write their paragraph, and then I had them jump slide to slide using the Nacho Paragraph. With the Nacho Paragraph, I had students go to someone else’s slide and add information to the paragraph. I asked them to do 2 things:

Add a new number and explanation to the paragraph.
Change the topic sentence to something new and better.

This was a great way to get the students to think, and they had fun. This activity was followed by a Fast and Curious and every class raised their averages – 89%, 88%, 84%, 90%, 81%.

After our Fast and Curious, I switched gears to a CyberSandwich which I paired up with a Stanford History Education Group lesson (SHEG) – Louisiana Purchase. The main question for the lesson was, “Why did Federalists oppose the Louisiana Purchase?” I had students work in groups of 3 and I had the following documents ready for them:

A letter from Alexander Hamilton
A letter from Rufus King
I typed up a secondary source about Democratic Republicans

I added questions to the note taking slide and gave students 10 minutes to read. Then I had students discuss. By this time, class was over. By the end of the day, I don’t know why, but I was questioning my use of the CyberSandwich. It seemed thrown together and forced. I don’t like that feeling, and I pursue better on a daily basis. By the evening, I found myself at home and I had a good conversation with Scott Petri who gave me a great idea – he suggested I use the Research Protocol.

Thursday

The Research Protocol is a new protocol Scott and I will be introducing in our new Eduprotocol for History book (When will this come out? I don’t know). I took Scott’s version of this idea and applied it to Middle School. So, I threw out the CyberSandwich lesson, but still used the same SHEG resources for the Research Protocol. I switched to this lesson because students would be working through multiple primary and secondary sources, finding important information and quotes, and explaining those quotes all while collaborating. Here was my set up:

I posted the central question – “How did Federalists and Democratic Republicans feel about the Louisiana Purchase?”
I shared a Google Form that allowed students to share a quote and explain it. Then I passed out the 3 sources I mentioned above.
Students had 15 minutes to share 2 reasons Federalists opposed the purchase and 2 reasons Democratic Republicans supported the purchase.
Then I created and shared a spreadsheet of the students generated information.
I had students fill out a V Diagram with 3 reasons for Federalists and 3 reasons for Democratic Republicans.
Then I had students choose a side and then write a thesis statement.
This led to a discussion of thesis statements and a self assessment.

This was such and awesome protocol to get students collaborating, finding relevant information, evaluating and comparing multiple sources, writing thesis statements. While students were sharing quotes and explanations, I was able to give feedback in real time. There were so many great pieces to this lesson – so it’s something to look forward to when our book comes out! Here are some pics from that day:

All in all, this was a productive week with many Eduprotocols. I need to get back to using to EMC2Learning resources as I have failed at that recently. I feel like we have reached that point in the year with a lot of apathy, and I need to plug in some excitement.