The Week That Was In 505

This week in 505, we covered a range of topics and used various teaching strategies to engage the students in text structures and westward expansion.

On Monday, we started off the week by writing with different text structures as we examined a funny photograph. This was a great way to get the students thinking critically about the photograph and the different ways in which they could present their thoughts.

Tuesday was a bit of a strange day, with very little emphasis on teaching.

Wednesday was when we started talking about westward expansion. We used a questioning strategy lesson, where students wrote questions about the painting “American Progress.” They then wrote a summary using the 8Parts eduprotocol. This was an effective way to help students engage with the material and understand the key concepts related to westward expansion.

On Thursday, I was presenting at the Hamilton County Educational Service Center about uses of A.I. to enhance learning and instruction. Whenever I’m out, I leave familiar lessons and protocols. I left a Sketch and Tell for westward expansion vocabulary, along with an edpuzzle video. This was a great way to help students understand key terms and concepts related to westward expansion, and to engage them with the material in a fun and interactive way.

Finally, on Friday, students examined motivations for American territorial expansion using a primary source and the 3xCER Eduprotocol. This was paired up with a SHEG lesson that I often use year after year. This was an effective way to help students understand the reasons behind American expansionism, and to engage them with the historical context surrounding this important topic.

Monday – 5xText Structure

Tuesday – some things are more important than school

Wednesday – Wicked Hydra JamBoard, 8pArts, Gimkit

Thursday – EdPuzzle, Sketch and Tell, Gimkit

Friday – 3xCER

Monday

When class began Monday, I created different Repuzzler cards, printed them and handed them out. I took away vocabulary words and added definitions. Now the 4 cards the students had to piece together were: definitions, example paragraph, signal words, and a graphic organizer. We followed up the Repouzzler with a Fast and Curious on Gimkit focusing on text structure definitions, signal words, and examples. All classes had a class average of 80% or higher. The Repuzzler and Fast and Curious took 10 minutes of class time.

Last Friday students were walking around the room, pulling cards from a ‘treasure chest’ and determining the type of text structure being used. After reading multiple paragraphs and determining text structure, I wanted the students to be able to write with different structures. I had an idea to change the 5xGenre EduProtocol to a 5xText Structure.

I tried to explain my idea to someone and it was kind of cast aside. It made me think my 5xText Structure wouldn’t work. However, I did it anyway. It worked great. The kids loved it.

When I introduce a new writing strategy in class, I try to use funny pictures. I try to use a low cognitive load as well. In the EduProtocols Community Facebook group, someone posted a funny picture of 3 chickens looking through a window at a cooked chicken on the counter. This was the perfect picture for the 5xText Structure. Here is how I set up and ran the 5xText Structure:

1. I created a slide with 5 different boxes for each text structure (descriptive, sequence, cause/effect, compare, and problem/solution). I left a blank space in the middle for a picture.
2. I remember reading in a research article about teaching text structures to begin with descriptive or sequence first. The top two boxes are for those text structures.
3. I set the timer for 4 minutes and had students write in a descriptive text structure about the image.
4. I encouraged them to use signal words. I also had them highlight signal words.
5. At the end of 4 minutes, we switched to the sequence text structure.
6. I ran the timer again for another 4 minutes.
7. We did this until the end of class. It was awesome! The kids loved it.

Since the introduction of the 5xText Structure, I had students create a new slide with a new picture. We begin class now by writing with a new text structure each day. One text structure a day, and now we are down to 3 minutes. Here are some examples:

Tuesday

Tuesday was a difficult day. Some things are way more important than school. People often ask me what I learned about education during Covid and I always respond, “I learned that it’s just school.” Many kids will come into our classrooms and at the end of the day, at the end of the quarter, at the end of the semester, or the end of the year they will always remember how they felt. I tried to do some school on this day, but I changed my mind. It didn’t feel right.

I often write random poems for school, tennis, or life. This moment called for me write a poem:

Wednesday

Wednesday we came back ready to begin a new unit. I have moved onto westward expansion. My overall question for this unit is, “How did manifest Destiny drive westward expansion?” So, priority number 1 is helping the students understand the phrase Manifest Destiny.

I took nine vocabulary words from the lesson on westward expansion and created a Blooket and a Gimkit using ChatGPT. (It’s mind blowing!) Here is how I made them in 5 minutes or less:

Before we even used the Gimkit, I wanted students to ask questions about the image, American Progress. This image is Manifest Destiny. I copied this image onto a jamboard and had students share with each other. This image has so much going on that it naturally creates curiosity and questions. I gave students 5-6 minutes to ask questions. The students used the post-it note feature on jamboard to ask their questions. At the end of 5-6 minutes, we had a brief discussion about the image.

One thing I usually have to point out about American Progress are the two halves – light vs. dark. Most students to pick up on this, but several students asked the question, “Why are they moving into darkness?” “Why is one side lighter?” It led to great discussions – I love Jacob Carr’s Wicked Hydra EduProtocol.

In an effort to keep writing as a theme in my class, we followed up the Wicked Hydra with an American Progress 8pArts. Now, students had some basic background information with the painting and I wanted to see how they could use that information to write. The first thing I had students do was take a question from their Jamboard and turn it into an I Wonder statement on the 8pArts.

We haven’t completed an 8pArts in a long time and it showed. I had to remind 8th grade students what verbs and adverbs were. As a result, we did the 8pArts together. After we filled in the boxes, they wrote their summaries.

To conclude class, we played a Gimkit with westward expansion vocabulary words. All of the class averages ended up at 67% or higher. The most commonly missed words were: cession, annexation, and diplomacy.

Thursday

On Thursday I was out presenting. I was at the Hamilton Education Service Center presenting 10 Ways to Use A.I. to Enhance Learning and Instruction. If you want any ideas or want to contribute an idea, here you go:

1. My Presentation – some of the highlights include: mad libs, creating questions, and pairing some EduProtocols with AI.
2. Share an A.I. idea here on a Thin Slide.

Whenever I’m out, I always leave something familiar for the students. So, I left a Sketch and Tell, and EdPuzzle video about westward expansion, and a Gimkit. When I looked back through the student work, I had 74% student engagement. I received only 1 email from a student and it said, “Can you please reset my EdPuzzle?”

For the Sketch and Tell I had students paraphrase westward expansion definitions for cession, annexation, diplomacy, and Manifest Destiny (The most commonly missed words from Wednesday’s Gimkit). Students could use Google Shapes or Scribble Diffusion. Scribble Diffusion is an A.I. site that takes your drawings and converts them into images. It’s super cool. Here is a disclaimer – I have used scribble diffusion several times and 98% of the time it has been awesome! A student showed me a drawing he made for ‘cession’ which was a stick figure. He showed me his description, “someone surrendering,” and Scribble Diffusion create an inappropriate image. It was weird. Out of the hundreds of images I created, and the students created, this only has happened once.

Friday

Friday I took a SHEG lesson (Stanford History Education Group) about Manifest Destiny. The lesson asks the question, “What motivated American territorial expansion in the 1840’s?” I like to pair the 3xCER with SHEG lessons.

In this lesson, students read an excerpt from a textbook about Manifest Destiny. Then students read three more excerpts from John O’Sullivan, the Whig Party, and Theodore Parker. Each excerpt offers different insight to motivations for Americans.

I pointed out to students that the textbook and John O’Sullivan point out that territorial expansion was motivated by this belief that we were heroes, saving people, and bringing them American values. The other two perspectives show America as greedy for money, resources, and showing its strength.

Either way, I set up the 3xCER so students could write down the Textbook claim. We worked on trying to restate the main question in our claims. We also worked on not using, “I think…” in our claims. For the other three excerpts, I set a timer for 6 minutes on each one.

Here is what I love about the 3xCER – In just over 20 minutes, students wrote 4 claims, found/used 3 pieces of evidence, and used reasoning 3 times for their claims and evidence.

This particular lesson goes in a circle, and we circled back to the original textbook section we read. This time, the students had the option to add more information to the textbook article. Or, they would rewrite the textbook article. I had them add a picture, caption, and create a new title. Here are some students examples:

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