Visual Design & Interactivity
I just read about Visual Design and Interactivity in the classroom. An example of Visual Design is Visible Thinking. In Visible Thinking, the teacher and student work together to “show” the thought process of the students. I really like this concept because it’s easy to implement in the class and the products can be added into the students’ portfolios (I am a huge proponent of portfolios!).
I am thinking about adding this to my 5th grade lesson plan on the Civil War. I would incorporate the section of Visible Thinking called Circle of Viewpoints. Here is what it would look like:
Brainstorm a list of different perspectives and then use this script skeleton to explore each one:
Wrap up: What new ideas do you have about the topic that you didn’t have before? What new questions do you have? |
Part of the lesson is for my students to understand both perspectives of slavery by researching primary sources on the internet. As my students research, they need to think about many different questions. Why were slave-owners willing to go to war? Why did slaves want their freedom? What was it like to be a slave-owner versus being a slave? All of these questions can be answered using Circle of Viewpoints because I can see how they came to their conclusions.
Another way to increase active learning and offer better feedback as a teacher is through interactivity. I wasn’t able to find a definite explanation as to what interactivity was, but after reading a few articles, it appears to be the incorporation of technology into your lesson plans. So, teachers should try to incorporate technology in ways that allow students to think through technology’s use, offer creative uses of technology, and receive feedback on their products. I like using blogs in class because it offers students a more private and meaningful way to become engaged in discussions. I think students would feel safer to speak up because they aren’t on a time crunch (4 second rule) to answer a question or offer something to the discussion. Rather, students can think about what they want to say and analyze their opinion to a greater extent because there isn’t anyone there to interrupt their train of thought.
Circle of Viewpoints chart from:
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Online Databases
Online databases are a nice way to spruce up a web-based assignment. I developed a 5th grade web assignment about the Civil War. First the students go to the following link for the Library of Congress to read over the general chronology of the war. As they read and loo at the cool pictures, they need to write down two or three topics they discover on this site that they would like to learn more about. He he, this is getting them ready for another technology adventure.
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ndlpcoop/nhihtml/cwnyhsspec.html
Next they use the two links below to research four soldiers who fought in the war. Two must have fought for a free state, and two for a slave state.
click on: Kids, Families (on the left side, under Resources)
click on: American Memory
click on: War, Military
http://www.militaryindexes.com/civilwar/
The reason why I am willing to spend so much time on this is because I want the students to really understand that history is about real people who we can relate to. Through a personal quest on these soldiers, students can (if not already) respect and understand the men and women who fight in more modern wars.
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This is a really neat website that has LOTS of videos that you can download. I just spent some time looking it over, and found that it is extremely user friendly. It is easy to navigate, AND they have videos divided into SOL standards! So, for example, my
5th grade practicum class is about to start learning about the Civil War. So I looked up US9a, and found a video that covers the war. How cool is that?
I highly recommend this site. Oh, did I mention that it is free?
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