Daniel’s Lingering Questions

I’d love ideas about how to tie some of these writing prompts and activities into Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Maya, and Ancient India!

I’d love to look at specific ways to teach writing the two point paragraph (RACECE) for NYS Exam.

Basically, I’d like some guidance on how to implement these ideas into my specific context. I feel that this issue of transferability is very often problematic for me.

6 thoughts on “Daniel’s Lingering Questions”

  1. I had the same ideas Dan. I felt like I was given good strategies and activities but have no idea where to start with implementing them into my classroom. I think once I consider what and how I will be teaching this year, I will be able to find ways to include these strategies and activities into my classroom. I am hoping to try to use as many as I can, and you do the same.

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    1. I agree with Caitlyn. I think that once you really look at your material and what you have to teach you can start to see where these ideas might work. You may not realize that a strategy would fit really well in a topic or unit until you are planning that unit and then the idea strikes you that a strategy would fit really well here. Take some time before the school year and brainstorm the topics you have to teach and experiment with implementing these strategies. Bounce these strategies off of colleagues and friends and see what they say and think. Talking with colleagues a lot of time helps me to think through things that I am stuck on.

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  2. I definitely hear your need to transfer writing across content areas. I certainly want to honor this as we move forward, and not revert to the stance that writing happens only in the ELA room. As a literacy coach, I’ve actually seen a ton of success using many of these strategies in social studies classes – visual thinking, found poetry from articles/primary source documents, I Wonder, etc. The key is to find the right “fit” and not drop in a strategy for its own sake.
    Moving into inquiry in the fall, I’m excited to see where your questions might take you and your practice!

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    1. Dan! I just looked at what we are doing tomorrow…let’s see what you think of Julia’s Roundtable TIW using the RAFT strategy for writing! She developed this work with a social studies teacher, and it might speak to some of your questioning!!

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  3. I enjoy having students turn the class into examples of what they are studying. One book we were reading was the most boring book about what going through Ellis Island was like for immigrants, so we decided rather than summarizing boring chapters, we would use the book as a resource to help turn our own classroom into Ellis Island. Students were using “evidence from the text” like nobodies business, and teacher me would say, “Wait! You can’t do _____ unless you prove that it actually happened on Ellis Island!” Students would naturally flip to the page in the book and “cite” where they found proof that it happened. Super fun! You can do the same thing with turning your class to an Egyptian tomb.

    As for the other topics, I have enjoyed letting my students “plan a field trip itinerary” for whatever place we were learning about. As a humanities teacher, even if a time machine is involved students can write persuasive pieces to defend which location your imaginary field trip should go visit in the time capsule (Egypt vs. India vs Greece)… and/or sequential writing to describe the details of their trip.

    After talking about open ended research today… maybe it would be OK if a student who dislikes history simply researches “fun stuff to do” on vacation in Egypt/India/Greece.. and defends an imaginary field trip to one of the modern cities. A lot of the tourist sites are historically focused or related, and maybe better learning would come if they are given that freedom. It’s really hard to tell. Experiment. Keep what works, and throw away the stuff that does not. Good luck!

    If this post makes absolutely no sense to you – I will not be offended, and I can reexplain (with pictures) to make my ideas more clear for you.

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  4. After our conversation on Tuesday, the VTS presentation had me thinking. Some of the close reading strategies used in the VTS lesson — looking closely, noticing something, looking again, “zooming in” to see detail, confirming understanding in conversation — seem like they may be transferable across content areas when working with source material. If working with text is too difficult, working with photographs or artifacts or illustrations could work. So much can be gleaned from visual evidence, and so much can happen when writing from a place of curiosity about unfamiliar things.

    This also makes me think about the opportunity for cultural engagement in NYC in the traditional sense, such as bringing students to museums and giving them the opportunity to do “close reading” of artifacts from antiquity. One of my happiest memories from public school was sitting at the Met in the Temple of Dendur exhibit, sketching the Egyptian architecture, wondering about the use of the structure, writing poetry. What are the possibilities for writing about history from source material on a screen in the form of still images, in person, or perhaps even in film?

    I wonder the degree to which the historical thinking students were doing in Julia’s TiW might come into play for you. How might you incorporate writing as a way of thinking as students interact with the historical facts, texts, and narratives you’d like them to inquire into?

    I Also think Julia might be a wonderful thinking partner for across the course of the year!

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