CIVIL WAR CIRCLE
End of Instruction Strategies
Comprehension Vignette
This strategy will help students understands how a text presents information and determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development as well as summarize the key supporting details and ideas. This strategy aids in the development of academic language functions as students are analyzing and interpreting key concepts. Students would create a graphic organizer for position-reason text structure by determining important facts from the reading and recording to the form. The graphic organizer can also be completed as a whole class activity, ensuring all students have the same important ideas. The instructor will ask questions about the main ideas or specific important dates in the reading then summarizing and recording information in the boxes. The instructor would ask the class questions about events form particular dates and record in corresponding boxes. The graphic organizer would be slightly adapted to fit the language and components of the documents used in class. This strategy would be great toward the end of instruction to ensure students comprehend the content and make connections between events across time.
Turn and Talk
This strategy will help students understands how a text presents information and determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development as well as summarize the key supporting details and ideas. This method is a learning task that develops students’ academic language through interactive peer dialog. For social studies, students will read an article or part of a text and can write down their ideas of the text then turn to the student sitting next to them to discuss the content of the text and their ideas/feelings of the reading. After students discuss their ideas, students can talk to other students sitting on the other side and discuss their work to verbally articulate their learning. Then students can write down their thoughts and reflections after talking with peers and have a full class discussion of the topic.
The following web link is a great resource detailing how to properly implement turn and talk strategy:
http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/DE/PD/instr/strats/think/
This strategy is great to use toward the end of a unit of study as the students have had instruction on the topic and are now doing independent readings, followed by peer discussion. This strategy enriches student learning through the sharing of ideas and concepts and student can make comparisons with their own thinking. This strategy works well for most students as the students read information, write down their ideas, and then discuss their thoughts with their peers. The students get a visual, verbal, and written way to process work and students benefit from the interactive peer dialog that allows for comparison of ideas. This strategy is a collaborative method which helps students to familiarize themselves with working with other students.
I have…who has
This strategy can help students determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies. This method is a learning task that develops students’ academic language through interactive peer dialog.
This strategy is great for social studies as there are numerous terms, new vocabulary and definitions of specific historical/cultural places and geographic features that students need to learn for each new unit of study. It is essentially a matching game in which the names of locations or vocabulary terms are written on one side of a card with the definition on the other. An instructor will provide index cards with vocabulary terms written on one side of a card with the definition on another card that someone else will have. For a unit on the Progressive Era, one card would have the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire on the front side and the student will have to move about the room to discover who has the matching card with the information about the event. When they have found their match, the students confirm that they have the correct cards with the instructor and receive another card. This strategy is great to use toward the end of a unit of study as the students have had instruction on the topic and this method serves as a fun way to review content/ material. This strategy is designed to engage students and to enhance the learning of concepts, skills, themes, or topics. This strategy is excellent for kinesthetic learners but appeals to the majority of students as it provides movement and allows more flexibility and ownership of student learning. This strategy gets students out of their seats and actively involved with content in various forms and because this strategy requires students to physically move around the room, it can be especially engaging to kinesthetic learners.
Sneak Peek Box
This strategy can help students understand their peers’ interpretation of historical concepts as they are used specific to domains related to history/social studies. This strategy will help students infer and understand how visuals present related information and determine central ideas or themes of a topic. This strategy also aids in activating prior academic learning and prerequisite skills. This learning task appeals to a variety of learners as it can be utilized as a visual, auditory, and written method and is very engaging for students. For social studies, students gather any material available to them that they believe can be related to or demonstrate some resemblance or understanding of the current topic of study. If the unit is on the civil war, students could gather a miniature toy horse, a cotton ball, and a toy soldier and place them in a box. Students will then view the content of the box to determine what topic is being relayed through the visual clues. The following web link is a great resource discussing how to implement many great strategies and has a lot of good information about using a sneak peek box in the classroom. The method described on pages 72-74 describes this strategy as “facts in five” method using a bag or a box.
This strategy would be great toward the end of instruction to assess understanding of content.
