Emphasizing Historical Concepts and Skills

In Manitoba, we are lucky to have the Big Six: Historical Thinking Concepts included in our curriculum. These concepts emphasize historical perspective,  ethical dimensions of history, establishing historical significance, understanding cause and consequence in a historical context, identify continuity and change, and analysis of primary source evidence. These concepts force students to interact with content. They must gather, analyse, inference, and synthesize information in order to create a finished product to demonstrate their understanding of a given concept. These skills and concepts are the backbone of my teaching, and most importantly the focus of student learning in my history course. Because there are only six main concepts, it allows students to re-visit these concepts multiple times over the course of a semester. By re-visiting concepts it allows me to scaffold student learning, and allows students to formulate more complex understanding of historical events over the course of the semester. Perhaps most importantly, when I assess concepts multiple times throughout the year, I am gathering a variety of data. This leads to more valid assessments and ultimately more accurate grading.

Traditionally, the teaching and learning of history has emphasized content related goals. The end result of emphasizing content in isolation is a number of assessments that rarely rise above lower level thinking (multiple choice, true/false, short answer, etc.). These assessments measure a student's ability to memorize information rather than their ability to think critically. In a world where content is easily accessible through technology, it is logical that we must take advantage of the increased access to content and ask students to do more with this information. By emphasizing concepts and skills, I am forcing students to develop critical thinking skills that are infinitely more important in the long run, than the ability to memorize the facts and figures of historical events.

By providing feedback and revisiting concepts multiple times, ultimately we can hold students to a higher standard because we are supporting the development of the advancement of these skills. This has forced a growth mindset in my history course until the end of each semester. We are never "done" a concept. In a class that emphasizes content, once the unit test is complete, they no longer have to worry about improving their understanding. As my course progresses we are working to constantly advance understanding of the essential concepts. Students are encouraged to use feedback to improve understanding and applying these concepts to new content in order to show an improved understanding. By providing feedback for students as the course progresses, they can further develop their understanding of the major concepts that underpin the history curriculum and ultimately show stronger, more well rounded understanding of history.

@mrridgen

#Twitter Chats in High School History

Last Thursday I used twitter as a tool to generate a discussion with students in both of my Canadian history classes to formatively assess their understanding of the concepts related to cause and consequence (Seixas and Morton). The idea of using a twitter chat came from the process of developing my pln. I have been participating in various #edchats and have found that they were very engaging to me. They are engaging because of the global connections I have been able to make,  forced reflection, and most importantly the real time feedback. So I thought if it was engaging for me, perhaps this concept could be extended in my classes. I gave students in my history classes 3 days to research the Red River Rebellion, with the understanding that they would be answering questions in a twitter chat. I invited my pln on twitter and a few friends/colleagues to join to show the students that we were part of a bigger discussion. The kids were very engaged, even more so when they realized that there were "visitors" in our discussion.

I archived both chats below.

Red River Discussion AM
Red River Discussion PM
**Note: If you have not done a #chat, these chats follow a question and answer format. In these archives the chat begins at the bottom, and the conversation moves to the top.

My ultimate goal with this concept is to have my students facilitate a Twitter type discussion with a class from outside our region. I would love to compare views of an international event like the War of 1812 with a history class from the US. It would be interesting for students to see a completely different perspective, and of course, share our Canadian perspectives with a receptive American audience!

This chat was valuable to me, and I will do them again. Each student was responsible to contribute to the conversation by sharing their own individual response to each question, and also to challenge other people’s ideas in a responsible and academic way. It made students accountable and forced participation from students who would not have participated or even paid attention had we had a traditional class discussion. Lastly, the impact of having "visitors" in our chat changed the dynamic of the discussion. Students took an interest in asking visitors questions, and began to formalize more thorough responses based on the feedback they were getting from others within the discussion.

If you are teach high school history and would like to connect with my class through a twitter chat, feel free to contact me.

@mrridgen