Lessons Learned

Instructional Technology - International Education - Wellness

Category: IB History

Catching Up…

I want to share a few items that folks might find interesting as I catch up with my blogging. As we are about to travel for the next two weeks in Morocco, I will be posting about living and traveling in this fascinating country.

SOS Podcast: Jeff and I enjoyed a wonderful conversation with Justin Medved in episode 29 of the SOS podcast. Our essential question was, “How can the IB curriculum be shifted?”. We also discussed the ins and outs of international school recruiting in episode 30. If you are interested in becoming an international educator, do check out the show notes for the two articles I list in the Links of the Week.

IB History: I continue to work to find ways to shift my IB history class more towards inquiry and constructivist learning. I tried a semi-WebQuest for the unit on Germany and pulled back a bit on the latest unit on WWII. The semi-WebQuest had some components of a normal WQ, but I did not have the students take on roles, and they had a choice for their assessment. They could take the standard IB essay test or do a more WQ-style application project. As so few students took on the application project, I made the unit on WWII more of a standard research project. I use the term “Learning Pursuit” when I have the students do WebQuest-style online research but are not required to do all the aspects of a WQ, especially when creatively using their new understanding in a real-world application.

Here are links to these two units:

Germany Learning Pursuit

World War II Learning Pursuit

ICE Model of Instruction: Our school director, Mark Lee, gave an excellent presentation last week on the ICE instructional model. One of the ways I like to use inquiry to make connections to extend student learning is through mind maps. My favorite collaborative tool is MindMeister. While now, one is limited to only three maps for a free account, my students can export their work and stay below the limit. Here is an excellent example by Hala, one of my IB students, on the Weimar Republic, where she created a mind map to research to make connections in her learning to extend the learning into new understanding. Hala’s map is so vast you will need to zoom out to see all of it and then scroll to see all the sections.

Shifting Our Schools: Season 3

SOS

Transition and change can be a large part of one’s life as an international educator. Taking the first step to leave one’s home country to live and teach in another country leads to many more transition steps. International schools vary in how fast-paced they are and how much change is happening at any time. But change is often a common theme, with new teachers and administrators coming and going, bringing new ideas and energy to their schools.

I bring up this topic of transition and change because my wife and I decided that after many years in Asia, we wanted to move to a small school in North Africa or Europe. Morocco had been on our radar, so we left for Casablanca American School this past August.

It has been a challenging transition to a developing nation, especially balancing the needs of our two middle school sons with our new jobs, housing, transportation, etc. efforts. I am teaching IB history for the first time, which offers a steep learning curve, especially coming from a very constructivist, technology-integrated curriculum at my last school.

Thankfully, we are settled in and finding ourselves in a very close and supportive teaching community. 

The wonders of Morocco are now accessible as we enjoy incredible travel and cultural opportunities.

I mention these topics because they are what Jeff and I will discuss in the first three episodes of the Shifting Our Schools podcast as we kick off our third season. We will continue to have guests who bring their expertise to the essential questions that drive our discussions. We also want to expand the conversation by having listeners call in.

Here is the schedule, hopefully starting at 8:00 PM Bangkok time for each episode:

Episode 28: November 18

EQ> From Morocco to Bangkok: How goes it?

Episode 29: December 2

EQ> How can the IB curriculum be shifted?

Episode 30: December 16

EQ> How to recruit to be an international educator?

In a blog post about international recruiting, one of the big questions for readers who contacted me was about taking their children overseas, not only to new countries but to new schools. I plan to share our family experiences in the November 18th show and hope to have listeners call in to share their insights. With IB being so new to me, we will need listeners from IB schools to add to the conversation about their experiences. As it is the start of recruiting season, we hope to provide some insights for those new to international teaching and veterans who have not been recruited in some time.

We have several ideas for our shows in 2010, and we welcome listener questions and guest requests. Please let us know what you are thinking.

Trading History Cards (Instructional Strategy)

Score Card

A portion of “learning” IB history is memorizing people, places, and dates. As I am not in the Core Knowledge camp but believe in some level of cultural literacy, I realize my students must have a certain amount of content for their exams. Thus, I am working to be creative in developing helpful content attainment practices that are fun for students.

Playing the American baseball angle, my students create history trading cards resembling baseball cards. The person, place, event, date, etc., are listed on one side, with the other side filled with pertinent information. Here is an example of a homework assignment, class lesson, and follow-up homework for the Interwar years.

Before class homework description:

Trading History Cards: You are to research and write information about the following topics on small index-style cards. Some have been covered in your presentations, so this will be reviewed. Try to find a paper that is a little thicker than regular paper. On one side, you write the topic in large letters; on the other, you are to answer the following key questions: What/Who? When? Why Important? Any Connections to other key topics, events, or persons? Your cards cannot be any larger than 9 cm by 9 cm. Do include a drawing, map, etc., if you can. 🙂 We will have a little competition in class to see whose specific cards you want to trade for the most. Each student/player must request and review a trading card from as many classmates as possible on all the topics listed below. When we meet and have our trading session, each student will be allowed to ask for seven cards in total from other players. You will also write down how well you know each topic on your scorecard and who has the best card for each topic. We will count how many requests the top players have at the end of the game.

In Class:

Trading History Cards: You are to have your cards ready with the listing of the topics on one side, and on the other side, you are to answer the following key questions: What/Who? When? Why Important? Any Connections to other key topics, events, or persons? It would help if you used your Score Card handout to walk around and ask as many players as possible to see some of their trading cards. You must see cards for all the topics listed on your Score Card, and you are not to see more than two cards from one player. We will have a competition to see whose specific cards you would like to trade for the most. Each student/player can ask for seven cards from other players. You are to remove a request strip from the second page of your handout and give it to the person whose card you want. 

Go to your Score Card to write down the name of the person you requested the card from, listing their name in the “Golden Glover” column. Even after you hand out all 7 of your requests, continue to list the player’s name who did the best job for each topic. We will count how many requests the top players have at the end of the game to see who the top three players are. And at the end of the activity, take a few moments to self-assess. Are you “hitting” above .300, signifying that you know the topic, or are you batting below .300, meaning you need to do more work to understand the topic?

Homework: You are to take the topic list from today’s exercise and voice record your explanations for each one. Hopefully, you have new material in your mind beyond what was there when you made your trading cards. You will return to these recordings as you prepare for the exams in the spring.

Voice Recording (Instructional Strategy)

I have written in a few venues about using voice recording software like Audacity or GarageBand to support learning. Working with my 12th-grade IB history students, I discovered a new strategy to fit the needs of these students who have to document their learning to study for the external exams and to help them have one more way to construct their understanding.

I am having my students take the topic list, essential questions, and unit questions for our study of the Interwar years and have them voice-record their current understanding of each. This should help those students who struggle to get their ideas down from their minds through their fingers into Word documents. It should also offer another modality to support their efforts to take notes and outline. I will be interested in surveying when students review for their external exams to see how helpful it will be for them to listen to their sound files.

I keep reminding them that with six area exams, they will be on information overload trying to put two years of learning into their minds this Spring. The more they can hear their calm, confident voice recordings before they take their exams, the more they will quickly remember and connect to their past learning. 🙂

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