Creating a Structured Academic Controversy

There is the content.

There is what students "need to know."

There is what students are interested in themselves...

And if you are lesson planning as a new teacher, how do you connect all these dots? I often look at a lesson plan or a list of bulletpoints that students need to know and all I think of is "Oh crap, kids are going to be booooooored with this!"

Marzano (2007) speaks of a number of ways that teachers can "engage the learner" including what he calls "mild controversy" or competition. This approach jives really nicely with another push that I've been trying to make in my classroom, which is a move towards historical thinking. 

As I remember it in the history classes that I sat in through high school, history was but a list of dates and facts. Remember them and you'll ace the quiz on Friday. The problem is, that's not what Historians do. By teaching history that way we're not only boring kids to tears, we're not teaching what history really is - a discussion or debate in the present about the past. 

The Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) has recently helped me with this approach - they have fantastic, really adaptable posts that are actually designed as Structured Academic Controversy (SAC).  I tried one of their lessons recently during a unit on Ancient Greece.

The lesson asks students to examine primary and secondary documents and to arrive at a historical claim on the question: How many soldiers were at the battle of Thermopylae?

The battle of Thermopylae is historically a controversial topic. It's the battle that inspired the horrifically terrible and historically inaccurate film 300.  According to legend a small group of Spartan soldiers held off a large army of Persian soldiers for seven days, an event that inspired the Greeks into victory in the Greco-Persian war.

But just how many Persian soldiers were at Thermopylae? Getting a 14 year old to care about this was a long shot -  BUT by giving students multiple accounts of the battle and allowing them to debate it - it actually got kids to a thinking place where suddenly it didn't matter how mundane the question was. The point is, kids are thinking. Their minds turn on - and when it comes to creating engaging lessons, that's really the point. I've begun to preach this to kids openly. The Battle of Thermoyplae? Sure, if you really care - then by all means become a history major and do history - and I hope  you find real passion for this. But the real point here - is that we become critical thinkers. I'm not expecting you to jump for you joy over the number of Persian soldiers in this battle - but if students are learning how to question what they read in the process, then I think a lesson like this does its job. I hope to do more in the weeks to come.

Creating Engaging Lessons

Effective teachers plan ahead. If done well,  they plan ahead to create lessons that are engaging while meaningful. This year I have really focused my time on thinking through exciting “hooks” or “anticipation sets” that will get students eager to dive into the material in  the "primetime" of the lesson. 

I'm going to be real... For me at this point in my teacher development, getting students to get started on that Do Now is largely about getting kids to get seated and settled while I get my life together and monitor that entry. BUT it is and should be so much more than that. It's really about what's going to get students authentically engaged in the lesson of that day. 

Here’s a sampling of some questions I’ve used thus far this year:

"Talk about a recent frustration that you've had - why were you frustrated and what would you do differently if you could do it over again?" 

“What’s more important – happiness or material wealth?”

“When you think of a caveman – what types of images come to mind? (I.e. are cavemen smart? Are they athletic? - this was for a lesson on the paleolithic age)

“What is your ideal job?”

“In the United States we commonly believe that we are “civilized.” Are we civilized? How do you know? Explain using evidence. 

“Given your knowledge of history and our current situation – from high unemployment and fears of terrorism at home to the comforts of technologies such as smart phones and hybrid cars – do you believe that we are better off or worse off as human beings today?

When I sit down to write a hook, I’m generally asking myself:

-          What are they key human questions in today’s content?

-          What do kids care about?

-          How can I generate a question that is relevant to the day’s content – but accessible enough for students?

-          If this week’s content was a #hashtag, what would that hashtag be? Can I refer back to that hashtag so that when kids think of their content, they relate it to that week’s hashtag?

Another big question is – what to do when your hook doesn’t work so well. Or when kids push back on that question or it turns into a much bigger conversation than you had anticipated...  I'll try to address that in another post... But here's the short version of the answer - if the "hook question" is authentically good and speaks to students lives, students will let you know right off the bat. Tomorrow's always another day to implement the very real feedback that students will give you about the work you're doing.