My students and I really enjoyed the updated contextualization activity for agrarian societies!
I modified the directions slightly so that each student had their own set of activity cards that they laid out in their notebooks first while discussing with a partner. I copied and pasted the cards onto slides that I printed and placed in sheet protectors. Once students had their cards separated into broad and narrow I passed out the enlarged cards (slides) to pairs. Then, like in the original directions, the pairs came up to the board one by one and placed the enlarged cards (slides) in the columns I drew on the board. [Side note: before the school year started, I bought these magnetic clips thinking I would find a use for them and I sure did with this activity!] The pairs explained their placement and could change any of the previous pairs' card placements. I'm usually pretty skeptical of "gamification" but this was a competitive activity that I could get behind--2 of my 3 classes were VERY enthusiastic about changing previous decisions and arguing for their new placement (the 3rd class was just in an afternoon slump).
In the end, I asked how the two levels of context impacted their understanding of agrarian societies. Here are some sample responses:
I like that the last student brought in the word "temporal" that came up in Era 1 when we did the "Draw Your History" activity!
Have you tried out the updated contextualization activities? How did it go?
