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Contextualization: Agrarian Societies

Erin Cunningham

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?

Parents

  • Erin, did you do this part of the lesson plan after the card sort? - 

    Finally, your teacher will assign each group an article from the Agrarian Societies article collection. As you read your assigned article on your own, think about the following questions with your group:•Where and how did this agrarian society form?•How does the information from the article support, extend, or challenge the arguments you made about geographic context and the formation of agrarian societies in this activity?

    I like the card sort/contextualization idea but I'm trying to wrap my head around the jigsaw afterwards.

  • in reply to Angela Flakker

    Hi  , I just went back to my agendas from last year and it looks like I did the jigsaw prior to the contextualization. With the changes to Era 3/Unit 3, I'm still working through how I want to approach it this year. I'll be on this topic this week or next so I'll let you know what I decide.

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  • in reply to Erin Cunningham

    I took another look at the activity and I'm totally with you. I'm going to do the contextualization activity like I did in this original post (I also realized the event cards are not on the new version but they are still on the old version). And then, next week, I'm going to do the jigsaw.

    I think I'll have the kids look back at their event cards to see which ones seem most relevant to the society they read about. At this stage, if they can see the connections between the context and the formation of agrarian societies, we have success.