How to teach Frames?

Alphonse is not a frame.  I think that goes with causation.  The videos really helped me and my students with the frames.  I also used the doc. that Ben created.  Worked pretty well.  

It is causation, but in the new version we are to take the causes and add them to our frames.  

Rebecca, you are probably not the only one experiencing a disconnect teaching/defining the Frames with the students. What do you think would be helpful to include to help clear those up, for both students and the teachers? These are pretty critical for the course, so it's important we get these right early on! 

I am not sure.  I understand the importance, and maybe when we get into the human history, finishing Era 1 next week, it will make more sense.  Even drawing the frames was a little challenging.  Maybe we (students and myself) are thinking to modern terms.  Again, I am unsure.

Had a funny moment with some students after watching the frame introduction video today...one student said, "Before we watched the video, you introduced Professor Bain and that he taught history at Univ of Michigan. I was surprised when the video came on, I thought he was going to be bald!"

Students never surprise me.

Is that causation?  If you go bald, you end up teaching at a university?  ;-)

Hey Rebecca!  I started my lesson asking the students what a frame is.  They mostly thought of picture frames, and one student brought up frames in a video.  I explained that the Frames in this class will help us outline and focus on certain stories throughout history to make sense of it.  I'm not confident they totally get it, but I hope as we move through the eras we can highlight examples.

The metaphor of frames and framing can be a bit vague - but it is so often used that I can see why it's been adopted. As a way of explaining frames, try having the students take a photo of a mural (like this Diego Rivera or any picture with different activities) with lots of activities in it, then crop out all but one section of the mural where there's a particular type of activity and focus on that. The crop acts like a frame - focusing on one part of the story. It helps to explain that the frame is not the whole story, but a focus on a theme that helps us understand the story from that point of view.

To get a sense of how the well the students understood the three frames, I had different table groups rewrite the Alphonse the Camel story through the three different frames. Though not perfect, here are three examples:

• Original
• Networking
• Community
• Production and Distribution

I hope this helps!

This is a great idea - I love the collaborative story writing - in and of itself -  and to pair it with Alphonse and the Frames is so smart.  Did the kids enjoy it?  Does anyone else wish they could spend two months in Unit 1??  I think I will adapt this idea to fit another "story" from Unit 3 so I can try it out.

Thanks for sharing!

That's a great idea Dabney...how did it work out?