• Replies 6 replies
  • Subscribers 6 subscribers
  • Views 2570 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

End-of-Year Activities and Interwar Global Economies

ERIN CUNNINGHAM

We have about 21 days left of school and it's wonderful and terrible all at once--the end is in sight...but not quite. And being Chicagoland, the weather is wonky!

So given this situation, I've been trying to think of ways to strengthen foundational skills AND engage my 9th graders. We've done some hardcore DBQ work lately so for Lesson 7.2, I wanted to make the primary source analysis of the global economic documents a little different. Inspired by the caption contests here in the community and The Writing Revolution, I had students write captions for some of the photographs included in the document collection. While the humorous aspect of the caption contest had to be eliminated due to the subject matter, I did like that telling students to be ready to share made them a little more focused on thoughtful work. Overall, I liked that they practiced inferencing and primary source analysis while moving around the room and asking each other questions. Also, they were a little more enthused about close reads of photographs instead of texts.

CAPTION THIS! Global Economies in the Interwar Period

Some student samples:

What kinds of activities do you like to use toward the end of the school year?

Parents

  • Dear  

    I just love, love, love what you have created here. I am in the Interwar section currently myself. We have been reading the Global Depression article and answering Stock Market Crash related items. While most of my content right now is still driven by reading and checking for understanding in that way, I definitely feel the need to simplify at this stage. I have asked my students to pair down their writing to summerize a question in no more than three words. My hope is simplification and summerization will help my students absorb the important takeaways. My students are certainly ready for the end of the year and I completely understand. I would love to try this caption idea next year! Thanks so much for providing the inspiration. 

Reply

  • Dear  

    I just love, love, love what you have created here. I am in the Interwar section currently myself. We have been reading the Global Depression article and answering Stock Market Crash related items. While most of my content right now is still driven by reading and checking for understanding in that way, I definitely feel the need to simplify at this stage. I have asked my students to pair down their writing to summerize a question in no more than three words. My hope is simplification and summerization will help my students absorb the important takeaways. My students are certainly ready for the end of the year and I completely understand. I would love to try this caption idea next year! Thanks so much for providing the inspiration. 

Children
  • in reply to Jeffrey Boles

    Your point about simplifying and summarizing reminds me of another Writing Revolution idea that is super easy to implement. They're "because, but, so" sentences.

    For example, when we finished learning about WWI, I gave students the following sentence starters:

    World War I was a global war because...

    World War I was a global war but...

    World War I was a global war so...

    As a class we discussed what each of the conjunction words do in a sentence and what kind of information should follow them. I found it to be a simple and effective way to check for understanding of a complex topic.

    Here are some student examples:

  • in reply to ERIN CUNNINGHAM

    Oh Wow! This is also wonderful. Thanks so much for supplying these great ideas. As I plan for next year I will apply some of these strategies. Sometimes less is more like you have shown here. 

  • in reply to ERIN CUNNINGHAM

    What a sneaky way to push the skills of causation and argumentation!!  LOVE this.  Thanks for posting the student examples so that I can see how they interpreted the stems differently, too.

    This is such a great idea and SO easy to use as a lesson opener or closer.  Just when I thought the exit ticket possibilities were all "been-there-done-that"...  thanks for this new one!

  • in reply to Julianne Horowitz

    I'm a huge fan of simple routines that you can get a lot of mileage out of and this is totally one of them. And it's definitely a sneaky assessment of not only content but also the causation and argumentation--they're essentially writing claims!