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WHP1200 / Lesson 1.1 Activity -- Alphonse The Camel

Gwen Duralek

Thinking back to how I presented this skill to last year's students, I knew that I needed to do a better job of explaining the Alphonse activity.

I created a slidedeck that helps cue me to keep the activity flowing from the story to considering causes to organizing those causes. There's the intro to the frames at the end of this activity, almost as a pre-teaching of the frames that come in a lesson later this week. 

Hope that it's helpful when you teach causation. 

Parents

  • Thanks for sharing your slides,  . I wanted to create a slide deck for the Alphonse lesson for my BHP class to get the ball rolling with causation, and this helped me get started! Question for you - when defining short, intermediate, and long-term causes, how do you define the length of those when it comes to the story? I know that through the lens of history, short, intermediate, and long feel a little easier to identify, but I'm wondering if your students struggle with defining those terms for Alphonse.

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  • Thanks for sharing your slides,  . I wanted to create a slide deck for the Alphonse lesson for my BHP class to get the ball rolling with causation, and this helped me get started! Question for you - when defining short, intermediate, and long-term causes, how do you define the length of those when it comes to the story? I know that through the lens of history, short, intermediate, and long feel a little easier to identify, but I'm wondering if your students struggle with defining those terms for Alphonse.

Children
  • in reply to Meaghan Mihalic

    Oh,  this is the question!  I leave it up to my students to define short / intermediate / long term and I assure them that their definition is their definition -- don't worry about what your table partner or even I would say. If they can defend their decision to place an event in the category, well, that's the work of historians. 

    When I have those students who really struggle with the vagueness of my response, I ask them to place the cards in story chronology. Then, let's take a step back and see -- are we looking at the childhood events of Frank & Alphonse -- if so, those are likely a long time ago (hint, hint). As we look at the overall, the students start to adjust their thinking about short / intermediate / long term, which will definitely help them for Mansa Musa's contextualization activity. 

    I wonder how   and    help their students through this thought exercise. I learn so much when they describe their classes' experiences. 

  • in reply to Gwen Duralek

     , I absolutely LOVE your explanation for this question. Describing how they defend their decision as the work of historians is also a great way to introduce evidence with a low stakes activity. Our students just recently did the Mansa Musa contextualization and I wish I had seen this post sooner! I'd love to hear how Mansa Musa goes for you this year.

  • in reply to Gwen Duralek

    Hey there   I think you're too kind! I don't know that I have anything too profound to say about Alphonse. I can say on first thought that I always find it's really important to model for students the idea of the "straw that broke the camel's back" because many students simply don't know the phrase! Kids these days, am I right? Slight smile

    I did put together these slides that I still use and brought this to the community in case it's  worth peeking around.