Just about every year since I've started working with OER Project curricula I've promised myself that I'll make better use of the Graphic Biographies. This is a post for every teacher out there who feels ambivalent or a little uneasy about giving it a try.
This week I've paired the Graphic Biography of Mongol power player Sorqoqtani Beki with the other documents in the Mongol collection. I was preparing my students to engage in a central historical question - What were the Mongols Really Like?
This was not my first time teaching the bio but it was my first time using the new OER tool - and honestly - it's just so good on its own. In particular, I really like how students generate a question for the first read and then seek out the main idea as well as textual/visual evidence. I feel that this really helped students not to get tripped up on too many details (especially because this one requires students to sorta keep up with a family tree, which can be confusing). Then by the third read I was also asking students if their main idea and evidence matched or helped to answer their questions from the first read. By and large, the theme of women acting as "kingmakers" in the Mongol Empire not only bucked some narratives and stereotypes about the Mongols - it also helped to answer my students' questions about the floating imagery, the striking image of the women holding the map in the middle, choice of color, etc.
Of course I made a few adjustments in the ways that I presented the materials - here are my slides if they're helpful to anyone.
I'll put this out there to the community - Have you used the new tool and how is it going for you? If you teach Origins and are thinking about using this bio/tool please do so and report back - I would love to compare notes.
