Causation! How comfortable are you with teaching the skill of causation? Where should OER Project focus on supporting you best?

I would like OER to start at the beginning with causation.  I have not used the term causation with my students and I want to be sure I understand all that it entails..  I believe causation involves determining the cause of an event but perhaps there is more to it than what I stated.

My understanding of causation is that it is similar to the foundational skill of cause & effect.  I teach this in my classroom every year, so that students are prepared to apply this skill on class assignments, in their PBA responses, and in real life.  I would say that I am comfortable teaching this important skill, but I feel like I could go deeper into this skillset using OER resources.  For example, I am intrigued by this causation tool - it would be an effective way to formatively assess if a student is making connections between past and current materials.

For the next session, it'd be helpful to hear about and explore the resources available within the OER Project for causation.  I'd also be interested in hearing from other teachers how they encourage students to make connections between past and current content.  My students struggle with this, but it is an incredibly worthwhile skill.  Being able to make connections would increase the impact of their learning in a meaningful way.

I haven't discussed causation explicitly with my students, but have discussed it when discussing content (for example, the causes of the American Revolution). I would like to "zoom out" a little and start with the basics. What is causation? How do you determine cause and effect? What are ways that we can teach these skills maybe with non-historical examples?

I feel more comfortable and confident teaching claim testing and compare and contrast skills than causation.  I do tactile timelines to help my students learn cause and effect.  If OER has other graphic organizers or other practical tools to help teach this topic, that would be very helpful.  

This is a skill I struggle to teach my students.  Students do well telling the results of an event but when I ask them to explain why the event happens they struggle.  They can understand the immediate cause of the event but they struggle with the long-term causes.  For example, when teaching about the causes of the French Revolution they see the economic crisis. but they struggle with looking at the long-term picture of how decisions made by Louis XIV would lead to problems later on and be a large link in the French Revolution.  One support I would like to see if teaching this skill at different levels.  What does it look like in a standard class as opposed to a more advanced class?

I would like to see OER break down causation from the beginning. It is something that we discuss in history all the time but where does it end? Technically everything is caused by something and causes something else. When should causation be the focus and when should it not be? I would love to see OER's approach as a whole with some specific examples. 

On our assessments students are able to choose cause and effect as an option for their written responses. They choose two terms from the given list and show how one of them led to another. Cause and effect can be difficult because the students see it as a hypothetical rather than tangible which leads them to creating some interesting cause and effects. I would like a way to lead the students into creating realistic connections rather than stretching the ideas to fit. Graphic organizers would also be helpful. 

I am fairly comfortable with the idea of causation, although I usually frame it as cause and effect. I find that 9th graders need a more explicit explanation of what causation is than most people would expect. I used the Alphonse the Camel activity with some of my students after learning about it during the PD session at the beginning of the school year, and it seemed to help my students understand. I am most focused on new activities or strategies for students to practice using causation.

Causation, if it is cause and effect, is something I feel pretty comfortable with.  If it differs, then clearly I will need some guidance...but if it is just how various events and circumstances caused history to unfold in certain ways, then the most helpful resources would be templates that could be incorporated into class.  I'm envisioning something that helps students see not just the immediate cause/effect relationship, but how events and circumstances create climates that have long-term consequences as well.  Thinking about early world history, this may be a bigger challenge especially if we are crossing place in addition to time--so another support would be ideas on how to incorporate contextualization with causation.

I would like to finish the OER Cohort Skills before I make a decision of how comfortable and confident I am with teaching the skill of causation.  Also, I will be using these skills as the year progresses so I can answer this question better later in the year.  In addition, this cohort is a great way to support me as we progress forward.