OER Conference for Social Studies After Party // 2023

And now I'm chatting with my wife and developing a card game in my head where you get a deck of "cards" that are various sources quotes on a topic and kids have to counter or support with other "cards" to keep the conversation going.

Victoria Suarez welcome to the OER Project community! There's a forum especially for folks new to teaching world history - New to OER Project 

Feel free to reach out with questions as you jump into the school year!

In facilitating discussion in classrooms, I have developed a protocol that I use to try and balance participation in the discourse, and to support my students in staying on topic. I go over this in the first days of the course, and give refreshers as needed throughout the duration of the course.  I don't pretend to be an expert, but this has worked well for me & my students in 3 different school settings now, so hopefully it will be helpful for some of you.

I have posted sentence stems on my whiteboard:

Could you give an example?    What is your evidence for that claim?    Why do you think or support that claim?    Did you mean ______?

Could you please expand on what you just said?    I agree because_______     I disagree because___________     I would like to add on to what ______ said.

These are to help my students form respectful responses to one another, or get the conversation going, and keep the conversation on topic.  They don't have to use the sentence stems, but it gives the ones who feel "stuck" something they can fall back on.

In preparation for larger group or whole class discussions, I distribute playing cards to the students. 

The number of cards each students receives is based on the number of students present, the length of time allowed for the discussion, and the topic being discussed.   

The protocol is that every student must play all the cards they are dealt. 

If they choose to agree/disagree with their card, they must give a reason why, not just state agreement or disagreement. 

In order to speak, students must play their card(s). 

I do not generally distribute additional cards, unless I have additional time, and can distribute additional cards to everyone in the group/class. 

Speaking order is determined by the order the cards are played, not face value of the cards.  If 2 cards are played at once, I generally just ask the students if one will defer and speak second.  I haven't run into issues with this so far, but that may need to be adapted for your specific classroom needs.

Love these ideas!   I had a students that would either panic or get really excited when they would walk into the room and find me sitting with my coffee cup at a student desk, because they would recognize that we'll be discussing something. Setting the expectations of power by lowering my power into a student desk raised many students' voices.  

RE: Dr. Kenneth Pomeranz comments on build the popular narrative and knock it over at the same time; use surprises to help them challenge the narrative:
The OER Political Party Platform activity is FANTASTIC at just this: builds and challenges the narrative that only bad people joined the Nazi Party. It lists some of the Nazi Party Platform with references of the Reich etc removed and then at the end they find out it was the Nazi Party Platform. It surprises them when they agreed with many of the things that "don't sound super crazy" or even align with democratic values. This is one of my favorite activities because they are always surprised when I tell them it was actually the Nazi party platform.  "I don't tell you these platforms because I am trying to convince you to join the Nazi party, I am telling you about these political stances because it shows how easily ordinary people can be convinced to join, and we can begin the conversation about how dictators and fascist governments actually took over in Italy, Germany, and Japan during the interwar years. 

I love the primary sources and how you blended them.  I also loved how you said, "follow me." You got my attention and made me think...I am stealing that!

Sessions 1 and 3 were the most helpful. Thank you to all the speakers.

Thanks, Myriah!   

Victoria Suarez There are a lot of us teaching WH for the first time, or for the first time in a long time.  The collaboration is welcome, I'd like to keep in the loop sharing and using all the ideas possible.

Amanda Johnson Dr. Williams points rolled right in with what Dr. Reisman spoke about.  One of the key take-aways is that a lot of times teachers are afraid of what teaching with primary sources brings- a lot of questions and discussions, and teachers not having the answers.  I for one have experienced this, but the more I try to incorporate primary sources and discussions in my class the more I'm comfortable with the unknown results.  Just because I can't control or predict the results or the ways kids think or speak, doesn't mean there is no value in it.  What are you thinking about regarding how to get your team to use more primary sources?  I'm curious because I have new teammates this year and I don't know how they feel about using primary sources.