Play

Play is an essential tool in learning for every individual.  When you are an infant, much of what you learn is through play.  You learn object permanence through the play of the game Peek-a-boo.  Children play and practice manners and chores when they "play house".  The importance of rules and many math concepts are also learned through board games.  I first learned to budget by playing games like Monopoly and Life as a child.

Play also no knows no age limit.  Even adults learn through play.  Many games shows, like Jeopardy for example, are geared towards adults.  Many professional programs, from law school to med school also use play.  Law students play in their mock trials and mock juries.  Many medical programs use role play and run their med students through pretend scenarios like breaking tough news to patients to treating pretend patients.  Some programs even use highly sophisticated dummies and robots to mimic patient symptoms and reactions as part of this play.

Play is very important for the learner because it allows them to work through new ideas and concepts without the extreme consequences that they might have in the real world.  In the med student scenario, for example, their mistake in the play scenario could ultimately cost a real patient their life.  The students feels the some of the same pressures to perform, but the mistakes are not as costly.  Thus, the learners feel safe and more trusting in play scenarios.  Play keeps interests sparked and allows learners to become more creative.

Each year, usually before a holiday break, I use play scenarios with my students.  They are excellent ways to burn off built up energy and excitement while still learning.  This year, I have planned to use two play scenarios together to teach students about rights.

The first play scenario is that of crime scene investigation.  Years ago, I found a crime scene investigation webquest created by a group of Michigan State students.  The webquest sets up the details of a crime scene and has students work through the evidence and (hopefully) determine which suspect(s) committed the crime.  In past years, I have not been able to use the webquest the way it is set up either because it is blocked on school computers or because the computer lab has not been available.  Thus, I usually end up providing the information to students in a presentation or we go through a packet of information as a group.  We then look at the pictures and evidence via overhead or digital projector and then I ask students to work through the evidence as if they were the detective.  They must pretend that they are responsible for figuring out who killed the victims.  Students always get excited about this project and really get into the play scenarios. 


We completed this initial play scenario prior to the Thanksgiving break.  My students worked in teams/groups.  In each group, one student was designated as a detective in charge of interviewing suspects.  Another was in charge of sketching the crime scene.  Another was in charge of reviewing the physical evidence.  Many students fought over this because it was like watching an episode of CSI.  Then as a group they had to discuss the evidence they each had, decide who they believed the killer(s) was/were, and present their findings.

I will then continue the play scenario with a mock trial.  In class we will review the steps related to arrests and trials.  We will also review the rights of the accused and how those rights are guaranteed by the constitution.  We will reference the concept map from my modeling post and use that to guide us in the direction of our play.  I will then ask students to act out various parts of the process.  The detective, for example, will act out the arrest, making sure to read Miranda rights.  Students will also be split into teams of prosecution and defense.  They will prepare and deliver opening arguments.  They will prepare witness lists and ask for evidence to be admitted into trial.  Both prosecution and defense will examine witnesses on the stand.  Some students will have to role play as witnesses.  One student will play the judge.  Some students will play jury members.  I am looking forward to the students acting out the questioning and the cross examinations in the court room.  And students of course will have to decided if the suspects/accused will exercise their 5th Amendment rights or if they will get on the stand in their own defense.

Mock trials are an excellent example of play.  They allow students to see what the trial process would be like.  They will also be able to role play in the safe environment of the classroom.  Furthermore, students will have to think critically and use their analytical skills as they play through this scenario. I am look forward to the end result.

Below is a picture of another class's mock trial so that you can visualize the play scenario.  It comes from the blog of a school in New York: http://blog.ps119amersfort.com/?p=1099

How Do I Love Thee: Modeling

Modeling is the act of creating something to represent a complex object or idea. At the very basic level, modeling is constructing a miniature version of an object as way to better understand that object. For example, people build model planes, model cars, and models of buildings. The act of creating these models helps the learner understand more about the actual or in some cases, full-size, object. However, modeling can go far beyond making a smaller version of a large object. In some cases, we might make a larger version of a very small object. Take the double helix model of DNA. We can create a physical representation of DNA that represents the sugar-phosphates and the bases that make up a strand of DNA. As described by the Root-Bersteins, the double-helix model is "physical embodiment of something that is simply to small to see." (239) From this model, the learner can see what we cannot normally see: the structure of DNA and how its components fit together. That is main idea behind modeling: to represent how something works, looks, or perhaps, fits together.

Models of all kinds represent the original object, usually in a way that makes that object more accessible to the viewer/learner. For example, I obviously can't have the Titanic at my disposal any time I would like. It is a massive ship that is at the bottom of the Atlantic. But I can learn more about the Titanic with a model. By looking at a model of the ship I can see what it would have looked like and how the iceberg might have damaged the ship. If I build the model myself, and go one step further, I will have a better understanding of the spatial relationships on board. I would have a better understanding how small a room in steerage was compared to that of someone traveling in first class.

Other models, may not be physical embodiments of the original. In other words, not all models are objects that we can reach out and touch. Sometimes they are diagrams, such as a diagram of an atom. Sometimes they might be virtual, like a flight simulator or a training program for police officers to run through life-like weapons scenarios. Furthermore, they might simply be representational in a more abstract way.

For example, my content area that I have been focusing on over the course of the semester has been rights and freedom. But how do you build a model of somethttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhing you can not see, touch, taste, or smell? In this case, I created a model of freedom and rights in the United States by using a concept map. A concept map is a model in the sense that it represents the components of the original and helps the learner understand how its parts fit together and how ideas are connected.



To view the concept map as a webpage, click: http://www.gliffy.com/publish/3083436/

The above model shows depicts some of the key components of rights and freedoms in the United States: civil liberties and due process. The concept map then goes on to show the connections to the U.S. constitution. While this concept map does not show all rights and freedoms in the U.S., it does indicate how rights and freedoms are directly related to the Bill of Rights and the subsequent amendments to the constitution. To fully understand due process, I found a concept map that shows the complexities of due process in the judicial system. The diagram below was created by the U.S. Bureau of Statistics and goes a long way to show how complicated this system is:http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif


This image can also be viewed at:
http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/largechart.cfm

or

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cjsflowco.svg





Without these models, students can read about these rights and freedoms, but might not fully understand the interconnectedness of them. If given the time, one could even add pictures to either concept map, to show examples of each detail. For example, suffrage could be represented by an image of a voting booth while the 4th Amendment might be represented with an image of a police search or warrant.

Models are an excellent way to represent something that is much larger, either in size or in idea, to make it more accessible to the learner. Models help us to think about their original or their muse in a deeper fashion. Finally, we should strive to model more, as modeling is a higher order of thinking and requires the use of observation, spatial understanding, and patterns.

Embodied Thinking

One of the best ways to understand history and other subjects in Social Studies is through embodied thinking.  It is a vital way to understand new ideas and concepts at a deeper level.  It can involve kinesthetic thinking and emphasizing.  Kinesthetic thinking is thinking with your body.  It can range from thinking and explaining through movement (such as a dance) to tapping into sensations associated with something (how something feels, smells, etc) to connecting to the feelings (like tension or stress) one has with an experience.  Empathizing on the other hand is the act of thinking through and understanding what it would be like to be in someone else's position or perhaps to imagine yourself as the thing you are studying.

Empathizing is critical to many subjects in social science.  It can help historians understand the reasoning behind critical decisions made by leaders.  It can also help them to understand what it would have been like to live in a certain time period and understand what the social climate was like at that time.  Empathizing is also critical in terms of government and civics.  When politicians make decisions, they must be able to empathize with those who will be directly affected by those decisions.  The same concept goes for voters.  For example, take the upcoming election.  Many communities are voting on millages and tax increases to keep services like police and fire.  As they weigh their decision, they will first think about the affect on their budget.  Next they will think about what would happen if they themselves might have an emergency.  They might also consider how their neighbors would be affected.  They might even consider the jobs of the officers and firefighters.  Voters who empathize have a better understanding of their role in the larger community.

In the classroom, it can be very advantageous to have students do kinesthetic thinking and empathizing.  When teaching concepts like rights and freedom, there are many ways to get students into this line of thinking. On a field trip to the Henry Ford Museum, my students used kinesthetic thinking and empathizing to relate to Rosa Parks and develop a deeper understanding of the civil rights movement.  On display at the museum is the actual bus from the incident that sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  It is open for visitors to climb on board and get a feel for what it was like to ride the bus. Once on the bus, many of my students asked to seat in the very seat Rosa Parks had sat in.  We even took pictures to recreate the famous editorial picture of the event.

While on the bus, a larger group came on, forcing those students who were not already in the back to have to move to the back.  Here they moved out of social etiquette to give others the chance to experience the bus.  But the physical act of moving to accommodate someone else, sparked an understanding in students.  They went from having the misconception that Rosa Parks had remained seated out of laziness to having an understanding of why refusing to move not only made a statement but might also have given her some personal satisfaction.  Now, I should note that we reviewed the event prior to the field trip.  But when we returned to school and I prompted a discussion, the first thing my students were quick to say was how they did not want to have to move to the back and how they related to Ms. Parks in that very instant.  I also used this field trip for a digital storytelling project in CEP800, as you can see in the video below:

Students were able to feel the seat on the bus.  They could get a sense of their proximity to the front and to the back.  They were able to see how she actually was already in the "colored section".  When the new group of students arrived, they were then able to experience the physical movement.  I asked them later to imagine themselves back on the bus as I described the scene again to them, having them think about the heat, the long work day, the history of discrimination that came before it as they sat in that seat on the bus.  This was all kinesthetic thinking.  Then in the discussion that followed, they were able to empathize with Rosa Parks all on their own.  The discussion we were having quickly went from praising Rosa Parks to students sharing "If that was me" statements.  I was surprised how even my toughest kids with the big egos, admitted that they would be nervous to do what she did, explaining that the fear of retaliation from whites would have overpowered them. 

After we left the bus we continued to explore the civil rights exhibit.  My camera died just as we made it to the "White Waiting Room" and the drinking fountains for Whites Only and Colored Only.  I was able to get on picture of the waiting room.  We staged this of course, talking about the irony of it.  My students were so disappointed that I could not take pictures of them drinking out of the "Whites Only" drinking fountain.

My students, who were primarily African American, had much to say and the comments were free flowing at this point. I knew the trip was a success even before we held our discussions back at school.  They were empathizing with those who had lived during that time period and thinking about how they would have felt to have been in their shoes.


That field trip was more powerful than any lesson I could have given on the subject and I hope I get to experience that true depth of learning with my students at least one more time in my career.   I say that not because I don't feel I teach well or that my students aren't learning.  But to accurately describe how incredible that experience was for both me and my students is just not possible.  In fact, if I could edit that digital storytelling project (other than the corrections I would make on the explanation of the pedagogy and as well as many other edits), I would add a slide at the end saying:  "This lesson brought to you by embodiment and empathizing" like the end of an episode of Sesame Street.

How Do I Love Thee: Abstracting

Abstracting is the act of taking a complicated subject matter and stripping away all other details to focus on one important characteristic of that subject. In a way, it is asking someone to describe or represent a complicated issue or topic in a simple way. Abstracting can be very difficult. It is a process of looking for only the essential qualities of something as a way to define it or describe it. Try thinking about how to abstract something complicated like justice or beauty. There is an infinite number of ways to abstract justice or beauty. The wonderful part is that there is no wrong answer and no wrong representation. The key to abstraction and the benefit of abstract is the thinking that goes behind it and the learning that occurs as a result of it.

For this series of assignments, I have been focusing on rights.  It has also been a topic that we have been discussing quite a bit the last week in my classes.  We recently had a student bring a gun to school.  As part of the discussion about the incident I had with my students, we talked a lot about rights and freedoms, the importance of those rights and freedoms, when you loose those rights and freedoms, and how those rights and those freedoms are maintained.

When you think about freedom, many ideas will pop into the mind.  For Americans, it can be easily abstracted as symbols of freedom in the United States such as the national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner.  The Star Spangled Banner actually started as a poem titled Defense of Fort McHenry written by Francis Scott Key, a witness to the British bombardment on Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.

From this famous poem we now have key principles like "land of the free" and "home of the brave".  Once it was set to music, the first stanza of the poem became our national anthem, and when played, gives Americans the sense of freedom and pride in that freedom. Here it is played by The U.S. Army Band, under the direction of Colnel L. Bryan Shelburn:


http://www.thenationalanthemproject.org/sounds/Sing%20America%2001.mp3

Some might be interested in a vocal abstraction of the piece:


See more Audio at TeacherTube.com.


Or perhaps you might prefer the Jimi Hendrix abstraction:


Though, maybe fr some, the national anthem does not fully depict the essential aspects of freedom.One cannot fully understand freedom without understanding the lack of it.  Therefore, we might think of freedom when we see images of chains and shackles broken and images representing release.  All of these images below evoke the strong sense that now that freedom has been obtained, there is now the option of choice.

Freedom can also be abstracted in poetry.  Below is an acrostic poem I wrote.  I tried to include as many of the essential characteristics of freedom that I could think of.  Disclaimer: I do not proclaim it to be good poetry.)


          Free to think, say, or do what we choose
          Rights that are protected by others
          Every person deserves it
          Equality for all
          Democracy for all
          Opportunities for all
          Many died to preserve it for us



Perhaps we can abstract freedom in another way by depicting another essential aspect of freedom: its importance.  Freedom is so important to us that we celebrate those who serve us to protect that freedom and we lament the loss of those who die for that freedom.  Below are pictures my husband, a police officer, took at another officer's funeral who had died in the line of duty.  (I wrestled here with which pictures to use.  There were some extremely heart wrenching ones that would have had a deeper impact, though I did not want to use them out of respect for this family.)  These images and each funeral he has attended over the years reminds the two of us of how precious that freedom is that so many others are willing to risk their lives to protect it.

Finally, to end this on a lighter note, I would like to share one last thing: a video on freedom from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. This video is a spoof on "Freedom Packages" offered by the United States to other countries uses abstractions. The video itself is an abstraction of infomercials, keeping the key elements of an excited host or announcer with a headset on. Further along we see more abstractions. Notice that Sudan is represented by a bowl of sand; Egypt is represented by the bowl of sand with a pyramid on top; and Iraq is represented by the bowl of sand with oil on top. Not accurate representations, but commentary on how they believe the United States or perhaps Americans view these countries. Finally, the entire video represents the comedians' abstractions on American foreign policy. It strips away all of the complicated details related to foreign relations, revealing a simplistic view on how the United States deals with freedom and rights of citizens in other countries. Political commentary after all is naturally an abstraction that focuses on one important aspect and leaving the complicated details out of the explanation.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Resources:

1. Image, Defense of Fort McHenry by Francis Scott Key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_of_Fort_McHenry
2. Star Spangled Banner, as played by the U.S. Army Band under the direction of Colnel L. Bryan Shelburn: http://www.thenationalanthemproject.org/sounds/Sing%20America%2001.mp3
3. Vocal of Star Spangled Banner: http://teachertube.com/members/music.php?music_id=6872&title=Star_Spangled_Banner___Full_Performance
4. Jimi Hendrix, Star Spangled Banner, http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=L3JbKimTdMg
5. Image, Celebrating Our Freedom: http://www.saralandchristians.com/featured/celebrating-freedom/
6. Image, Broken egg, http://gargarita.wordpress.com/2008/02/16/libertate/freedom-2/
7. Image, Broken handcuffs: http://www.wednesdaynightservice.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Broken_Handcuffs.jpg 
8. Police Officer Funeral images, used with consent from Michael Jain
9. Video, America's Freedom Packages, The Daily Show:  http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-21-2011/america-s-freedom-packages

How Do I Love Thee: Perception – Reflection

Perception is vital to creating understanding. As described by Robert and Michele Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein, “All knowledge begins in observation. We must be able to perceive our world accurately to be able to discern patterns of action, abstract their principles, make analogies between properties of things, create models of behaviors, and innovate fruitfully.” (30) We cannot make connections to the past, to our present, or to our future without observation and perception. Nor can we make connections from one discipline to another. Finally, we cannot foster true understanding without making observations in what we are doing, whether it be performing an experiment or reading a historical document.

A huge challenge that I face with my students in any of my Social Studies classes is reading comprehension, especially of primary documents. Though I have been working with students to improve their comprehension and vocabulary, they spend so much time trying to decipher and decode text, that they miss the important concepts within the text. They don’t take the time or perhaps never even get a chance to observe the connections and the patterns within the reading. Thus, when I started thinking about how the Bill of Rights might be perceived by my students, I started thinking about the important and repeated concepts that they might overlook trying to comprehend the text. In other words, they would be so intent on learning the vocabulary within the text, they might not observe the ideas and concepts that are continually repeated throughout.

That is why I decided to use Wordle to create a visual representation of the Bill of Rights. (There is a link to the Wordle I created in the previous post.)

Wordle generates word clouds from text that the user inputs. The more often a particular word is used in a passage of text, the larger it will appear in the word cloud. For my students that would mean being able to see all of the repeated words and concepts that they might not of observed while they were busy trying to define and understand the vocabulary. Showing this resource to students even just one time can be a valuable tool. Once you realize how often certain words might be used over and over again, you can think about why and what are the different connections to the word or concept within different parts of the text. You can even take it a step further and think about your understanding of the word and how it might be different now that you see how often it is used and how important it is to the document. Students can also be asked to predict what words will be the largest in the word cloud. Even if they are not able to accurately predict which words are the largest, knowing what words they think will be the largest can be a valuable tool for teachers to help assess misconceptions and correct them.

There are many different ways that I could have re-imaged the Bill of Rights. I had thought about creating a video with images that might represent the Bill of Rights. I had even thought of collecting sounds that might be associated with the Bill of Rights. However, I wanted to create something that would have the largest shock factor with my students and something that would connect with their struggles with comprehension. I plan on using it for a writing exercise this upcoming week and look forward to the outcomes.

< P . E . R . C . E . P . T . I . O . N >

Below is my perception of rights, or more specifically, the Bill of Rights. Click the image to see the larger version on Wordle.