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Showing posts from February, 2017

Exploring Artifacts to Spark Critical Thinking - Middle School Social Studies

This term, I've partnered up with the Literacy Support teacher in my school for my Social Studies 8 class.  For two blocks each week, she comes into the classroom and we co-teach lessons for the Grade 8s. She has more experience and so many more ideas than me, so it's been amazing getting to work with her in the classroom and learn from her. One idea that she had was to do an artifact study to explore culture and to spark critical thinking. This is what we did over the course of 4 days. Day 1:   As a whole class, we had a discussion about artifacts.  My co-teacher, Laurie, is Ukrainian and brought in a Ukrainian headscarf from her family.  She didn't tell the kids a lot about the scarf at teh beginning of the lesson.  Instead, she asked them to observe it, ask questions, and arrive at conclusions about it.   For example, one student noticed it was made from wool, and concluded that the people who made it must have had access to sheep to collect the wool. After