BECAUSE.
Moodle is one of the tools that our upper elementary teachers are phasing in over the next few years. When asked how teachers can best use Moodle to promote 21st-century learning, I suggest that they take advantage of the students’ home Internet access and use it to either awaken prior knowledge or reflect on their learning. (Moodle also does stuff like lets you automate quizzes, but that doesn’t take the learning deeper - it just replaces paper quizzes with a screen. NOT 21st-century!)
Those are two things that sometimes fall by the wayside during the school day to make room for standards, but we know that both are essential for learning for understanding. And in our district, we are fortunate that (knock on wood), nearly all of the students in our elementary classrooms have home Internet connections. (Those who do not can swap out some DEAR time for computer access, as reading can be done at home!)
One of our prior knowledge strategies has been to build on the use of primary source images in the social studies curriculum. We use the TCI social studies textbooks, and in fifth grade, each chapter begins with a primary source image and then asks some questions. We can move those questions into Moodle and voila! Motivation and engagement rise.
The photo above isn’t what we actually used, but it helps illustrate something we learned along the way.
Let’s say the students were asked to brainstorm, like this:
What do you think the smaller child is wrapped in?
The fast answer would probably be, “A blanket.”
The “answer in complete sentences” approach would yield, “The child is wrapped in a blanket.”
Both of those answers are probably “right,” but they don’t reveal much about how the student came to that conclusion.
But what if the directions are tweaked just a bit, to:
What do you think the smaller child is wrapped in? Include because in your answer.
By adding “because,” we can, even with young kids, get them to make a hypothesis AND justify their answer (which is really tricky for elementary kids to do in their writing). We don’t have to say, “Be sure to justify your answer with information from the past or from the photo.” Because lets us streamline the instructions but deepen the answer.
Answers might read:
I think the child is wrapped in a wool blanket because the fabric is plaid and has fringe like the wool blanket my mom keeps in her trunk.
The child is wrapped in a blanket. I think that’s because he’s also strapped into something, and the blanket keeps those strings from digging into his skin.
I think the child is wrapped in a blanket because kids get cold easily. The girl sitting next to him doesn’t need a blanket because she’s older.
Sandy Buczynski and I talked extensively about the power of because when we worked on Story Starters and Science Notebooking: Developing Student Thinking Through Literacy and Inquiry (Teacher Ideas Press/ABC-CLIO, 2009). That book built on the science notebooking strategies developed by Michael Klentschy, who planted the because seed in our brains. So often in science, students are asked to predict what will happen (or to make a hypothesis), but they’re not asked to explain their thinking. If we don’t ask them to explain why they made the prediction they did, we don’t know if they’ve tapped into their existing scientific thinking or, frankly, just guessed.
Try using because and see how it helps students justify their work (and you see their schema)!
Historical photo from the American Memory Project of the Library of Congress (PS - Can you see the hands of the mystery adult holding up the baby?)