“document-based questioning: A technique used both for instruction and for some state and national assessments that involves presenting students with historical documents and having them analyze and answer questions about them, either orally or in writing.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
This post begins a run of eleven (twenty-two including the interstitial quotes) that comprise a global studies unit dedicated to the document-based question (DBQ).
I wrote this unit in the late summer and early fall of 2018 after a late-spring meeting that year with the assistant principal of humanities at the school in which I then served. He stressed the importance of DBQ work in our classroom. The next year’s New York State Global History and Geography Regents Examination, he assured us, would require students to possess a strong ability to interpret primary source material–i.e. complete the standard DBQ.
Because I was a doctoral candidate in history before becoming a high school teacher, and because I respect the importance of inquiry in primary sources, I knew I needed to get to work on creating DBQ materials for the struggling students under my purview–even though in principle I fervently resent teaching to tests. (Aside: I am still surprised at how many of my students, past and present, link their sense of themselves as students, and indeed their self-esteem, on achieving “success” on the kinds of crude instruments that constitute our standardized testing regime.) The problem I faced was at once simple and complicated: DBQs require interpretation, which means students completing them must be able to think abstractly. Many if not most of the students I served struggled with abstract thought. I knew they could learn to deal with DBQs, but I also knew it would be a careful, even painstaking process that would take place over a relatively long period of time.
I started with the standard textbook we used in social studies classes in my school, to wit, McDougal Littell’s World History: Patterns of Interaction (Beck, Roger B., et al., Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell, 2007) and wrote materials based on the primary documents in that book.
Unfortunately, I never used this unit. But now it’s back. I’ve spent a few hours revising the lesson plans and making sure everything is formatted correctly and consistently–something I think is important in meeting the needs of struggling learners. If you’ve made it this far, here is the payoff–the documents.
This is the unit plan with all the scholarly and pedagogical apparatus–i.e. standards and works consulted page. If you want to rewrite or edit this unit for use in your particular classroom, here is a lesson plan template, a context clues worksheet template, and a primary worksheet template for your use. Finally, here is a couple of pages of assorted cut-and-paste text to prepare new lessons.
Let me close with this unsurprising statement: there is a lot of room for expansion, adaptation, and improvement in this unit. As with the lion’s share of documents on this site, all of these are in Microsoft Word, so you can revise and edit them to suit your classroom’s needs.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“adaptive skills: Daily living skills that a person needs to be able to live, work, and play independently. There are 10 skills that are included in this area: communication, self-care, home living, social skills, leisure,, health and safety, self-direction, functional academics, community use, and work.
Adaptive skills are assessed in the person’s typical environment, in all aspects of an individual’s life. A person with limited intellectual functioning but who does not have have limits in adaptive skill areas may not be diagnosed as having mental retardation. By law, such a person is not retarded.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“context clues: Using information in a sentence or paragraph surrounding a new term to help the reader understand that term. There are several items to look for when searching for context clues, including
Learning to use context clues to gain meaning is an important reading skill. A student who is able to use the context to identify an unknown word, grasp the meaning of a word, or comprehend a passage read, will become a good reader.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“Double bind: An inescapable dilemma involving conflicting demands that allow no right or satisfactory response. An influential theory of the etiology of schizophrenia was put forward by the English-born US anthropologist Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) and several co-authors in an article in the journal Behavioral Science in 1956, according to which schizophrenia is caused by parenting styles that create double binds for children, as when a mother complains to her son for not giving her a kiss but recoils physically whenever the child does kiss her. This theory was enthusiastically adopted by the Scottish psychiatrist Ronald D(avid) Laing (1927-89) and others during the 1970s and 1980s, but empirical evidence has not been forthcoming in support of the theory, despite its attractiveness.”
Excerpted from: Colman, Andrew M., ed. Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
It’s a gorgeous August day in southwestern Vermont. Here, if you can use it (I did more than once, for students dealing with schizophrenia in their families), is a reading on schizophrenia along with its vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet. The reading is relatively straightforward, nonetheless it contains abstractions (e.g. “delusions of grandeur”) with which some learners may struggle. As with just about everything else at Mark’s Text Terminal, this document is formatted in Microsoft Word, so you can alter it to your student’s needs.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
Posted in English Language Arts, Independent Practice, Social Sciences, Worksheets
Tagged building vocabulary/conceptual knowledge, career/technical education, cognition/learning/understanding, diction/grammar/style/usage, health, questioning/inquiry, readings/research, science literacy, social-emotional learning
“A factor arising from racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic background that may systematically influence test performance on a specific assessment instrument.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“analogy: A comparison between two different but related things. The ability to comprehend and create analogies is an important component of critical reasoning capabilities. For example, an analogy might compare the biological process of a tree growing from a small seed to a tall oak, to the human process of development from infancy to adulthood. This analogy would be written;
SEED : OAK AS INFANT : ADULT
Another type of analogy is the visual analogy. For example, in a 2 X 2 cell grid, the two cells on the left might contain blue strs, and the top cell on the right might contain a green square. The person taking the test must then select which of several presented figures (including the correct green square) mts go in the empty cell.
For some students with learning disabilities, understanding analogies may be very difficult. They may process information in fairly concrete ways, and miss more subtle connections between dissimilar things.
Often, however, the ability to reason analogically is a relative strength for students with learning disabilities.”
Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.
“prior knowledge: The totality of an individual’s experience and knowledge at any given time—that is, what a student brings as background information to a new learning experience. The more prior knowledge a person has, the more prepared he or she will be to learn new ideas. Almost everything that a person learns or can learn depends on the extent of his or her prior knowledge. One of the major missions of school is to build students’ fund of background knowledge so they have a foundation for future learning.”
Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.
“Chapter 7: “Reading After the Digital Revolution” Summary, Implications and Discussion Questions
Summary
Implications
Discussion Questions
Excerpted from: Willingham, Daniel T. The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017.
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