Teaching History - Beginner Teachers Session with Jonathan Dallimore

A little while ago I had the pleasure of presenting at the HTA Beginner Teachers Conference. One of the highlights of doing something like this is that it then means I get watch Jonathan Dallimore share his insights into historical thinking. This time around, Jonathan Dallimore's session started with a primary source, introduced with very little context, and the prompt for beginner teachers to read and discuss with the person next to them... what is this source? What do we think of this extract? What can we deduce? 

As some answers were tentatively offered, Dallimore made the point that our lack of orientation and potential confusion was perhaps a reflection of how our students feel when a source is placed in front of him. 

The source transpired to be part of a letter from Dallimore's grandfather, written in 1943, in World War II Germany. The issue is that students often don't have this background knowledge when they look at a source; as History teachers we fall into the trap of looking at sources in isolation, which is contrary to what historians actually do. A historian has a purpose for looking at a source and they know the context of what they're looking at... in fact, more often than not, context is what they start with. 

There's a delicate line that needs to be walked here. There's a need to teach the facts and have students be able to recall these but, also, there's a need to have "an understanding of how historical knowledge is attained, its relationship to evidence, and the way in which historians arbitrate between competing or contradictory claims." (Peter Lee, Teaching History). History should be hard because it's not a 'natural' way of thinking - if students don't find it hard, then it's not focused enough on historical thinking. Dallimore zooms in on this and highlights some key elements of subject History. As we spiral into a world of politicised history wars and ongoing discussion, argumentation, and pseudohistoricising of conspiracies, Dallimore points out our responsibility as teachers to set students up to be able to navigate this violently contested space with appropriately disciplined and critical historical thinking. So yes, this involves providing some degree of context when students look at sources.

Dallimore boils down our role as History teachers as essentially being about the following:

• Historical Confidence and Agility
• Build students' substantive knowledge - provide meaningful data required to make sense of an issue (EG. 17 dictatorships in Europe by 1939 - this fact is meaningful because it raises important questions, EG. Why did this happen at this point in time?).
• Disciplinary knowledge - facilitate an understanding of key disciplinary concepts (EG. Causation, significance)
• Procedural knowledge - teaching the skills needed to 'do' history (EG. Communication in essay form, undertake historical research). 
  

Sources fit in all of the above strands of History teaching- we need sources to build our substantive knowledge but also to help us answer questions. Sources work in a variety of ways within a subject History context:

• Stimulus - to start a discussion
  
• Illustration - to provide an example of something
• Investigative - in an analytical sense, testing a source'sreliability and how/why they've been created.
  
• Construction - using evidence to describe, argue, etc.
• Extension - to research and add layers to what's being discussed.

To keep the balance, each of the above should come into our source analysis. To get to a point where we are taking this robust approach to sources, Dallimore highlighted the importance of choosing your moments - deep source work doesn't have to happen all the time; we have a syllabus with a range of elements that need to be taught but you have a year to teach them so there's no need to focus on all of them all of the time. One topic might focus on chronology and key terms/concepts, another might bring in contestability and analysis and use of sources. The next topic might then shift to significance and communication, with continuing analysis/use of sources. The final topic for the year could then look at perspective/empathy alongside continuing communication and significance. Other skills that might come into play in the following year are change and continuity and causation. Or perhaps they would work better in the first year and you could swap some of the skills around - it's a flexible approach.

The subtext here is that there should be room to interpret the syllabus in accordance with our professional judgement - and we're lucky in the sense that our current syllabus allows for this.

Source analysis in the context of a classroom can be approached in regard to three strands of pedagogy:

• Asking questions
• Finding and analysing meaningful data
• Communicating, sharing and challenging stories and arguments. 

Each of these elements are worked through in three stages - for example, establishing what asking questions looks like, guiding student negotiation in asking questions, and then guiding student creation of their own questions.

As usual with all of the Dallimore sessions I've watched, this was a thought-provoking seminar that helped me to rethink how I do things in the classroom. Great professional learning does this... it lets you watch a subject-expert who speaks the shared language of your subject area. In the course of this discussion, we learn new concepts within this shared language, and we re-energise ourselves as subject-area experts for our students. If I want to get better as a History teacher then I'll watch experienced and passionate History teachers talking about History. That's what this day was... I'm not a Beginner History Teacher; I was in attendance as a presenter in another session, but I'm thankful that I got to tag along and watch this session. Sessions like this aren't just for beginners. 

Focus on Reading and Super Six Strategies

I have to admit that I'm finding it difficult to think pedagogically at the moment. What I mean by that is that I'm usually trying to think and plan ahead into the next term or two. I always want to backward map as much as possible, to frontload students so that when they get to the tricky part of their learning they feel as prepared as possible. It also helps diminish my own anxiety and gives me a clear roadmap to work to - everything is transparent and students know exactly what's coming up throughout each term. Assessment tasks can be given to students far in advance of due dates, and it usually frees up my spare periods to concentrate on head teacher responsibilities, or welfare troubleshooting, helping students 1:1, or any other long projects I might be working on. 

In the age of COVID-19 it just feels impossible trying to plan for anything. Our goalposts are getting moved almost daily... and it isn't anyone's fault, it's just kind of how it is. Being able to plan far ahead has become a privilege rather than a necessity. 

I hate it.

Whenever I get stuck like this I tend to favour a back-to-basics approach. When times are complicated then the work should be simpler. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (pictured above) makes it pretty clear that students are less likely to be able to engage with curriculum if their basic needs aren't being met and, as this pandemic provokes and fertilises a seemingly neverending range of issues straight out of a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel, I don't blame them. A lot of students are going to find it difficult to take complicated course content on board in order to "become the most that one can be" if they feel that their safety needs are being threatened by a pandemic.

I always come back to the Super Six Literacy strategies. 

Some time in the past, I think it might have been 2013 or 2014, my school undertook the Focus on Reading professional development modules. Others will be able to tell you about this literacy initiative more than me... what I will say instead is that this particular professional learning galvanised my appreciation for teaching literacy skills. The Focus on Reading modules just felt so wonderfully practical and I'm glad to see that the Department of Education is currently working on a new version of it.

I replicate some of the Super Six-related strategies below in the absence of their current availability. 

Here's an example, from Page 8 of Module 1, drawing upon Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency by I. Fountas and G. Pinnell (2006, pp.463-464). This demonstrates some ways in which students can practice independent writing in relation to their reading:

Writing and Drawing About Reading

Using words, phrases or sketches on stick-on notes or in the notebook to note:

• Place where you made a personal prediction
• Predictions
• Place where you found out something about a character
• Wonderings
• Place where you learned new information
• Place that you found confusing
• Place that you found interesting
• Memorable language
• Place that reminded you of another book

Short writing activities - a few sentences or paragraphs produced quickly in a notebook or a long stick-on note that is placed in a notebook:

• Reaction to the writer's style
• A prediction
• Response to a selected quote
• Response to a peer's thinking
• Reaction to a character
• Thoughts about the writer's craft
• Thoughts about the writer's message
• Comments on the writer's point of view
• Thoughts about how the text reveals life issues
• New understandings or insights
• Using knowledge of the genre to think about character, plot, theme, setting
• Links to other texts
• Story map

Graphic organisers - words, phrases, sketches, or sentences on graphic organisers or drawn in a notebook:

• Web
• Time sequence chain
• Comparison/contrast chart
• Cause/effect chart
• Problem/solution chart
• Grid for comparing elements or taking notes
• Outline
• Letter to the teacher with reply (ongoing dialogue about texts)

Longer responses in the notebook elaborating on thinking about one or several texts

• Double-column entry (two-column responses with material from the text, a category or questions on the left and response or comments on the right)
• Expansion of thinking from the notes, sketches, short writing, or graphic organisers
• Letter to author or illustrator study
• Book recommendation
• Book review 

Published work - more formal responses to texts that are shared publicly

• Poem related to a text
• Picture book on a topic or subject (EG. Biography)
• Opinion essay
• Report of an author or illustrator study
• Examination of a particular theme across texts
• A character analysis or companion
• A book critique  

This particular Focus on Reading module notes go on to discuss the interrelated nature of reading and writing - the way in which learning to write should take place alongside learning to read, as one strengthens the other and vice versa.

I came to realise in light of all this that the explicit teaching of reading and writing right up to the end of Year 12 it is a fundamental part of our ongoing ability to understand complex and sustained text. Indeed, even adults need to make these processes explicit to themselves if they are to develop their own critical faculties in relation to the wider world. Learning never stops.

Super Six Literacy Strategies

The strategies mentioned above can be categorised as examples of the Super Six - to be honest, all comprehension essentially fits into this paradigm. The Super Six, in brief, are the following:

Questioning: Learners formulate and respond to questions that clarify meaning. This allows for greater depth of understanding when drilling down into texts.

Visualising: Learners create a mental image from a text. Visualising isn't necessarily a natural skill for everyone and is something that needs to be developed so that imaginative skills are engaged.

Making Connections: Learners make personal connections with the text by linking it to themselves, another text, or the wider world. This process makes use of our ability to recall information from our broader understanding of things - building pathways between different kinds of knowledge and prompting development of our ability to synthesise information.

Monitoring: Learners interrupt the reading process by stopping to check their understanding. This is an important part of comprehension as it forces the learner to develop strategies to cope with obstacles or disrupted meaning during the reading process.

Summarising: Learners identify and gather together the most significant parts of a text, restating this information in their own words. This is another valuable part of the comprehension process as it helps develop our ability to synthesise information, sort and categorise ideas, and discard irrelevant details.

Predicting: Learners use information from one part of the text to construct an idea of what will happen later in the same text. This is a valuable part of our critical thinking in that it makes explicit the way in which we adjust expectations based on the available information.

I always find myself assured that I'm doing something useful by falling back on the above six domains of comprehension while designing learning activities. Students never fail to be able to engage with these strategies and it's almost always useful in a wide range of contexts.

Food for thought :)

Cutting Edge: A Report

Plenary Hall on Day 1

I attended the AATE/ALEA Cutting Edge conference in Hobart about two weeks ago and my head is still giddy with the pedagogical possibilities I experienced there. Each morning, I stepped out into the bracing stillness of the harbour's Southern Ocean air, looked up at the looming snow-specked rockface of Mt. Wellington, and smelt the collective woodfire of the street's chimneys.

The walk to Wrest Point Convention Centre was chilly but the scenery and ambience always made up for it.

View of Mt Wellington from Wrest Point

Where does one start with a conference attended by 1100 delegates, a conference that went for four days, a conference where 260 separate teachers and educational specialists shared their knowledge and ideas with one another? Many times I felt like a kid at a music festival with multiple stages, wrestling with the agonising need to make a decision about which bands to see. Gnashing my teeth whenever I noted that two or three or even four great workshops were up against each other.

Like many other attendees, I was spoilt for choice.

Day Zero: The extended pre-conference sessions gave me a chance to engage more closely with the pedagogy of international speakers Linda Hoyt and Steven Layne, who were both such enthusiastic presenters that one couldn't help but get swept away in the positive and constructive methodology they shared. Dr Layne spoke wonderfully about using feedback and community-styled classroom environments, and modeled how this works by getting those of us who attended the session to generate creative writing pieces and accompanying feedback.

Day One: My highlight for the second day (the first day of the conference-proper) was a session in which South Australian teacher and researcher Sarah McDonald discussed the problematic stereotyping that has contributed to the timbre of boy-focused literacy initiatives in Western education. Her ongoing research was both useful and thought-provoking. Another highlight for the day was the keynote from American high school reading specialist Cris Tovani, who turned the focus back onto the teachers in the room by asking them to consider what it is that makes learning compelling for them, and then showed the lecture theatre some useful strategies to get students interrogating the texts they read for greater depth of understanding - alluding to Super Six-styled skills of connecting, monitoring, questioning, etc.

Cutting Edge talk on the 100 Story Building

Day Two: Wayne Sawyer started the day with his inspiring delivery of the Garth Boomer address on 'Low SES contexts - What could they mean for 'English'". Among the many insightful points made, Professor Sawyer highlighted the concentrations of disadvantage in those of low socio-economic status, asserting that deficiencies in performance within the subject of English are always about class. I'm not going to do justice to his keynote address in the space of a paragraph, however, the inclusion of the Motivation engagement Education (MeE) framework - and it's 'Fair Go' principles - provided a lot of intellectual grist for the audience. Later in the day, I was also fortunate to attend a session on the Seven Steps to Writing Success presented by its creator, Jen McVeity, and in the space of just 35 minutes she managed to convey enough material for several lessons' worth of creative writing instruction. It was fantastic.

Day Three: The last day of the conference was another big one, with Israeli educator Dr. Adam Lefstein sharing his research on classroom practice. Dr Lefstein made the case for repositioning Professional Learning as something that should happen on the job rather than outside it, and spoke illuminatingly about the way discourse shapes our thinking as teachers, as well as the need for educators to focus on positive practice when observing each other (rather than the usual things in the classroom that can go wrong). Dr Lefstein lectured about a lot that really spoke to me, and I can see myself blogging more about him more extensively in the future. The final day of the conference was also the one in which my colleague Kira Bryant collaborated with me on presenting our own materials on teaching explicit creative writing skills in the classroom. I enjoyed it a lot. 

Presenting on Creative Writing strategies

I had to take this photo - I couldn't help myself!

I met so many great teachers at Cutting Edge and learnt a lot of great stuff. I'd like to once again thank the Copyright Agency for granting me a 2017 Scholarship to attend the Cutting Edge conference. I blogged a few times about it, and the links can be found here:

Engaging Writers in the Classroom by Steven L. Layne

Gender and Literacy by Sarah McDonald

Sizzling Starts by Jen McVeity

Write Right: Authentic Engagement with Creative Writing

That's Wrest Point on the right

Some links of interest related to some of the presenters can be found here as well:

Linda Hoyt - Excellence in Literacy Instruction
Steven L. Layne - Passionate about Reading
Cris Tovani - Reading Comprehension Specialist
Elizabeth Birr Moje - Dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan
100 Story Building - Creativity and Literacy for Young People

Wayne Sawyer and Larissa McLean Davies - Investigating Literary Knowledge in English Teachers
Angela Meyer - Flash Fiction
Jen McVeity - Seven Steps to Writing Steps
Rosie Kerin - Write Me: Workshops on English and Literacy
Adam Lefstein - Some useful articles on his research around classroom management and professional learning