Year 7 History and the Inquiry Learning Journey - part 2

In this post I will attempt to analyse the Year 7 History unit I introduced in my last post against the various theories and concepts I have covered in my course so far. I will then offer recommendations on how to improve the inquiry journey for students studying this unit in the future.

A quick note on the History unit presented. I have chosen to look at this unit as a whole instead of the three individual parts as most might choose to (as shown below). The idea of structuring three depth studies with a varying degree of assistance from the teacher shows the gradual release of responsibility from the teacher to the student, in keeping with the notion of Scaffolding students' learning. Taking each unit as an independent sequence would limit the view of the inquiry learning journey undertaken by the students.

  

Australian Curriculum aligned course
outline from the Year 7 History unit analysed.
Permission for use granted by authors. 

Analysis against Theories & Concepts

The Year 7 History unit has been written to meet the Australian Curriculum focus skills of Historical knowledge & understanding and Historical skills at the Year 7 level and aims to address the Key Inquiry Questions set at this level as:

• How do we know about the ancient past?
• Why and where did the earliest societies develop?
• What emerged as the defining characteristics of ancient societies
• What have been the legacies of ancient societies?

The unit progresses from teacher directed instruction of explicit skills through the lens of Ancient Australia to a guided inquiry into Ancient Egypt before culminating in an open inquiry (students choose an appropriate guiding inquiry question) about either Ancient China or Ancient India. This is an example of a Coupled Inquiry (defined as progression from teacher guided to student guided). 

Intertwined throughout the whole unit are the various progressions of Bloom's Taxonomy.
Students are asked to:

by  nist6dh 

• Write definitions of key words/concepts using the textbook (Remembering)
• Write a short explanation about how the climate affected the everyday life of Ancient Egyptians.. (Understand) 
• Use information contained in a presentation to create a detailed diagram that highlights 'change and continuity' between each [Ancient Egyptian] Kingdom. (Apply) 
• Compare and contrast images/phrases that define the characteristics of an ancient society against the characteristics that define a society today. (Analyse) 
• Examine the different theories of how the Pyramids were constructed and evaluate the different theories. (Evaluate)
• Formulate their own inquiry question about an ancient civilisation (India, or China) then collate and organise information in order to answer the inquiry question. (Create)

The explicit teaching of Historical Inquiry Skills within the initial stages, a Generic approach, followed by the contextualisation of those skills within the Inquiry into Ancient Egyptian life, place this unit within the Situated window of the GeSTE windows framework. Involving students in historical thinking pushes past the Generic window with activities like "Writing an imaginative letter to a friend adopting the persona of a person living in ancient Egypt" and the "Evaluation of theories related to the construction of the pyramids".

Students are required to interrogate and evaluate primary & secondary sources using ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘why’ questions set out in their textbook and Generic questions (see inset below) are given to guide students to draw conclusions about a usefulness of sources - that resemble the questions asked in the C.R.A.P. test.

DRAWING CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE USEFULNESS OF SOURCES A useful source, whether primary or secondary, is one that will add to your understanding of a historical inquiry. The source needs to be relevant to the topic or question asked and must also be reliable.  The following are good questions to ask in order to determine the usefulness of a source:  ☺ Is it a reliable source?  ☺ Is there enough information and sufficient detail to help me answer the inquiry   question?  ☺ Does the information support and reinforce evidence from other sources? ☺ Is it balanced or does it present one point of view (bias)?  ☺ Is it based on fact or opinion?  ☺ Is the information current?

NSW DET Information process

The unit uses the New South Wales Department of Education and Training's (NSW DET) Information Skills Process (ISP), although not named as such within the curriculum documentation. This model guides the students through both their guided and individual inquiries.

Screen shot of the Information Process used within the unit. Permission to use granted by authors.

Assessment as and of learning in this unit come in a variety tasks. The skills are measured against a unique continuum created for the college. Using the Australian Curriculum and research theory coupled with teacher expertise, staff have built continua of the natural progression of skills as seen in their students. Capturing the observable skills and learning the students show at each step of their learning journey. This helps to create realistic snapshots of students and creates a common language between teachers across year levels thus allowing greater tailoring to individual students’ Zone of Proximal Development. Matrices for assessment tasks are informed by the continua and act as concrete tools to assess student progress throughout tasks. This allows all students demonstrate ability regardless of level in all assessment tasks.

Recommendations for enhancing the unit

Year 7 History is such an extensive unit when looked at as a whole. Isolating each depth study would have brought up deficits in different areas. The fact that these units are not mutually exclusive and must be taught in sequence shows that a lot of thought was put into the progression of student abilities across the whole subject area.

In order to push this through into the Transformative window of the GeSTE framework, this unit could have gone on to look at the commonalities between the treatment of people in Ancient Societies and today's society and taken on a moral stance towards an issue effecting the world today. The line of questioning such as "What mistakes have been made in the past?", "What mistakes are we still making now?" and "What can we do to help stop or minimise the impact of these mistakes?" could help students reflect on their learning and push them to an activist role for human rights issues through the lens of the Ancient Societies, however this may be difficult.

Year 7 History and the Inquiry Learning Journey - part 1

For my final assignment in the Queensland University of Technology's Master of Education (Teacher-librarianship) I need to analyse an example curriculum document using a range of theories and concepts as covered in the Inquiry Learning subject I am now completing. In this entry I will endeavour to describe the Inquiry Learning Activity I have chosen and explain its' context, what students are expected to do and its intended learning outcomes and assessment.

The focus of my inquiry into Inquiry Learning Activities present within the curriculum currently being taught at my school is Year 7 History. 

photo credit: Pharoah Khufu's Great Pyramid at 
Giza, Egypt via photopin (license)

Year 7 History is taught over one semester as a unit within the Humanities subject. It begins with a focus on teaching historical skills through Indigenous culture and moves onto an in depth study of the Egyptians before finishing with a focus on Ancient Indian and Chinese cultures. Using the skills acquired through the studies of Indigenous Australian and Egyptian cultures, students set off into an Independent inquiry into the Indian and Chinese cultures, this inquiry constitutes their formative assessment. Oxford Big Ideas History 7 (Saldais, Taylor &Young, 2014) compliments this unit of inquiry providing key inquiry questions, the “big ideas”, and core skills and concepts. 

Due to a recent shake up of curriculum delivery at the college, this unit is presented in an online format (interactive website) where supplementary documents and information are generally embedded directly into the lesson sequences for easy 24/7 access. As these curriculum sites exist on a closed school network and are not available publicly on the web, as yet, I am unable to share much in the way of screenshots of content or links. I will however endeavour to describe these lesson sequences in depth and to the best of my ability.

Condensed view of lesson sequence - Year 7 History Site.
Permission granted for use by author P.Owens, 2015.

Following the model used by the school across all learning areas, each of the lesson sequences listed in the image to the left contain Learning Intentions, Stimulus for learning and Activities. Each sequence can last for several lessons if required and is differentiated with a selection of activities based on Lev Vygotsky's zone of proximal development and Jerome Bruner's subsequent idea of scaffolding.

Throughout the unit students are expected to :

• examine the seven key historical concepts (Evidence, Continuity and Change, Cause and Effect, Contestability, Significance, Perspectives and Empathy) 
• look at the characteristics of society 
• understand the role of groups, beliefs and practises
• examine why societies change
• study past perspectives and interpretations

This is punctuated with formative assessments such as:

• a group presentation of one of the key historical concepts in the form of a poster to be displayed in class.
• a multimedia presentation that introduces the importance of history for future Year 7 Classes
• creation of major events timelines
• writing an imaginative letter to a friend adopting the persona of a person living in ancient Egypt
• biographical recount of the life of a chosen famous Egyptian
• evaluation of theories related to the construction of the pyramids
• explanation of the difference between primary and secondary sources

The focus on Egyptian life ends with the Historical Inquiry question "How did the defining characteristics of Ancient Egypt contribute to its organisation, law and order?" which the students are expected to address via the medium of an informative poster. For this inquiry students are required to follow the STRAP strategy (as set out below) to collate and organise information to help answer the inquiry question. Before beginning the inquiry process students are also asked to write a short hypothesis that aims to answer the question.

The following STRAP statement should inform the style of writing required Subject - Ancient Egyptian society Text type -  Written explanations / descriptions/ illustrations and diagrams. Role - An expert in Ancient Egyptian Society Audience - Readers of an Ancient Egyptian text book Purpose - To inform anyone interested about organisation, law and order during Ancient Egypt

In terms of this unit the above task is still considered formative as students go on to replicate the above strategies on their own in a summative Independent Historical Inquiry where students are required to formulate their own inquiry question about an ancient civilisation (India, or China). After writing an hypothesis, they then collate and organise information in order to answer their inquiry question.