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.