Week 2: Interconnected Timelines and Copyright Instruction

This past week, I hit a road block in my classroom.  One of the standards in 2nd grade relates to being able to identify key people that have impacted history.  In our 2nd grade classroom we teach the Civil Rights Movement in order to meet this standard.  My students come into the classroom with a lot of background knowledge about Martin Luther King Jr. from 1st grade.  This makes it a good unit of study specifically for this time of the year.  Even with a lot of background knowledge my students were disengaged.  They didn't see how these event mattered in 2016 and appeared bored by the lessons. I realized that they were struggling to see how interconnected these events were to key influential decisions.  

One of the many struggles in teaching elementary school is, how much do you tell students about the real world?  I don't want to sugar coat the events that are currently taking place, but I also want to respect and enjoy that my students are 7 and 8 years old. We live in a world surrounded by civil rights issues.  Most people know all about Ferguson and Michael Brown, but should 2nd graders know that?  Should they know that the shooting of Michael Brown is not an isolated event, and that this is a civil rights issue our country is dealing with in the very moment?  We have endless opportunities to be the source of information for our students, but with that power I do think their should be limits.  

Back to my original dilemma... my students were disengaged and I needed to respond.  In Chapter 1 by Hicks (2013) he states, "... and publish their works for a variety of audiences" (p. 1).  This idea that we are creating writers that need to be heard by more than just their teacher, helped shaped my lessons for the week.  I realized my students creating timelines in isolation from each other counteracted the idea that history and current events are a series of interconnected events.  I then was able to introduce my students to a variety of media materials.  

We decided to ditch the personal timelines that retold 6 key events in the Civil Rights Movements and make one large class timeline with events that mattered to the students.  Students were given printed books and access to World Book Online (a tool they have practiced in Library).  Their job was simple, read about a person or event I have discussed in my teaching and find out more about it.  They had the choice to find facts or key dates to add to the class timeline. 

It was one of those thrilling moments where all students are engaged and on task.  Media would have you believe that these moments occur every day in the classroom, but as teachers we know how hard this can be.  My students were talking, discovering, and developing their knowledge around our common goal.  Hicks (2003) mentions, "When writers begin to think intentionally about creating meaning in their readers' minds, they are beginning to master the craft of writing" (p.13).  My students worked tirelessly to gain knowledge form multiple media sources and report their findings back to the class.  This interconnectedness that was created through a shared visual representation of knowledge built on how essential it is for students to feel that their writing has purpose.  They need to know that someone besides their teacher will read their writing.  This motivation to be heard and share what they learned catapulted my students to a new level of engagement.  

The end result of the class timeline was simple.  We had over 15 dates that the students felt were important to the timeline and over 5 separate facts that they learned about the people they researched.  We even had a student go to the Longmont Library and pick out books to bring into class to share with others in order to help build the timeline.  

Usually this lesson results in all of us knowing 6 key events in the Civil Rights Movement.  Instead as suggested by Hicks (2003) I had students find their own exemplars of good writing and contribute that knowledge to the class. In addition to getting to see the power they held by picking their own sources of information my students were able to learn as writers, historians and use technology to further their knowledge.  Hicks (2013) talks about pushing students to be more than "born digital" (p. 25) but to really empower students into becoming purposeful and power contributors to digital writing.  I think this lesson really was the first step for my 2nd graders.  They finally saw their work viewed by others.  They also saw how their new knowledge had the power to teach others.  

The Center for Social Media (2009) discusses, "Feedback deepens reflection on one's own editorial and creative choices and helps students grasp the power of communication" (p. 4).  This feedback given by other students greatly contributed to the positive engagement in my classroom this week.  My students saw how the power of their research, verbal communication, and written communication impacted our entire class. 

As I look to future lessons, I was able to relate heavily to talking about the need to cite sources. That was not a requirement in this lesson but needs to be my next step.  I found a fun a video to introduce the need to cite sources and to talk about copyright law.  I am going to create a Google Doc for our classroom. I will then have students look for articles related to the Civil Rights Movement and copy their source to a shared document.  I hope this will build on the interconnectedness that was so successful this week and help students understand the important of citing their sources. 

I look to future lessons in my classroom to see how this week's readings can help me continue to build creative writers who understand the importance of their knowledge.  I also hope to help my students understand the importance of citing and sharing where their knowledge came from.  Here is the website for a copyright assessment I plan to use in my classroom to help my students understand these rules in a more interactive way!

Sources:
Copyright & Plagiarism for Kids. (2014, July 5). Retrieved January 23, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngKGGoqFKTI

(n.d.). Retrieved January 23, 2016, from http://cyberbee.com/cb_copyright.swf