Collective Responsibility

When our social studies department chair discussed students’ difficulty to contextualize the facts on the APUSH test, I knew this problem wasn’t just because of one rigorous course curriculum. As a department, all of the preceding Social Studies classes share the responsibility of these scores, and I hated the idea that students left my class at the end of sophomore year and left behind all of the content knowledge that we shared no longer able to use their learning to potentially earn college credit let alone help them flourish further on in life.

When I was in school, I often felt like my history teachers just told us these historical facts and stories in isolation. Sure, I thought they were interesting enough to further my study, but I certainly didn’t have the capital as an adolescent to distill the underlying principles and patterns of the content on my own. Even today, I knew that I’d have to build a cognitive structure for my own students learning in order to make it stick.

Weave it Together

In that light, I started playing around with this idea of taking an already secure framework of must-know US History facts and weaving in larger themes and trends. In other words, I wanted to figure out a way for students to zoom in and memorize the important, you-cannot-be-a-functioning-adult-without-knowing-this-history-fact while simultaneously zooming out to see how these pieces fit together as a whole narrative of the American story. By weaving the isolated facts together, students are able to recognize patterns and retain the content longer because, for example, Executive Order 9066 is no longer floating around aimlessly in their notes but rather fastened to similar racial injustices over time to reveal the bigger picture. Understanding this bigger picture of the past then, of course, helps students understand and make decisions about life in the present.

I describe the Big Picture Guide to my students like a tapestry being woven on a loom. Imagine it hanging in front of you now. Thick vertical threads hang straight down from the top frame of the loom to the bottom. Horizontal threads are individually streamed through and tamped down. The yarn is squished together so tightly that they completely hide the vertical backbone threads from view. When new colors are introduced, their vibrancy pops up occasionally on the front of the tapestry; however, when you turn the work over, you see the various colors of yarn stretching and connecting across the larger space.

To craft my loom framework, I considered the wider lens historians take when they study the past: social, political, economic, and military perspectives. These four categories became the hanging vertical threads of our US History tapestry. Then to weave in the seemingly isolated facts, I sequenced them according to the already “tamped down” sequence of US Presidents. These forty-five presidential terms became the horizontal threads. I ask my students to imagine a slow-growing tapestry that over the course of the year is eventually gridded in a 4×45 pattern with various color trends appearing throughout.

Spaced Practice

As we move through the year, I have the students sidestep from our already ongoing unit study to add to our Big Picture Guide notes. This extra attention to the major events students need to know obviously helps reinforce students’ preparation for end-of-unit assessments, but what’s most important to note about the Big Picture Guide is that we never drop our retrieval practice of all of the earlier presidents. Students are expected to retain all of the BPG facts throughout the entire year and hopefully beyond to support their long-term flourishing.

To make sure this retention actually happens, I use cognitive science strategies to create challenging, spaced retrieval practice. This starts by introducing only 4-5 Presidents at a time; this number generally matches the eras of our unit studies. During that time, I focus on 3-5 must-know social, political, economic, or military events/policies from each of those Presidential terms.

As new sets of Presidents are added unit after unit, it’s essential to both space out the practice to allow time for forgetting to set in and to do frequent quizzing that increases in difficulty over time. In the Civil War & Reconstruction Era Unit, I introduce the must-know facts associated with Presidents #16-19, Lincoln, Johnson, Grant, and Hayes. The quiz, as shown below, is set on “level easy” because students only need to recall the presidents’ last names and the title of each big picture event or policy.

Later on, after we’ve moved on to a new unit and students are quizzed again, the difficulty is increased. The first set of presidents moves from just recall to now “level medium” of recall and description of the major events. The quizzes are still structured according to the original “loom” framework; however, students are now able to start seeing topic patterns emerge. Note the boxes labeled in red below focus on issues related to Native Americans.  Like looking at the back of the tapestry, students can see how the thread of these military and political actions against Native Americans and how they stretch and intensify across time.

Ultimately, because we keep coming back to this same must-know content week after week, unit after unit, my students not only solidify their understanding of US History content today in class, but it’s been structured in a way so they can confidently use the information twenty years from now. They won’t become informed global citizens if the content spills out of them and remains left behind on a Scantron bubble sheet.  I want my students to be fluent in the language of history, the way bilingual speakers can switch languages with each breath.

This post is reshared by the author as previously contributed content from Dave Stuart Jr.’s book, These 6 Things: How to Focus Your Teaching on What Matters Most (Corwin Literacy 2018),  which "is centered on a simple belief: all students and teachers can flourish. These 6 Things is all about streamlining your practice so that you’re teaching smarter, not harder, and kids are learning, doing, and flourishing in ELA and content-area classrooms." In exciting news, it is now available on Audible!