Maps, Critical Thinking and Good-bye to the Lecture

Let me begin by saying I still believe that there is a place for the lecture method in a teacher's repertoire.

In grade 7 we are currently studying New France and the fall of Quebec.  In the past, I would have taught well-planned lessons that told the story of the British conquest,  the various battles blah, blah, blah.
Today we did not do that. Instead we engaged in a critical thinking activity where students were given maps and asked to draw conclusions.

Students self-organized into small groups and I gave them questions to think about. These included:

1. Why is the first map a logical way to show boundaries for First Nations peoples.
2. For there to have been a treaty, what must have happened?
3. If France no longer controlled New France after 1763, why are there still French people living in Canada today?

All students were able to figure out that a war must have occurred and the French must have lost. They also predicted that land may have been sold.  And they concluded that the British had allowed the French to remain on their farms.  I did no traditional teaching except at the end when we gathered as a class. We shared conclusions and revisited our original inquiry question: what led to the October Crisis of 1970 and the separatist movement.  Students recognized that the French were a conquered people.

Tomorrow we will view material from a variety of sources to determine whether or not our conclusions are correct. Students didn't have to memorize facts, the lowest level of skill on the Thinking Matrix. Instead, they engaged with facts in order to think critically.

One thing we did not discuss, but will, are missing voices.  This pulls the media literacy piece into social studies. Key concepts: All media are constructed. Media contain idealogical and value messages. Who drew the maps? Whose voice is missing? How would First Nations people have responded to the maps?

I always enjoy watching students shift into inquiry and listening to the discussion that evolves as they begin thinking. They play with possibilities and ideas. They wonder and imagine.  Conversation becomes very natural. I circulate, engage, respond to questions and give prompts to further thinking.

The students loved this approach to learning. We compared it to how I would have taught it in the past. Almost all agreed that this was a more interesting approach and that they were more likely to recall the information because they had figured it out themselves.