Name: Madison Noakes

TE 803 SS20

Expanding Your Instructional Repertoire

Part 1: Proposal
Problem Statement
Describe: The main issue of student engagement that I saw first semester was a lack of
What I see... student willingness to participate in higher order thinking. Especially in the
Hypothesize: social studies classroom, students would rather come into class, be able to
Why is this a more complete a worksheet for the “correct” answers, take an objective unit test, and
than a one-time move on. Students also struggled to connect higher order thinking tasks with
thing? What is the evidence, a skill that is essential to the social studies. By this, I mean
underlying issue? completing writing tasks that require complex thinking, like an argumentative
(2 paragraphs) essay, that also require evidence to back up the thinking, be it textual or
otherwise.

I feel as though this is more than a one-time issue for a couple of important
reasons. Firstly, students are “conditioned” in their previous classes/school
experiences to have certain expectations about their current experience. If
students at the 10th grade level are coming into my classroom with social
studies experiences that have mostly asked them to recall certain information,
they may be resistant to more complex thinking. Unless there is a dramatic and
rapid shift in the way that students are taught in the earlier school years, this
will likely continue to be an issue that I see in my students. It is a long process
to change the way things are done in schools, in addition to changing the way
students view school and tasks associated with school. Additionally, higher
order thinking requires risk-taking, and students who do not feel safe and
accepted in the learning environment will be less willing to take the risks
necessary to participate in higher levels of thinking. There is a certain level of
failure that students must be willing to experience, of course supported by
feedback from the teacher, which can be a difficult shift for students to make,
as well.

Brief Overview of Instructional Strategy

Select an Option I intend to begin each unit in this semester by creating one compelling question
for Action: and three supporting questions that will drive the sequence of instruction. I will
Explain the basics share these with students to encourage their own natural curiosity in the unit’s
of the strategy. content. I will also circle back to these questions throughout the unit to give
Mention resources students an opportunity to evaluate them based on what we’ve covered and
that will help practiced so far so that they can practice using content knowledge to answer
develop and refine more significant essential questions. These questions will encourage higher
the strategy. (2-3 order thinking as they go beyond simple recall to answer. Additionally, as we
sentences) move throughout the units, students will have to answer these questions using
evidence that we have “collected” from our studies along the way. As much as
possible, I will encourage students in short-answer “Questions of the Day” or
exit tickets to use evidence to support their claims. In addition to this, I will
implement at least one Document Based Question (DBQ) in each unit. The
purpose of this strategy is to encourage students to analyze documents and use
 textual evidence to support a claim.

Rationale
Justify the I believe that basing the units around compelling and supporting questions and
Selection: integrating Document Based Questions into each unit is the key to making
How will this progress on all of these learning goals. Students will need to go beyond simple
strategy increase memory and recall of facts to answer broad historical questions, an example of
motivation and which might be: “Is Imperialism ever justified?” That question might start as a
engagement of yes or no question, but without evidence to back it up, the answer falls flat. To
students? What are connect all of these goals will take a significant amount of practice for students
the learning goals and constructive teacher feedback on that practice. As stated by Grant and
of the approach? Gradwell, “The Inquiry Arc is a form of guidance for social studies curriculum
Why choose this? that moves away from traditional textbook coverage to a model that is more
(5-8 sentences) consistent with the research on ambitious social studies teaching” (Grant and
Gradwell 2013). The DBQ project is an example of this ambitious social
studies teaching. The method hooks students’ natural curiosity about a
question, then walks them through the step-by-step process of identifying
possible arguments and analyzing documents for evidence to support those
arguments. My hope in implementing both of these strategies in tandem with
one another will push students out of their comfort zone of their past
experiences of social studies education to develop skills that they will need
beyond their grade school experience.

Grant, S.G. and Gradwell J.M., (2013). Social Studies for the Next Generation:
Purposes, Practices, and Implications of the College, Career, and Civil Life
(C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards. National Council for the
Social Studies, xvii-12.

Roden, P. and Brady, C. (2000). DBQ Project Method. Retrieved from:

https://www.dbqproject.com/about-us/dbq-project-method/

Part 2: Action Plan

Look back at your in-class data analysis from the end of Unit 2 for help formulating a plan for
collecting evidence in this project.

Baseline data: Claim

What would you Using compelling and supporting questions will give students purpose for the
hope to claim? (2-3 content we are studying. It will also help them to identify how documents we
sentences) analyze (which are sources of evidence) can be used to answer those broad and
enduring questions. By the end, my hope is that they will be better engaged and
more willing/able to participate in activities that require higher order thinking
and evidence-based reasoning.

Baseline data: Sources

What sources of *beginning of the semester survey: “How do you learn best?”
data do you want *weekly Questions of the Day/exit tickets, at least two of which ask for higher
to use as a order thinking (DOK 2, 3, or 4) and/or ask for use of evidence, as well as at
baseline measure? least one DBQ project essay each unit
(1-2 sentences) * video of lessons (3x during the unit)
For example:
● Student work
● Video
● Audio
recording
● Classroom
notes and
observations

Baseline data: Lens(es) of Analysis and Scales

What lens(es) of Survey: receive student feedback about how they feel they learn best, in order
analysis will you to judge their current understanding of higher order thinking as it relates to the
apply to those social studies classroom
sources? What Class assignments and Short answers: I already use “Question of the Day” as
scales will you use a formative assessment, and occasionally exit tickets, as well. Some of these
to keep track of questions are focused on recall, but most of them require higher order thinking
change? (4-6 and use of evidence to back up a claim. I can use these as evidence to see how
sentences) they improve on the skills of critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning. I
can also use their DBQ essays as evidence of how they understand and respond
to essential questions of history and use evidence to back up their response.
Video: Writer’s workshop to analyze the rubric together as a form of teacher
feedback on student work

Baseline data: Analysis

What do you think Based on earlier analysis of Questions of the Day and DBQ essays, there is a
the data currently wide array of student willingness and ability to engage in higher order thinking
says? (2-3 and Document Based Questions. Many students fall within the “Developing”
sentences) category for at least one of the key skills associated with higher order thinking
and evidence-based reasoning. Some of these key skills include: creating a
thesis statement, creating sub-theses, using adequate evidence to address the
claim, adequate analysis as to how the evidence connects to the claim, and
including an adequate counterclaim.

Use formats for lesson or unit planning that work for you to structure your responses in the
next section.

Instructional Plan
Provide the steps On the first day of the unit, I will introduce the compelling and first supporting
for implementing question. The other two supporting questions will be introduced as we move
your strategy. throughout the unit. In this case, I will specifically zero in on my focus classes
(approximately 1 of World History. This strategy will be implemented over the course of a unit,
page) so I will skip from lesson to lesson to get to the final DBQ lesson, which took
place over the course of four days.
1. Introduce and discuss the compelling question: Is imperialism ever
justified? Then, introduce and discuss the first supporting question:
How did nation-states develop in both western and non-western
contexts during the 19th century? Important terms, such as imperialism
 and nation-state, will be defined during this time.
2. After completing in-class activities that address the first supporting
question, we will move on to the second and third supporting questions.
Throughout these days, students answer Questions of the Day that
encourage higher order thinking and evidence-based reasoning, some
of which I will use as evidence of progression throughout the semester.
3. The second and third supporting questions are as follows: What were
the social, political, economic, and cultural factors that led to the rise of
imperialism by western nations? How did imperialism and subsequent
colonization affect colonized people?
4. After the introduction of the second supporting question, students will
complete their DBQ. That process goes as follows:
a. Hook and Background Essay: Students read through a series of
scenarios of why European nations imperialized other parts of
the world. With a partner, they will determine if imperialism is
justified in that case. Then, they read the background essay and
pull out important details to use in their introduction.
b. Understanding the historical question and pre-bucketing: At
this point, we will analyze the historical question that students
will answer in their DBQs: What was the driving force behind
European imperialism in Africa? Students will then brainstorm
categories that they could use as topic sentences in their essay,
for example economic reasons, cultural reasons, etc.
c. Document Analysis and Bucketing: Students will analyze the
documents to determine which of the potential reasons they can
make the strongest argument with.
d. Creating an outline and final draft: Students will create an
outline where they have to identify the key features of their
body paragraphs: argument, evidence, explanation, and
analysis. Using this outline, they will create a final product of a
formal argumentative essay.
e. Peer-editing: Using my rubric for an argumentative essay,
students will peer-edit each others’ papers, giving them an
opportunity to become more familiar with the rubric and
examples of proficient writing.
f. Submission of a final draft: Students will use their peer’s
feedback to make adjustments to their paper to submit for final
feedback from myself, again using the rubric that I have
created for argumentative writing.
5. Once we have completed this process, I will adapt the DBQ process
that we use to address any struggles students had throughout.

Classroom Environment Plan

Provide the steps While implementing Question of the Day and DBQ, I will be sure to be clear
for preparing about my purpose for each of these learning activities. Fortunately, these are
students for the not completely abstract ideas for my students; there are other teachers in our
new norms and/or department who use these and similar practices. However, I’d like to implement
routines in your them more intentionally and purposefully, so that students don’t just create a
strategy. final product that demonstrates their content knowledge, but actually slow
(approximately 1 down to practice the skills required for the task. This will require giving
page) students more time than they are used to complete these tasks, especially the
essay, and they might question that decision. I will have to be ready with my
rationale to communicate clearly with students, and will also have to model for
students how to complete these tasks differently according to my expectations.

Data Collection Due Date

Specify the date N/A - I did not submit my data in advance.
you will submit
your analyzed
data. Dates
outside the range
of March 1-10
require instructor
pre-approval.
Part 3: Evidence
Rubric data
Question of the Day: Three evidence-based question checks throughout the data collection
period, determined Advanced, Proficient, Developing, or Beginning based on the argumentative
writing rubric; Document Based Question (DBQ): One evidence-based five paragraph essay
that required textual evidence and skills that required higher order thinking.

Table 1: Periodic Question of the Day Check (Number of Students at each Level)
QOD Checks Advanced Proficient Developing Beginning Missing

Check #1
1 5 15 10 10
(1/30/20)

Check #2
3 12 12 11 3
(2/4/20)

Check #3
5 9 11 9 6
(3/3/20)

Table 2: Breakdown of Proficiency in Higher Order Thinking Tasks for the Document Based
Question (DBQ) (Number of Students at each Level, of total students)

Task, Identified on the Advanced/Proficient Developing/Beginning

Rubric

Creating a Claim or Thesis 27 12

Creating a
19 20
Counterargument

Use of Relevant Evidence 31 8

Explanation of the Source

24 15
or Evidence

Analysis of the Source of

11 28
Evidence

Table 3: Document Based Question (DBQ) Overall Essay Results (Number of Students at each
Level), Based on the Rubric, for 3rd Hour
 Students Advanced/Proficient Developing/Beginning

Student 1 x

Student 2 x

Student 3 x

Student 4 x

Student 5 x

Student 6 x

Student 7 x

Student 8 x

Student 9 x

Student 10 x

Student 11 x

Student 12 x

Student 13 x

Student 14 x

Student 15 x

Student 16 x

Student 17 x

Student 18 x

Student 19 x

Table 3: Document Based Question (DBQ) Overall Essay Results (Number of Students at each
Level), Based on the Rubric, for 5th Hour
Student Advanced/Proficient Developing/Beginning

Student 1 x

Student 2 x

Student 3 x

Student 4 x
Student 5 x

Student 6 x

Student 7 x

Student 8 x

Student 9 x

Student 10 x

Student 11 x

Student 12 x

Student 13 x

Student 14 x

Student 15 x

Student 16 x

Student 17 x

Student 18 x

Student 19 x

Student 20 x

*Rubric used to assess both the Question of the Day responses and the DBQ Essay may be
found at the following link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yr6YFWK3Qw8Fu0F880BIP7z67RLX4TFCs759NhlWUQ
Q/edit?usp=sharing

Part 4: Conclusion and Reflection

Intended Claim
Copy the claim you Using compelling and supporting questions will give students purpose for the
had hoped to make content we are studying. It will also help them to identify how documents we
(from Part 2). analyze (which are sources of evidence) can be used to answer those broad and
enduring questions. By the end, my hope is that they will be better engaged and
more willing/able to participate in activities that require higher order thinking
and evidence-based reasoning.

Evidence for Claim

What changes I attempted to use compelling and supporting questions in all of my classes this
actually occurred? semester, but in this report, I will focus on data from my 3rd and 5th hour
What changes can World History classes. Overall, there was slight improvement over the course
you demonstrate of the data collection period as to the proficiency of the higher order thinking
with data? (1 and evidence-based reasoning that students participated in during Question of
longer paragraph, the Day and Document Based Questions. Although I was unable to record
approximately 6-10 itemized data (student-by-student - this will be addressed in the limitations) that
sentences). You shows individual student growth, there is a classwide trend of increased levels
may also include of proficiency of higher order thinking and using textual evidence to support an
up to 1 page of argument. However, though the class data overall shows improvement, many
tables separately, if individual students did not experience significant growth in these important
needed. skills over the course of the data collection period. This tells me that in the
future, I need to focus more on 1) breaking down my expectations for students
using the rubric I evaluate them with and 2) modeling higher order thinking and
writing skills for students as we go. Because these skills are challenging for
students to reach levels of proficiency, I wish I would have implemented more
activities where I show students how I might answer a complex thinking
question or analyze a document relative to the topic of imperialism.

Interpretive Cautions
What are the There were several important limitations of my data. Although I intended to
limitations of these collect more video, I did not have a strong enough vision at the beginning of the
data? (1-2 project as to what I would record and what it would be used for. In the end, I
paragraphs of only recorded one video of myself completing a writer’s workshop with my
approximately 4-5 students. Although this video, in some ways, displays me modeling how I
sentences each) would interpret our essay rubric as well as evaluations of varying levels of
student work, it doesn’t necessarily show growth or development of my
students over time. To address this limit, I could have done a writer’s workshop
at both the beginning and end of our DBQ process to assess student growth.

Probably the most significant limitation is the amount of data that I collected. I
had intended to do an itemized (student-by-student and criterion-by-criterion)
table for both Question of the Day and the Document Based Question rubric
scores. However, I realized that this would be the most effective analysis after
schools had closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So, these documents
remained with students, and I had to use less specific gradebook data and my
own memory to put together these tables. This severely limited my ability to
assess individual student growth over the course of my action plan as well as
my ability to focus in on the criteria that display higher order thinking and the
ability to complete evidence based reasoning, such as having a thesis and
effective counterargument. Also, the data would be much more convincing if I
was able to complete two full DBQ processes with my students so as to assess
their growth over time. However, time constraints did not allow for this, as
DBQ essays are very detailed.

Final Claim
Do these data Because I was unable to collect itemized data, I’m not able to claim that my
convince you that work with compelling and supporting questions, Question of the Day, and
your initial claim Document Based Questions led to better student engagement, increased levels
was correct and of higher order thinking, or ability to create a reasoned argument using textual
supported in this evidence. I do believe that even small exposures to new types of thinking and
case? (1 skills is significant for students to move from more content-based social studies
paragraph of 4-5 to skills-based, but I cannot fully support my initial claims with the evidence I
sentences) have. In all, there are some major changes I would have made to this
instructional and data collection model in order to increase the probability and
proof of student growth. These changes will be addressed in the Reflection,
below.

Reflection
Explain how these I do still think my action plan includes many effective aspects, but I would
results will inform make some changes to their implementation. Firstly, though I will continue to
your future use compelling and supporting questions to structure my units, I would like to
practice. (1-2 implement them in new ways. Though supplying students with the questions is
paragraphs of 4-5 a way to start the year (so that I can model how to think about social studies
sentences) content more richly and complexly), I’d eventually like to trend toward students
brainstorming these on their own. Then, they could chart their own path of
study, as long as they can prove that they’ve met the unit learning targets. This
would demonstrate tremendous ability to think critically.

As far as the action plan that I have in place here, there are some smaller
changes I could make that would also help me make a more definite conclusion
of my claim. I would focus more on the baseline data, not just what students
produced as a result of my efforts. For example, with more time, I could assess
two of my students’ essays to chart for growth. That way, I wouldn’t have to
rely on two different types of assessment measures for comparisons of student
thinking. Being able to compare samples of student writing before and after
implementing my strategy would be the best way to make a claim about student
growth. Additionally, I think it would be effective to increase students’ self-
reflection, as this demonstrates the ability to think critically. To self-assess,
students have to understand not only the content at hand, but also how their
final product - Question of the Day, essay, etc. - demonstrates mastery of that
content and skill. So, another source of data for me could be a self-assessment
that I create for students to track their thinking and their own progress. This
would build on the writer’s workshops that I completed with students - instead
of evaluating the quality of other’s work as it relates to the rubric, they could
also evaluate their own.