Last month on twitter I spotted this post and knew I could make use of this idea.
Inspired by @activehistory and @russeltarr – source overlay in action in this morning’s #opendoorclassroom pic.twitter.com/cosRgdrxX5 — Q3 Teach & Learn (@Q3TeachLearn) January 22, 2015
I responded to the tweet and they very kindly sent me a copy of their source analysis overlay along with the original idea by @russelltarr aka @activehistory. I immediately made my own version following the inspiration.
It’s quite simple to create the overlay, you just cut out the ‘white’ area of your printed sheets and laminate or pop them into a plastic wallet like I did.
I’ve used the idea twice so far. First time I used it was with year 8 to help them to interpret primary and secondary sources; initially they used it to make sense of the source and then they started to consider how useful the source had been to their enquiry about farming and land use change in Kent. The discussion and interpretation was interesting to hear. Although I think this group need a lesson on the difference between wine and beer 😉
They’ll be using this approach again this week, but I’ve changed the questions a bit to encourage them to make interpretations of the sources they are looking at rather than assess the usefulness of the source.
The second time I used it with year 11 in their study of Rosa Park’s actions on December 1st 1955 and the resulting Montgomery bus boycott. The task encouraged them to interpret and assess the usefulness of the sources. Something I’ve had to spend a lot of time on since taking over the department. They said they felt ‘wrong’ writing on the tables which really seemed to engage them, it’s not often that I have such a quiet classroom with this class. The next lesson they wrote an extended piece of writing using success criteria, which clearly demonstrated their progress from this lesson.
You can download my templates by clicking on the images or download them here.
If you use them share the results with me on twitter and I’m sure @activehistory would be keen to them as well.
Hope it’s another useful idea.
