Headline Success

HEADLINES 

Easy way to assess understandings based on an essential question

This is the second year working with the thinking strategy “Headline”. I have always felt that this was a great way to make meaningful connections to the lessons in our classroom. Unfortunately in the past my students haven’t always created headlines that synthesized the” Big Idea” of our lesson. The headlines felt flat or filled with misconceptions, which is not always a bad things, but not what I was hoping for. This particular time I would say I loved the “Headline” thinking routine because it was easy for the students and at the same time showed me that they had made meaningful connections. (Yahoo!) Goes to show me, “practice makes perfect”. I love that this strategy documents group thinking and gives everyone an opportunity to summarize and synthesis their learning in a cooperative format. I believe learning can be more powerful when you have the support of your classmates.

What were we leaning:

In this particular lesson we were learning about the first three English settlements in North America

Roanoke, Jamestown, & Plymouth.  During and after our social studies lessons students analyzed these three settlements to show why settlers came and the hardships they endured.

Setting the stage for this thinking activity:

As usual I begin this thinking activity by using mentor text (newspaper headlines) to remind students what headlines looked like. The difference was this time I used headlines from the local paper, Front Porch, those headlines read: “Home Business Turns Kids on to Sewing” & “Meet the Kids: Fifth Graders Explain Homelessness”

 I've used mentor text like the above before, but with less success. I believe that because they had previous experience in conjunction with these headlines students were activating and applying their schema more effectively and we were more successful in the end.

 Next Steps:

Students were given the directions to write three or more headlines that captures the main ideas of one of the three New England settlements. I reminded students that headlines are not written in complete sentences, but are short in order to capture the Big Idea of their learning. I was trying to find out what they’ve come to understand about early settlements. Essential Question: "How did the challenges that the first English colonies face determine their success or failures?"

We did put a little twist on this activity that you won't find in the textbook. As always I give everyone an opportunity to share their headlines and ask them to give reasons behind their headlines. This time I asked each group to send the secretary who recorded their thinking to meet with me as a group. I asked the secretary to look at the headline their group chose as their best. I then told them the headline couldn’t have the name of the settlement present. At first they were not happy with taking the name off, but by removing the name we really were able to see where they focused their thinking.  Once we had our new headline we wrote them on a sentence strips. Taking these headlines back to the classroom everyone began to analyze the headlines together. This allowed us to see other perspectives and see the content in a new way they might have not thought about. Our final step was to try and categorize headlines according to the three English settlements. Student's shared supporting evidence for choosing that settlement. This is where the magic happened for me. Adding this twist to our "headline"  activity allowed me to get a glimpse into how students were or were not connecting to ideas.  I was not disappointed with the rich discussion students have been having about their thinking.

Future plans for this activity:

I will keep the above headlines handy so that we can revisit them during our next lessons on the 13 New England colonies. My hope is that students will transfer their learning from this activity to the next.

I love headlines as a formative assessment tool. I should start using it as a pre-assessment tool  so I can quickly see what my students are coming to the lesson with and who needs some more scaffolding to get there.

I’m thinking that I could use headlines with just about anything. I might try having students write a headline about their weekend, how class went for the day, after an assembly, or even to sum up a conversation in class. Headlines are a quick way to checking in on students synthesis.