Step Inside

Connect: As we've been studying different time periods of Colorado history the kids have been asked to synthesize all of their learning and thinking around the time period and show off their understanding of the content. For both our Native American and trapper, trader, & explorer units students have taken their understandings from a variety of sources to write from the perspective of someone who lived at that time. My goal is for them to use fact to create a sensory image in the readers' minds. The reader should feel like they are with the character.

Extend: This is one of the thinking routines that I can honestly say I'm using as a routine. Throughout our Colorado study and the remainder of the year we are focusing on synthesis as a tool for understanding. So in my conferring (more with fourth than third) I've been asking students to share how they are synthesizing in order to complete their pieces. I know it's still at a surface level, but it's been great to talk through our strategy study in writing as well as reading.

Challenge: When completing our initial 'Step Inside' some kids had an easier time than others writing a 'story' per say. My wonderful teammate (Sarah) had made a graphic organizer containing prompting questions from the Making Thinking Visible text. Many of our third grade students wrote from a perspective of a Native American, but they simply listed answers to the prompting questions. I truly wanted them create a 'snapshot' or small moment of the person's life. We're currently in the second round of these pieces narrating the lives of either a trapper, trader, or explorer traveling through Colorado. With these pieces I decided to use our writer's notebooks instead of the graphic organizer-focusing more on the sensory images. So far I see less list like facts and touching stories.

Step Inside

Step Inside

What we did:  As literacy teachers, the shift to Common Core State Standards puts more emphasis on using increasingly complex text and academic/content vocabulary.  At Roberts, although we platoon content, we are planning our non-fiction unit around a social study of Colorado History.  This allows for meaningful collaboration with our teammates and deeper understanding for students.  For two months, students read difficult text about the Puebloans, Native Americans, Explorers, Miners, Cowboys, Farmers, and current people in Colorado. They annotated text as they made sense of primary and secondary sources.  As a mini-closure to synthesize each learning, students did the Step Inside routine.  This provided the way to take all the facts, find the perspective of a person in history, empathize with their story, decide upon the most important story to tell, and describe a snapshot in their life using sensory details and figurative language.

Connect:  This routine reminds me of the RAFT (role, audience, format, topic) exercise for students.   I have always loved the synthesis and empathy of that activity. I like to stop at intervals during a study to make meaning, and have found Step Inside to be a great  formative assessment. 

Extend:  My ideas have definitely broadened since I first began this routine with my students. At our professional learning community last week, I was given the opportunity to share the work of Step Inside with my colleagues.  One of the teachers at the table, Annie, shared the way she used it with first graders. Her students created masks to help them understand the perspective of characters in a story.  I believe that drama and art are a natural way to connect with all types of learners and make perspective meaningful! 

Challenge: I am planning to take this to the next level with the Circle of Viewpoints from Making Thinking Visible.  What better way to take all the perspectives to the table and share multiple viewpoints?!

Step Inside

Jamie and I used this routine called, "Step Inside" as a culminating activity following the kids' study of Native Americans.  We wanted them to produce a piece of writing, but wanted it to be fairly straight forward because we are still only part way through our study of Colorado History.  This was an excellent choice that Sarah Gasamis had used with her students.

What I did:  Prior to this routine, students had done the routine, "I used to think, Now I think" to tap into their prior knowledge.  They explored pictures of Native American culture and did a "See, Think, Wonder."  And they studied images and text on a website called Doing History and took notes on what they read.  Now, students were asked to think like they were Native American.   They wrote, "I am" and could make up their own Native American Name.  They indicated where they lived, then answered the following prompts:

• What do I see, observe, notice?
• What do I know, understand, hold true or believe?
• What do I care deeply about?
• What do I wonder or question?

They wrote in the form of a narrative and were given a checklist of what good writing should look like.  They could add an illustration when their writing was complete.

Connect:  I would connect this to other failed attempts to have students meaningfully reflect on their learning in writing.  Something about this routine worked for kids.  I was so impressed with the depth of students' writing.  Students wrote very touching work that indicated that their research helped them to come to a better understanding of Native Americans in Colorado.  One of the topics that students had no prior knowledge about was reservations.  After doing the research, many students chose to write about life on the reservation.  Their writing indicated that they had a much better understanding of what it must have been like for a Native American to be forced to move on to a reservation.

Extend:   I am anxious to use this routine again, and in other contexts.  I think that if we continue to use this routine for other aspects of Colorado History, it could be put together as a larger project to show students' understanding of the whole unit.  Our plan is to have students do a research project on a person, place or event in Colorado.  I could see a student taking this writing and expanding it into a research project on Native American communities, reservation life, or food, clothing and shelter.

Challenge:  I think the challenge is always how to keep this routine meaningful.  I agree that it is important to make these into routines so that the understanding can go deeper, but I think the challenge is that students will often cruise through a routine like this one because they perceive that it is too easy, or they will do similar work that they did previously, or they simply get bored with it.

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