Author Archives: Joan Lange

Finding Treasures in Our Communities

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A previous AISL article, “Exploring Our National Treasures,” highlighted the rich learning experiences that can be accessed through our national museums. This article will describe a successful collaboration that grew from relationships with local organizations in Houston, Texas. As a member of the AISL organization, I value the many ways that independent school librarians across the United States and Canada network to provide ideas and best practices for promoting literacy. But there is a special connection that forms within our local librarian communities. The Houston Area Independent Schools Library Network (HAISLN) brings together librarians who share ideas as well as serve on committees to recommend book titles for the HAISLN Recommended Reading Lists. In January, HAISLN organized an opportunity to build collaborations through a meeting held at the Holocaust Museum Houston (HMH). Librarians were encouraged to bring a teacher from their school, and together they toured the museum and learned about the museum’s educational outreach programs.

My school’s 7th grade ELA teacher, Dr. Matthew Panozzo, joined me for this HMH presentation, and we were impressed by the Digital Curriculum Trunks. HMH loans these trunks to schools so that students can read a variety of books about the Holocaust experience, and curricular resources are provided to deepen students’ understanding. As Dr. Panozzo and I toured the HMH museum, we excitedly discussed the possibility of broadening students’ understanding and empathy. The 7th graders had been exploring themes of social justice, and a class trip to HMH was planned in support of reading Elie Wiesel’s book Night. What if students read an additional book presenting the Holocaust experience and students were challenged to write a persuasive letter to an authentic audience, such as the HMH museum? With the identified audience in mind, students would propose the inclusion of their chosen book for the Digital Curriculum Trunks through 1) a brief book summary; 2) personal connections to the book; and 3) suggested classroom extension activities. This letter-writing component would provide a meaningful goal for the students’ independent reading and deepen student engagement.

Book Tasting
Students sampled possible fiction and nonfiction titles in a “book tasting,” and they submitted a google form of their top three books along with a brief explanation of their interest in the book titles. Through our school library’s print and ebook collection, most students were matched with book titles that presented a variety of voices and experiences of the Holocaust–without requiring students to purchase their own copies. This drove home the point to students that our school was privileged to have such wonderful resources–the HMH Digital Curriculum Trunks provide resources to schools that need book resources or that wish to expand their own classroom library reading materials.

Letter Writing
Here is a sample letter for the book The Light in Hidden Places that was shared with students.
The students’ letters identified a variety of themes and personal connections. Highlighted below are a few of the students’ connections and suggested extension activities.

The Light in Hidden Places by Sharon Cameron
Themes: Strengths of sisterhood and friendship.
Personal Connection: Fear–”breaking out in a sweat” while reading tense scenes.
Extension Activity: Draw an apartment space to hide Jews and note necessities, such as
access to food, water, sanitation, etc.

Alias Anna by Greg Dawson and Susan Hood
Theme: Importance of family and staying true to oneself and one’s passions (talent for music).
Personal Connection: Historical story takes place in Ukraine, and it reminds one of current struggles and conflicts in Ukraine.
Extension Activity: Create own alias and personal motivation (example: the character Zhanna took as her alias the name “Anna” and she was motivated to stay “Alive.”) Create a poster to visualize your alias and motivation. 

Resistance by Jennifer Nielsen
Theme: Courage, but also “feelings of guilt that come with saving yourself instead of others, even if it is the logical and safe thing to do.”
Personal Connection: Teenage point of view of the main character seemed authentic–conflicting emotions of difficult relationships and missing a family member or friend.
Extension Activity: Cast the fictional characters in the book and describe why a particular actor or actress would best convey the book character.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Theme: Personal loss, importance of building “new family” and friend relationships.
Personal Connection: Voice of the narrator, Death, helps the reader to better visualize and empathize with the characters and conflicts.
Extension Activity: What Would You Do? Step into one of the scenes of conflict in the book and discuss how you might have intervened or reacted to Nazi persecutions of the Jews.

Final Reflections
Dr. Panozzo shared the following reflection about the value of this independent reading and persuasive letter-writing project:

When it comes to teaching reading, it is important to provide students with multiple entry-points to learn about a topic. Visiting Holocaust Museum Houston, reading the class novel Night, and students selecting their own books provided various opportunities for students to engage with the horrors of the Holocaust. But it wasn’t just about learning of the devastation; it was about finding their role in always remembering to never forget. This project inspired a sense of  hope as they read about the different ways families and friends looked after each other. This project helped us see the injustices of our world through a lens of the past, offering clarity in uncertain and unsettling times. Lastly, this project allowed students to take up the baton of teaching our rich history to others.

This collaborative project was an experience of serendipity; we discovered “treasures” in our own community. We are thankful to the HAISLN organization that made possible our visit with HMH, and we are grateful for the HMH program, the Digital Curriculum Trunks that promote understanding of the Holocaust. And, we are thankful to our students who embraced this opportunity to connect with the important themes of justice.

An Ode to AI

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The poetic muse stirred this response to recent discussions of ChatGPT and AI. Though the thoughtful conversation will continue on the merits and cautions involved in using ChatGPT in schools, here is just one perspective. This poem is dedicated to all teachers who encourage student voice and choice.

Launch Learning for Student Engagement

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Engaging student learning is one of the most important aspects of planning experiences that will “stick” with students and promote independent learning. Creating an effective launch into a topic or project is one way to jumpstart students’ own curiosity, questioning, and exploration. This libguide of resources assembles some of the methods that have proven successful in librarian collaborations with teachers and students. These recommendations for launches include resources for the following:

  • Storytelling and poetry to develop student voice
  • Novel Engineering to promote problem solving
  • Videos to spark curiosity
  • Discussion activities for delving deep into questioning
  • Primary sources to immerse students in close looking and critical thinking
  • Visible Thinking routines for building perspectives and empathy

    Enjoy exploring!

Designing a New Library Web Page

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A targeted goal for our library this school year was to create a fresh look for our main library web page and to streamline navigation and functionality for our users. The process aligned well with Design Thinking, so I  created an infographic to sum up the process. Many thanks to AISL librarians who shared insights and links to their “public facing” library web pages. These library web pages provided great inspiration for the brainstorming phase of the process. I am also grateful for the AOS library team, faculty peers, and students that provided feedback for the rough prototypes. Our school communication department and the consulting staff at Springshare streamlined the process for this updated library webpage. View the new AOS library webpage.

Putting Students at the Center of Learning: Student Blogs

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“If students do not develop a valuable relationship to the things they study in school,
their relationship with their teacher will not have accomplished its full purpose.
This challenges (teachers) to resist the desire to be the center of the story….”
Doug Lemov in Teach Like a Champion 3.0 (Jossey-Bass, 2021, pp. 103-104)

How do you measure student success as a learner? The AASL Standards for Learners echo Doug Lemov’s comments: “Put the learner at the center, focus on growth…and enable learner voice, choice, and agency” (AASL, National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries. ALA, 2018, p. 124). Educators provide a variety of learning experiences that offer opportunities for student inquiry, exploration, and growth as a communicator; however, student blogs have the potential to engage students with personal choice, critical and creative thinking, and decision-making skills through the creation and sharing of digital content for an authentic audience. In addition, student blogs offer librarians exciting ways to guide students in developing skills as ethical communicators and digital citizens.

Video Bloggers Characters Flat Set. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 2 Nov 2020.
quest.eb.com/search/186_3417278/1/186_3417278/cite. Accessed 28 Jul 2022.

Several years ago I challenged sixth graders to create their own mock-up of a blog. In this article I will share some details from that early exploration with student blogs, and then I will share additional ideas on how to expand the project, inspired by a summer conference presentation by educator Allyson Spires, Principia Middle School.

The Martha Payne Story and Digital Citizenship
Sixth graders were introduced to blogs through the story of nine-year-old blogger, Martha Payne, and her blog Never Seconds. This news show video and Guardian article provided the background story of Martha Payne’s blog. Students viewed the global response to Martha’s blog on this blog page, which shows photos of school lunches shared by students in Japan, Israel, Brazil, Spain, and Chicago. As students viewed the video and read the article, they were asked to think about the following:

  • How Martha identified her passion (Love for journalism and interest in writing about
    school lunches. She planned to post photos of her daily lunches and rate them.)
  • How Martha’s father helped her to ethically set up the blog (Discussed idea with the
    school for their permission before setting up the blog.)
  • How Martha safely set up the blog (Father set up the blog and she used the name VEG to protect her identity.)
  • How Martha reacted to public response (Excited response from community, even globally, as other students emailed Martha photos of their school lunches. Later, Martha’s school demanded that she shut down her blog because of critical reaction to the quality of the school lunches. After a strong reaction from the community in Martha’s defense, the school backed down and allowed Martha to continue her blog.)
  • How Martha used her “brand”–the popularity of her blog (Over 10 million “hits” to her blog website. Martha set up a “JustGiving” page for Mary’s Meals–a kitchen to serve free breakfast to students in Malawi. Donations raised £131,666.79.)

After reflecting on the success of Martha Payne’s blog and the charitable donations to provide nutritious meals to children, students also viewed the STEM Kids Rock website. These teen articles describe how members promote science discovery and outreach to the community. The mission of STEM Kids Rock: “We’re inspiring the next generation of STEM leaders through our Free Mobile Science Centre that is powered by kids.”

Creating Your Own Brand
Both Martha Payne and the teens of STEM Kids Rock created a memorable brand for themselves by following their passions and expanding outward in efforts to benefit others. For the blog project, students were asked to consider the following: What could be your brand? What passion could you share to engage the interest of an audience? Using Google Slides, students were challenged to create their own mock-up of a blog. (See slides for a template and a sample “Book Ends” blog–note that links are not active in this sample template mock-up.) The resulting student blogs reflected an array of interests: food recipes, sports highlights, car models, pet tips, superhero movie reviews (including an article “Most Anticipated Sequels that Never Came Out”), and art blogs (featuring an article “There’s No Such Thing as Too Much Art!”). These sixth grade students commented that creating a blog was one of their favorite projects. Because of a short time-frame (four class periods) for the project, a community outreach aspect of the blogs was not explored.

Re-Imagining Student Blogs: Choice and Voice
This summer I attended the STLinSTL summer conference, and a presentation by Allyson Spires, “Choice and Voice,” reawakened my interest in student blogs. Allyson Spires, a language arts teacher at Principia Middle School, developed a blog unit over a five-week period. She began the unit by challenging students to think about their knowledge and passion: What are your interests outside of the classroom? How would you share those with others? Students used Wix templates (wix.com) to create their blogs, and every aspect of the site was password protected (sites were shared through a link with the teacher and students could also choose to share the link with family and friends). Allyson Spires also used this Blog Evaluation so that peers could appraise the blogs and offer helpful comments for the bloggers. Students also considered how a blog could be a vehicle to spur positive action. View the Teen Activist resource list compiled by Allyson Spires (note that some titles are appropriate for high school readers).

Student Blogs: Next Steps
This Fall I plan to revive the student blog project with a seventh grade Creative Writing class. If possible, students will use Google Sites to create a private website for their blog and share the link with the teacher as well as family (if they wish). Students will have their choice of creating a blog that features an Indelible Moment or a blog that explores a Personal Passion. This criteria will be used to evaluate student blogs.  Beyond the creation of these blogs, students might choose to share their Indelible Moment or Passion article with the school community during their Language Arts class or during our weekly assemblies (each seventh and eighth grade student develops a personal essay that is shared during the assembly).

Final Thoughts on Blogs: Four Pitfalls to Avoid 

  1. Whose Blog is This? Student agency should drive the blog (not teacher-driven).
  2. Just Another Wiki? The blog should not be an info dump; instead, the blog reflects critical thinking and careful curation; the discussion of ideas shows new connections. 
  3. It’s All About Me? Blogs should illustrate (with a touch of humility) what has surprised the writer in the learning process AND what still needs to be explored or learned (new questions that arise). How has this experience or passion affected your life, your attitudes, and how have you grown as a learner? 
  4. You Said What? The blogger should be open to a lively exchange of ideas and allow the conversation to clarify ideas and enlarge perspectives. Remember that some commenters may criticize, but be thoughtful in your own responses. Dialog with ideas, don’t attack the person.

The goal of this re-envisioned blog project is to immerse students in a thoughtful use of digital tools to communicate to a wider audience. Empowering student choice and voice builds skills that will help students to become critical thinkers, creative problem solvers, engaging writers, and respectful, ethical communicators. And who knows, for some bloggers this experience may be the beginning of positive action in the community.

For further reading and viewing:
Melly, Christina. “Can We Blog about This? Amplifying Student Voice in Secondary
Language Arts.” English Journal, vol. 107, no. 3, 2018. Accessed 25 July 2022.

“Oversharing and Your Digital Footprint.” Common Sense Education,
commonsense.org/education/videos/teen-voices-oversharing-and-your-digital-footprint.
Accessed 25 July 2022.

“Profiles of Generation M2.” YouTube, uploaded by Kaiser Family Foundation,
youtu.be/rUOOAbTu07A. Accessed 25 July 2022.

“What’s in Your Digital Footprint.” YouTube, uploaded by Common Sense Education,
youtu.be/4P_gj3oRn8s. Accessed 25 July 2022.

Visually Thinking with Sketchnotes

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Leonardo da Vinci is noted for many accomplishments in the fields of art, science, and invention, but he was also a master in the art of sketching. His notebooks filled with drawings and observations about the world around him reveal a mind that was insatiably curious and adept at making connections. This image from one of his notebooks exemplifies how his mind leapt from one observation to another. The flowing drapery of the pictured old man is mirrored in similar energetic linework on the facing page that depicts swirling water.

Leonardo. Whirlpool and Old Man. Britannica ImageQuest, Encyclopædia Britannica, 25 May 2016.
quest.eb.com/search/109_225206/1/109_225206/cite. Accessed 20 Jun 2022.

Though visually thinking with sketches is nothing new, educators and businesses have been exploring the merits of Sketchnotes as a way to communicate ideas in a graphical format. Sketchnotes can take a variety of forms, from simple infographics, to stick figures, to complex representations of processes (such as cell division).  A book by Tanny McGregor, Ink and Ideas: Sketchnotes for Engagement, Comprehension and Thinking (Heinemann, 2019) provides several examples of introducing Sketchnotes in the classroom and using this technique to spark student thinking. I took a dive into Sketchnotes after reading Ink and Ideas, and the following examples and reflections show how Sketchnotes can be used to enhance discussions of books. 

Book: The Magnolia Sword by Sherry Thomas

Reflection:
The first two chapters of The Magnolia Sword by Sherry Thomas are a master class in writing: introducing compelling characters, setting up conflict, and suggesting a trajectory (quest) that will set these characters on a future collision course. 

Specific details from the chapters were first annotated in a journal and certain words circled that would be emphasized in the Sketchnote (such as “Fated to Clash”). As I sketched in pencil the preparatory drawing, I decided to group textual quotes by the two characters, shown separated in the sketch by the Great Wall of China (denoting the location of the story). The textual quotes highlighted in the sketch show the fierce martial arts skill of each adversary while also suggesting their mutual attraction to each other (Mulan faces her opponent with both trepidation and thrill while Yuan Kai muses that if circumstances had been different, they might have met as friends). Transferring my journal annotations into this graphical format helped me to compare these two characters while also hinting at future conflicts (Mulan’s father bent on pursuing this feud and the looming threat of the Rouran Invaders).

Book: Jennifer Chan is Not Alone by Tae Keller

Reflection:
I read Tae Keller’s book as an ebook, so my journaling notes were added in the notes section of the ebook. I discovered that these reflection notes were not as detailed as when I read a print copy and took pen and paper notes.

For my Sketchnotes design, I chose a basic template so that I could plot story events  highlighting major moments in the book. I represented events around a quote by the main character, Jennifer Chan: “We pull each other close, we push each other away.” The pictured events show this tension, some frames denoting hurtful actions and some frames denoting moments of healing.

Though plotting story events is a helpful exercise, this type of Sketchnote would need to be supported by questioning to reveal the richness of the message of this story and the dynamics of the the characters’ grappling with the worries, pain, and hopes. Question prompts might include Which character would you befriend? or, Which characters’ actions were hurtful and how would you respond to that character? 

Creating these Sketchnotes was a fun exercise in making visual the ideas that surfaced as I read these books. The process of reflecting on the sketches helped to clarify connections and prompt questioning for book discussions. Though these Sketchnote examples are not Leonardo masterpieces, this process was a fun and thought-provoking experience. I invite you to take pen and paper and try your hand at Sketchnotes.

Earth Day and Art Advocacy

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“If you pitch your rubbish into a rosebush,

the roses will notice it.”                

(Naomi Shihab Nye, Cast Away: Poems for Our Times)

Earth Day was first established in 1970 as a way to develop awareness and promote action to protect our environment. This Earth Day, April 22, enhance student investigations into environmental issues by combining poetry and art. The following resources, though not a comprehensive list, may inspire ideas to develop with your students.

Poetry
Cast Away: Poems for Our Times by Naomi Shihab Nye
These poems can spark interesting class discussions about things (and people) that we thoughtlessly cast away. 
Suggestion: In these poetic musings on discarded trash, how does trash suggest something about the person who threw it away? How do these poems suggest ways to change attitudes about what we cast away? Challenge students to collect several items of trash in a neighborhood walk and use these discarded items to create their own trash poems.

Call Us What We Carry by Amanda Gorman
Amanda Gorman uses a variety of poetic forms in this evocative collection of poems. Several of the poems are inspired by a scrap collection of news articles, diaries, and letters; she transforms these texts into found poetry.
Suggestion: Challenge students to use a scrap of written text from a newspaper article, diary, or letter to create their own black-out poem.

Poetry.org has assembled a list of Earth Day Poems.
Suggestion: In the poem by Gary Soto, “Earth Day on the Bay,” how does Soto use descriptive details to suggest the history of the shoe found on the beach? How does Soto suggest a more serious reflection on the cyclical nature of this problem of litter?

Fiction
The Seventh Most Important Thing by Shelley Pearsall
When a thoughtless act by a troubled 13-year-old boy earns him community service time with a “junk man,” the boy learns a valuable lesson that helps him to deal with the death of his father.  Just like art that is made from discarded objects, the old junk collector shows the young boy that anything can be redeemed and made to shine. 
Suggestion: The folk artist James Hampton is featured in this book. View a Smithsonian video about James Hampton and his art assemblage, “The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly.” Encourage students to create their own art piece from reclaimed materials and foil. 

Nonfiction
Washed Ashore: Making Art from Ocean Plastic by Kelly Crull
Artist Angela Haseltine Pozzi creates sculptures from plastic refuse found on beaches. Her marine sea creature sculptures highlighted in this book are a stunning wake-up call about the environmental problem for our oceans and marine life.
Suggestion: Challenge students to a scavenger hunt as they look closely at the marine sculptures to identify the reclaimed plastic items.

Rock by Rock: The Fantastical Garden of Nek Chand by Jennifer Bradbury
Folk artist Nek Chand used discarded glass, broken plates, and rocks to create a secret rock garden in a forest in India to ease his loss of homeland during the Partition of India into the Dominions of India and Pakistan. 
Suggestion: Discuss with students how creating art can transform suffering (like displacement from your home) into an experience of beauty that can bring comfort to other people who view the artwork.

One Plastic Bag by Miranda Paul
This inspirational picture book describes the efforts of Isatou Ceesay to create something beautiful and useful from the discarded plastic bags in her village in Gambia. Isatou Ceesay and a group of women began a business by crocheting beautiful bags from the discarded plastic. 
Suggestion: Challenge students to use a plastic bottle and transform it into a new object that could be useful.

Smithsonian Learning Lab
Aleah Myer’s Smithsonian Learning Lab Module, Environmental Advocacy through Art, curates environmental artwork and pairs it with Visible Thinking routines to examine the artwork. Also featured are several videos of art commentaries by museum curators. The following art curator discussions may be of particular interest:

Erosion 
In this Smithsonian video, Deborah Stokes, Curator of Education at the National Museum of African Art, discusses this environmental sculpture by artist El Anatsui.

Port Henry Iron Mine
Curator Eleanor Jones Harvey discusses artist Homer Dodge Martin’s landscape painting, Port Henry Iron Mine, an iron mine used during the Civil War. The curator interprets the artist’s intention to illustrate how the earth was “scarred” by the war and to create an emotionally-charged metaphor for how lives were impacted by the Civil War.

Videos 
Washed Ashore: Art to Save the Sea

Pass it On: Turning Scraps into Soccer Balls for Village Children

Documentaries
Landfill Harmonic: A Symphony of the Human Spirit
This documentary highlights the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura. These musicians make beautiful music from instruments constructed from discarded landfill refuse.

Waste Land
This documentary will appeal to high school students, though parts of the documentary could be shown to a middle school audience. Artist Vic Muniz returns to his Brazilian homeland to enlist the help of garbage pickers to create monumental art pieces that celebrate the lives of these individuals. The murals are assemblages from trash.

Taking a Perspective with Poetry

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Helping students to connect in meaningful ways to history is an important goal of literacy programs. One approach to making connections is by taking on the perspectives of people in history. In collaborations between the library, language arts, and history departments, students’ history research was enriched by creating perspective poems. Here are a few examples.

Colonial Williamsburg Perspective Poems
In preparation for a seventh grade field trip to Colonial Williamsburg, students used videos of historic interpreters to look closely and add details and observations on a note taking template. These details were then incorporated in a perspective poem. During a writing workshop, poet and author Deborah DEEP Mouton challenged students to take on an unusual point of view for their poem. One student wrote about an enslaved person working in a print shop and pondering if words like “freedom” professed in these colonial broadsides would ever change the plight of enslaved Blacks. Another student took on the perspective of a tailor’s pattern and mused, “even if the fabric is the same, the story of the customer will be cut different ways.”

National Monuments and Perspective Poems
Poet Deborah DEEP Mouton also worked with eighth graders to develop a perspective poem reflecting emotions and points of view of a national monument. Students will be traveling to Washington, D.C., and the events surrounding monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and Arlington Cemetery provide rich historical and personal connections. Mouton used several approaches to engage students in the act of writing. Some groups were asked to distill the most important words and ideas from their poem into a six word story (such as Hemingway’s famous six word story: baby shoes for sale, never worn). See if you can guess the National Monuments for these Six Word Stories written by eighth graders:

In another writing workshop strategy, students paired up, brainstormed main ideas on an important image for their national monument, and then separated to write individually. Then, the student partners came back together to pull their best lines into a combined poem that was performed aloud for classmates. Students enjoyed the opportunity for collaboration and were surprised and pleased with their collaborative poems.

Stepping in to empathize with the perspectives of people and stepping back to evaluate the events are important steps in engaging students with history. These approaches to creating perspective poems enriched students’ understanding and provided them a creative way to communicate their insights.

*Note to readers. The original blog posting included an example from a Holocaust topic. Given the brevity of this article format, this serious topic was not presented with sufficient discussion to accurately represent the student’s work or classroom discussions surrounding the research. This article has been revised in respect for this historical event and those who suffered.

A Window into Visible Thinking

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As part of a professional development course through Harvard University, five teachers at my school collaborated to engage students in Visible Thinking. This Thinglink compiles some examples of this collaboration and highlights observations about student thinking and learning.
I hope you enjoy exploring this window into the minds of our students that showcases their thinking and deep learning experiences.

Making Connections with Virtual Museums

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Museums are fascinating places. The curation and design of a museum display has the potential to captivate viewers and engage them in looking closely, thinking critically, expanding perspectives, and building empathy. For me, an epiphany moment occurred at the Frist Art Museum in the hands-on Martin ArtQuest room. One activity contained a blank map of Gallery Rooms, a collection of art reproductions on magnets, and the invitation to “Be a Curator!” This became an intriguing exploration of ways to organize the artwork in the empty gallery rooms. Should one curate by time period, art movements, thematically, or even as a comparison/contrast of artists? How would Van Gogh’s expressionistic field of iris dialogue with the abstracted desert landscapes by Georgia O’Keefe or the thrilling iceberg and volcano landscapes romanticized by Frederic Edwin Church? A 2019 visit to the National Museum of the American Indian provoked a different type of response as I viewed an expansive wall of merchandise, posters, commercials, and movies that throughout history had “branded” indigenous peoples to sell an American product and a perspective about these people. Part of the power of this display was the opportunity for viewers to linger with the images that they felt compelling and invite them to make their own meaning.

Curation is an art in itself, calling upon skills of discerning relevancy and critical thinking, and AASL recognizes this in the Curate Standard, part of which states that “Learners add value to a collection of resources by organizing and annotating them.” This school year provided an opportunity to immerse students in curation. As part of a Civil War investigation, 7th graders are being challenged to use their research notes to create a digital presentation (a virtual museum) of primary source images, historic documents, and analysis paragraphs. Though this type of multimodal exploration could be done in GoogleSlides by linking content to slides within the slide deck, these 7th graders will use ThingLink. With Thinglink, interactive tag markers can be placed on locations in an image to allow viewers to link to additional text boxes, images, or media (audio, video). Here is one example of a ThingLink by the Smithsonian Institution:
Fort Sumter Telegram. The organization of this ThingLink invites close analysis of a single primary source document.

Virtual Museums

For our students, the goal is to simulate the experience of a museum so that viewers can explore the students’ own thinking about the Civil War. Making Thinking Visible, a book describing Harvard Project Zero’s research, offered several helpful routines to deepen students’ thinking. One thinking routine, Generate–Sort–Connect–Elaborate, delineated the type of thinking students would use in this curation of a virtual museum.

Generate
In the note-taking phase of student research, students generated several ideas as they researched questions about the Civil War.

Sort
Students used the NoodleTools note card feature and titled note cards with brief descriptions. These note cards were used in the sorting process. Students sorted main ideas and supporting ideas; or gathered notes in groups for a comparison/contrast or cause and effect organization. This diagram shows an example of sorting into main and supporting ideas for a discussion of Civil War Technology:

Connect
The next step is to connect ideas and explain connections. Here is an example of how the sorted ideas would be connected in Thinglink. Note that links are not active on the following screenshots.

Example of ThingLink Link 7 that expands to a discussion of strategy. (See next screenshot.)
Strategy: Civil War Band Music
Discussion of how military band music was used by General Grant as a strategy to conceal the sounds of troop movements. Note that an additional link on the slide accesses an audio clip of the band music (links not active on screenshot, but you can click this link to hear the music).

Elaborate
A final text box (indicated by Star tag) links to a paragraph that elaborates on connected ideas and shares insights (see following examples). The more information tag on the ThingLink (indicated by an i tag) links to a bibliography of sources.

Example of elaborating on connections with own insights.

This is just the beginning phase as our students curate their research. It will be exciting to watch their thinking evolve as they generate, sort, connect, and elaborate their ideas in ThingLink and share with an audience their insights about the Civil War.