HSTRY.co Timelines: Building Content Connections with Student Creation

So many times in our classes, we ask students to rely on previous knowledge or context that may or may not be there. Building background knowledge and chronology of events are important skills to consider whether it be in social studies class studying an era of history, or math class understanding interrelated mathematical concepts. Timelines are a powerful teaching tool that many teachers utilize to bridge these gaps in knowledge and to allow students to create a product that visually helps students understand the BIGGER PICTURE of concepts.

I have written about the use of timelines before and I stand by their effectiveness. Luckily, this year our school is piloting HSTRY.co, an online resource that allows teachers to do several activities with timelines. Signing up is easy and so are creating engaging, collaborative & rigorous assignments.  

Within our school, several Social Studies teachers have already used HSTRY.co, including Adam Perez and Jerry Ponzio, so if you have questions, contact me or catch them in the hall for a quick chat.

For my own class, I have used HSTRY.co Timelines to build background knowledge that students then present to one another. This requires students to collaborate on research together and then create an eye-catching product that incorporates more than what a simple slideshow can offer.

HSTRY.co Timelines allow student creators to add quizzes which can help those viewing their timelines.

Sign-up:

GO to Hstry.co and sign up as an educator.

Tutorials:

After you’re signed up, you can follow this link or the directions below to get started.

How to Create a Timeline Tutorial.

Student Directions for sign-up:

**Go to edu.hstry.co to complete project

1) click sign-up at top right of HSTRY.co webpage

2) Sign-up with google account

3) ADD CLASS w/ code #######

4) (Have a sample timeline created as example) Look at Teacher’s sample Timeline

5) Create a Timeline about your topic adhering to directions

6) **Make sure to COLLABORATE w/ your partner so you both are working on the same timeline.

Possible Assignments:

Posing a student question:

Posing a question that need to be answered with a timeline is a powerful way to have students interact with content. Several questions could be split up among the class, or the same question for all students. Look at the example below:

 

• Students title the timeline the questions posed them

• Students define terms associated to question

• Show images and/or maps & videos that further answer to question

• Use text boxes to explain their answers

• ’Did you know box’ allows student to show extra interesting information

• A quiz could be incorporated that summarized information someone might gain from viewing their Timeline

 

Traditional Timeline to Summarize Information

See the link here for a rubric on a TRADITIONAL TIMELINE TO SUMMARIZE INFORMATION/EVENTS

Student Impressions

I conducted a survey of student impressions of using HSTRY.co & here are the results:

Most students felt it was easy to get started using HSTRY.co

A vast majority of students felt that creating a Timeline positively impacted their education. Creative format, collaboration, easy organization, and integration of media were all seen as positives for learning.

Collaboration with a peer and with the class timelines was seen with mixed results. For future use, I would probably either front load information about topics first before asking students to create timelines, or go over content in timelines with class as we viewed them.

NewsELA-Teaching Election Issues w/ Annotation & Discussion

NewsELA is a great way to promote civil discourse and to allow students to explore the issues that relate to the 2016 elections. NewsELA has curated TEXT SETS based on the election and issues surrounding the political process. On the home page of NewsELA.com go to Text Sets=>Election Issue Text Sets=>(Many Issues Included!!)

 

Teaching discussion on these topics should be coupled with a lesson on civil discourse, which is why NewsELA has partnered with Teaching Tolerance to provide resources for promoting acceptance and civility when having class discussions.  

 

I give this to my students and then use the link to provide SENTENCE STARTERS for their discussions, and then reinforce this language throughout the class discussions:

Basic rules for civil community discussions:

-Listen intently to what others are saying.

-Back up assertions and ideas with evidence.

-When refuting an argument, restate the argument being challenged; then, state your objection supported by evidence.

-Allow everyone to speak and be heard.

-Build in debriefing sessions.

Civil Discourse Sentence Starters

 

More resources:

**Teaching Tolerance-Resources-

Teaching tolerance website-catered to teaching election 2016

-PD Cafe-discuss and navigate this year’s election

-“Building blocks for civil discourse”

 

EXAMPLE of a Lesson built on one available Text Set under the Election Issues Text Set

 

Gun Control & 2nd Amendment

 

Goal: Facilitate discussion with a Gun Control Laws Tag Team Debate

Read Several articles and synthesize

Give students choice in articles for text sets

Teacher Support Link: https://support.newsela.com/hc/en-us/articles/211746426-Election-Issues-Terrorism-Homeland-Security-and-Gun-Control

 

–Annotate 1 article in class–

Model-Annotation, margin notes,

-Guiding Questions to class in margin

-PRO Details-A drop down arrow at top of article=Extra resources & focus for discussion

LESSON:

Color Coding Annotation:

1. Even if you give students choice, assign students purpose for reading:
   1. Highlight PRO/CON evidence to show “Should we limit the right to bear arms?”

 

• Elaborate in margin as to how this defends/attacks this issue

 

2.) Write-(You can change this prompt)-Go over prompt before reading so they can annotate with focus

a.) Crafting an ARGUMENT

ARE: Assertion-Statement, Reasoning-the Because, Evidence-ideas from a source

SEE: Subject-Statement, Evidence-ideas from a source, Elaboration-the because(explain how evidence supports Statement

3.) Several other articles for HW

4.) Student Debate(After TEACHING TOLERANCE “Getting Along” framework)

5.) Student Polls(an option for ending the debate in NewsELA)

 

**Create a MINI-TEXT SET-PAIRED TEXT

Text sets=>Your Text Sets=>Create a new Text Set=>Name/Description: “What Connections are their between recent terrorism events and why should presidential candidates be concerned with them?” =>Visible: Everyone(So students can view)

 

Assignment Instructions:

1. Review Guided Questions
2. Preview WRITE prompt before they read
3. While reading, reflect on parts of SEE/ARE so they annotate with this thinking.
4. After several paragraphs written in NewsELA copy into a larger writing assignment into notebook?

NewsELA Bolsters Student Reading

A recent online education article asked the question, “Why are 6.1 million students using Newsela?”. In this article, Shannon Garrison, education blogger and elementary school teacher veteran, offers an in-depth overview of how to use NewsELA.com. The article can be found here, but the highlights include the following:

 

• A library of articles

 

• “The news articles span a wide array of content, including science, money, law, health, arts, sports, and opinion. The site provides high-quality nonfiction texts from well-regarded media sources, such as the Washington Post, the Scientific American, the Los Angeles Times, and the Associated Press.”

 

• Multiple-Choice quizzes and writing prompts aligned to Common Core Anchor Standards

 

• “Newsela provides real-time assessments of student comprehension through multiple-choice quizzes and writing prompts. Each article is accompanied by a four-item quiz that probes the following areas: what the text says; central ideas; people, events, and ideas; word meaning and choice; text structure; point of view or purpose; multimedia; or arguments and claims. These categories are aligned to the first eight Common Core Anchor Standards for Reading.”

 

• Tracking of individual student progress

• “The biggest benefit of the PRO version is that it allows teachers to go beyond classroom-level data to view individual student progress and to track student progress against the CCSS. It allows teachers to see individual quiz results and read, score, and provide feedback on student responses to the writing prompts. Teachers are also able to sort and filter student-performance data and print reports, enabling them to track data, identify trends, and adjust instruction accordingly.”

The company of NewsELA also offers trainings via webinars which can be found at their calendar here.

NewsELA Rocks My School Site

In my first few weeks as Technology TOSA, I have seen several teachers using NewsELA effectively in their classrooms. During these observations I have seen students engaged with content, teachers able to organize lessons at differentiated levels, and students able to access material in ways that they find meaningful.

One such classroom was Ms. Fleener’s 6th period. In Ms. Fleener’s class, students are at many different reading comprehension levels, making meaningful differentiation difficult. However, Ms. Fleener approached reading nonfiction using NewsELA by allowing students the option to choose the article they wanted to read which kept them focused. She also taught them the benefit of the changing the lexile rating and had students choose the reading level they felt fit them. By doing this, and having students use a Goal Setting Chart like the one below, students are empowered to continue reading past their frustrational level and choose texts that interest them. This approach to teaching reading empowers students, teaching them ownership of their learning and skills in autonomy. Occasionally, I have even heard students say, “I want to read it AGAIN. Take the quiz AGAIN! I CAN DO BETTER!!”

INSTRUCTIONS FOR CHART (ABOVE)
In my own AP language class, Juniors were using NewsELA to not only access content about politicians and the political debate process of a presidential election year, but also used the annotation feature to highlight text highlighting text and write notes in the margin for reference when we had ours in class discussions. In the video below, one student explains his annotations and shows how to use the highlighting and note taking feature available in NewsELA Pro.

 

• Link to CHS Student explain NewsELA Annotations: https://youtu.be/z4iCkMVaJoo

 

 

Literacy Learning Platforms

Literacy Learning platforms 

The goal of supporting students in reading is daunting. The spectrum of possible texts out there for teachers to choose from is limitless. So, where to begin?

First, we as teachers need to understand that our students do read. In fact, they can search for, retrieve, and read information very quickly on social platforms they are comfortable with, such as Facebook and Twitter. The problem is, this skill is not usually being redirected for educational purposes. This is one reason why digital learning platforms are powerful.

NEWSELA Tutorial

Students can become more empowered with text that they can access in familiar ways(on tablets, with phones, color images, and interactive text). Learning platforms, such as Google Classroom, NewsELA.com, or Birdbrainscience.com, engage students because of their appearance and the comfortability that students have with social platforms.

NEWSELA with Google Classroom Tutorial

Bird Brain Science Tutorial

Finally, reading lexile ratings tell us how difficult a text is. Lexile can be changed to suit the student in learning platforms such as NewsELA.com. This allows teachers to use the data from previous years of testing and differentiate instructional materials and readings based on their student’s scores. When the lexile of a text is altered for a particular student, their lesson is being differentiated because they are receiving the same content, but at a reading level personalized for that student. The quizzes that come with the articles are also changed to fit the lexile of the article.

My advice: sign up your strongest class for one of these learning platforms and try it out! You may find it as something useful for your own organization and engaging for your students.

(**If you need help setting these up, I will be available in my room Thursdays after school until about 4:15. If you are using these, please let me know, I would love to spread the word on our Twitter feed #cougaredu !!)