As a History teacher, the exploration of primary documents is one of the most important teaching tools at my disposal. The problem with primary documents is without the proper scaffolding or space to ask questions, students may not see the value in using them. The ELMO is the most useful tool that I have to work with to help scaffold students' learning with primary documents. The ELMO allows me to model my own process while explicitly stating what I expect from students. Since the ELMO is a pretty standard piece of technology, I have also decided to work cell phones into this particular lesson using a PollEverywhere poll that allows students to give feedback and ask questions anonymously.
When exploring primary documents, I prefer to use the iREAD method. This method involves sourcing, contextualizing, and corroborating texts among other skills. For this particular lesson, I plan to model how to go about sourcing and contextualizing a text. Using the ELMO to display my own copy of the text on the SMART Board, I will guide students through this activity. Information about the source of the text will be annotated using arrows. Information regarding the context in which the text is written will be mark using stars or asterisks. Because of the ELMO, I am able to both state out loud and mark on a paper the reasons why I chose particular parts of the text as either information regarding the source or context of the document.
As I mentioned before, I plan to incorporate student cell phones into this activity as well. Most students in my class seem to feel uncomfortable asking questions in a public forum, especially on things they haven't seen before. Using PollEverywhere eliminates the anxiety students feel about asking questions publicly by providing them with an anonymous forum. This forum provides a space for questions, comments, and concerns that students can simply text in. For those students who do not have cell phones (I know there are a few) I will make it clear that I will also accept written responses. The combination of the ELMO and cell phones provide both myself and my students with an opportunity to use easily accessible technology to work together to advance their learning and teach them valuable skills in discriminating information.
