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Teaching Strategies

We encourage teachers to use student-centered teaching strategies that nurture students' literacy and critical thinking skills within a respectful classroom climate. The strategies suggested here can be used with students of all ages with any academic content.
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Exit CardsExit cards require students to answer particular questions on a piece of paper that is turned in before they leave the class. These cards provide teachers with immediate information that can be used to assess students’ understanding, monitor students’ questions or gather feedback on teaching. For students, exit cards serve as a content review at the end of a daily lesson and enhance their meta-cognitive skills.

Exploring Names: A Free-Writing Activity locked

This activity is used as an ice-breaker to help students immediately connect their personal identities to larger concepts of history, membership, ethnicity, and nationalism. It is a prop-free activity that can be used to launch a diversity of discussion topics. Students do a 5-minute free write about their names, then discuss what their names say about their identity. During this activity students will: reflect on the meanings of their names make connections between their names and their individual identities, to include family history, national and ethnic origin, and other personal experiences begin to make connections between individual identity and group identity

Facilitating Clear Thinking and Argumentation Using a Resource Book locked

In this activity: Students will develop analytical thinking skills Students will process the complexities of an argument Students will learn to structure and formulate their own perspectives When used as a pre-writing activity, students will develop organizational skills for producing an analytical or persuasive essay
FishbowlThe “fishbowl” is a teaching strategy that helps students practice being contributors and listeners in a discussion. Students ask questions, present opinions, and share information when they sit in the “fishbowl” circle, while students on the outside of the circle listen carefully to the ideas presented and pay attention to process.  Then the roles reverse. This strategy is especially useful when you want to make sure all students participate in the discussion, when you want to help students reflect on what a “good discussion” looks like, and when you need a structure for discussing controversial or difficult topics. Fishbowls make excellent pre-writing activities, often unearthing questions or ideas that students can explore more deeply in an independent assignment. Assessment, Consensus building, Debating, Developing a thesis, Discussion, Finding evidence, Perspective taking, Research, Sharing ideas
Formal Writing in a Facing History ClassroomFacing History and Ourselves is committed to helping students develop the skills and habits necessary for effective engaged citizenship. The capacity to express ideas through writing helps citizens communicate their ideas and advocate for themselves and their communities.  Writing is also a tool for reflection and meta-cognition. Through writing, students are able to “think about their own thinking.”  We believe that writing in a Facing History classroom embodies specific characteristics, including: Allows opportunity for student voice and choice Values complexity over simple responses Connects history to moral choices today Requires the use of evidence, from history, the humanities, and students’ own lives Encourages students to explore a question, issue or historical event from multiple perspectives For the purpose of this teaching strategy, the use of the term “writing” refers to written work that typically involves a process, including pre-writing, writing/revising, and sharing/assessment.  This writing could be creative, analytic, narrative, or persuasive.  For ideas about informal or “journal” writing (often an important pre-writing step), refer to the teaching strategy Journals in a Facing History Classroom.     Assessment, Developing a thesis, Evaluating sources, Finding evidence, Literacy, Reading, Research, Writing
Found PoemsFound poems are created through the careful selection and organization of words and phrases from existing text. Writing found poems provides a structured way for students to review material and synthesize their learning. 
Four CornersA Four Corners Debate requires students to show their position on a specific statement (strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree) by standing in a particular corner of the room.  This activity elicits the participation of all students by requiring everyone to take a position. By drawing out students’ opinions on a topic they are about to study, it can be a useful warm-up activity. By asking them to apply what they have learned when framing arguments, it can be an effective follow-through activity. Four Corners can also be used as a pre-writing activity to elicit arguments and evidence prior to essay writing.
Gallery Walk Teaching StrategyDuring a Gallery Walk, students explore multiple texts or images that are placed around the room.  Teachers often use this strategy as a way to have students share their work with peers, examine multiple historical documents, or respond to a collection of quotations.  Because this strategy requires students to physically move around the room, it can be especially engaging to kinesthetic learners.   Assessment, Consensus building, Debating, Discussion, Kinesthetic, Perspective taking, Reading, Sharing ideas
Graffiti BoardsGraffiti Walls are a part of the classroom, usually a very large sheet of paper, a whiteboard or chalkboard, where students engage in a written discussion. The purpose of the Graffiti Wall strategy is to help students “hear” each other’s ideas. Some benefits of this strategy are that it 1) can be implemented in 5-10 minutes, 2) provides a way for shy students to engage in a conversation, 3) provides a record of students’ ideas and questions that can be referred to at other points during the lesson (or even later in the unit or year), 4) provides space and time for students to process emotional material in the classroom and reflect on their own thoughts as well as the thoughts of others. Graffiti walls can be used as a preview or warm-up activity to introduce a new topic or to help students organize prior knowledge about content they are about to study. This strategy can also be used to help students share reactions to texts as preparation for a class discussion, writing assignment, or another project. If you are looking for a silent discussion activity that is structured to encourage deeper understanding and reflection, try a similar teaching strategy called "Big Paper."  
Human TimelineThe human timeline teaching strategy uses movement to help students understand and remember the chronology of events.   Assessment, Kinesthetic
Iceberg DiagramsTypically, there are numerous underlying causes that give rise to a specific event. Often these causes rest “beneath the surface” and can be difficult for students to “see.”  The Iceberg teaching strategy can be used to help students gain awareness of the multiple factors that give rise to particular events. The visual image of the iceberg helps students remember the importance of looking deeper than what is on the surface in order to better understand events in the past or present.  This strategy can be used as a way for students to organize their notes as they learn about a period in history, as a way to review material, or as an assessment tool. Art, Assessment, Evaluating sources, Graphic organizer, Reading
Identity ChartsIdentity charts are a graphic tool that helps students consider the many factors that shape who we are as individuals and as communities. They can be used to deepen students’ understanding of themselves, groups, nations and historical and literary figures. Sharing their own Identity charts with peers can help students build relationships and breakdown stereotypes. In this way, identity charts can be utilized as an effective classroom community-building tool.
InterviewingOne way to help students gather information is to have them conduct interviews. The process of interviewing gives students more ownership of knowledge, especially if they are generating their own interview questions and are accountable to presenting it back to the class. Assessment, Perspective taking, Research, Writing
Jigsaw - Developing Community and Disseminating KnowledgeUsing the jigsaw teaching strategy is one way to help students understand and retain information, while they develop their collaboration skills.  This strategy asks a group of students to become “experts” on a specific text or body of knowledge and then share that material with another group of students. These “teaching” groups contain one student from each of the “expert” groups. Students often feel more accountable for learning material when they know they are responsible for teaching the content to their peers. The jigsaw strategy is most effective when students know that they will be using the information they have learned from each other to create a final product, participate in a class discussion, or acquire material that will be on a test. 
Journals in a Facing History ClassroomOur ideas about the importance of journals in a Facing History and Ourselves classroom have been informed by decades of experience listening to teachers and students as well as by academic research, especially the following studies: Lisa Colt, Fanny Connelly, and John Paine, “Excerpts from Student Journals in Response to the Curriculum Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior.” Moral Education Forum, Summer 1981. Philosopher Hannah Arendt, herself a refugee of the Holocaust, asked, "Could the activity of thinking. . . be among the conditions that make men abstain from evil-doing or even ‘condition' them against it?"[i]  A study of Nazi Germany reveals the danger that can befall a society that is conditioned not to critically examine the world around them.  Adolf Hitler remarked, "What luck for leaders that men do not think."[ii]  His belief that people "do not think" (or that people could be conditioned not to think) gave him confidence that he could push through his racist agenda without much resistance. Indeed, the Nazis built an education system that force-fed knowledge and propaganda and discouraged questioning and individual thought.  They also prohibited free speech and free assembly, and kept their citizenry so busy with state-required tasks and meetings that there was "no time to think."  Just as dictatorships like the Third Reich rely on an unthinking populace to maintain control healthy democracies depend on a citizenry capable of critical thinking in order to support institutions such as a free press, an evenhanded judicial system, and fair and open elections.Facing History and Ourselves is committed to helping students develop their ability to critically examine their surroundings from multiple perspectives and to make informed judgments about what they see and hear. Keeping a journal is one tool that Facing History has found instrumental in helping students' develop these skills. A journal might be defined as any place where thoughts are recorded and stored. Loose-leaf and bound notebooks both make excellent journals. Many students find that writing or drawing in a journal helps them process ideas, formulate questions, and retain information. Journals make learning visible by providing a safe, accessible space for students to share thoughts, feelings and uncertainties.  In this way, journals are also an assessment tool-something teachers can review to better understand what their students know, what they are struggling to understand, and how their thinking has changed over time.  In addition to strengthening students' critical thinking skills, journal writing serves other purposes as well. Journals help nurture classroom community. Through reading and commenting on journals, teachers build relationships with students.  Frequent journal writing also helps students become more fluent in expressing their ideas in writing or speaking. Students use their journals in different ways. Some students may record ideas throughout class while others may only use it when there is a particular teacher-driven assignment.   Some students need prompts to support their writing, while other students feel more comfortable expressing their ideas without any external structure.  Just as students vary in how they use their journals, teachers vary in their approach to journal writing as well.   While there are many effective ways to use a journal as a learning tool in the classroom, below are six suggestions that we offer based on decades of experience working with teachers and students.   [i] Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind (Orlando: Harcourt Inc. 1971), 5. [ii]  Quoted in Joachim Fest, The Face of the Third Reich (New York: Da Capo Press, Inc., 1970), 39.
K-W-L Charts - Assessing What We Know/What We Still Want to LearnK-W-L charts are graphic organizers that help students organize information before, during and after a unit or a lesson.  They can be used to engage students in a new topic, activate prior knowledge, share unit objectives, and monitor learning.
Learn to Listen/Listen to Learn - Developing Deeper ConversationsThis discussion format helps students develop their discussion skills, particularly their ability to listen to one another. It is especially useful when trying to discuss controversial topics.
Levels of QuestionsThis teaching strategy helps students helps students comprehend and interpret text by requiring them to answer thee types of questions about the text: factual, inferential, and universal.  This scaffolded approach provides an opportunity for students to master the basic ideas of a text so that they can apply this understanding and “evidence” to conversations about deeper abstract concepts or complex historical events. “Levels of Questions” provides a way to meet the needs of different learners because you can focus students’ attention on the level of question most appropriate to their reading ability. This strategy can be used to prepare students for a class discussion or activity, and it could also be used as an assessment tool.
Life Road Maps - Who We Are and Where We've Come FromThis activity helps students better understand key life events of historical or literary figures by focusing attention on the many factors which have contributed to the array of choices they have made.  This strategy can be used as part of a research project, as a way to review previously studied material, or as an assessment tool.  When “life road maps” is used to focus on students’ own decisions, this strategy can help them reflect on key choices that have shaped their identities.
Living Images - Bringing History to LifeWith this teaching strategy, groups of students work together to bring historical images to life. Not only does “living images” help students develop a deeper understanding of a particular moment in history, but it also provides an opportunity for them to practice collaborating with their peers.