Generative Topics
As you read these brief descriptions, notice the criteria for Generative Topics embedded in each:
- disciplinary centrality,
- student and teacher interest,
- availability of resources, and
- potential for connections, engagement, exploration, and challenges.
Major History Units for a Year
Generative Topic 1
The first topic, "The World in 1492," was a world tour at the time of colonization. It raised the question of why some cultures colonized while others did not-that's central to the study of the English Colonies in North America and to the discipline of history. Excellent resources provided a good start—for example, I used a book written by different children's authors called The World in 1492, with chapters on cultures around the world. Students collaboratively analyzed chapters to find out what types of things the authors saw as worthy of comment-these became our categories of historical information.
Generative Topic 2
The next topic, the Italian Renaissance, is a fertile and important choice for exploring colonization, since many of the technologies and ideologies developed there led Europeans to leave their home continent to live on a new one. Again, one resource is an excellent piece of literature, The Second Mrs. Giaconda, by E. L. Konigsburg. The seventh graders were fascinated by the art of the period and by Leonardo's intellect and character. That led to their interest in governmental and economic structures of the period.
Generative Topic 3
The third Generative Topic, Pre-Contact America, helped students understand what North America was like before Europeans came, how people lived, how they saw their lives, and how their lives began to change. For example, some students were intrigued by the idea of learning about the Cherokee. Yet another excellent piece of literature, To Spoil the Sun, by Joyce Rockwood, has a protagonist about the age of the seventh graders. Written by an anthropologist, it let us compare pre-contact cultures with those we'd already studied. Some characteristics of these cultures did not seem to fit the categories we had been developing for how to look at cultures generally—for example, the Cherokee's economic structure didn't have a concept of private ownership for land, which Cherokee saw as sacred. As a result, we had to adjust our previous definitions of culture and challenge generalizations we had been making about how to find out about people who lived before we were born.
Generative Topic 4
The fourth Generative Topic centered on the life and history of the original thirteen English colonies. For me, it was difficult to find ways to engage with this topic, so I looked for ways to personalize it. Students had personal connections to different colonies for various reasons: some had relatives in or had visited one or another former colony; some were interested in the roles of women, or Jews, or African Americans, or Native Americans; some were intrigued by how land lent itself to different uses—farming, or industry, or trade; some wanted to know why a particular event that they knew about (e.g., the Boston Tea Party) had occurred there. In other words, they became interested because they made personal connections. That led to better research about the colonies, which helped students make connections to the states they became and develop interest in current and related social and political issues.
Generative Topic 5
The fifth Generative Topic, Colonial Biography, was a way students got interested in historical individuals by comparing historical lives and choices to their own. Biography felt natural to take on-it is another genre of writing (we had already examined history texts, primary source materials, historical fiction, and narrative poetry), it allowed students to develop interests in characters they'd heard about in previous units, and it naturally raised questions of historical empathy and judgment which are critical to an historian's work.
Generative Topic 6
The sixth topic, the American Revolution, continued the theme of multiple points of view developed throughout the year, broadening from studies of individuals and places to the ideas of conflict and oppression-central arenas of historical focus.
Read about the Throughlines for the year.
|
