Using the Book "Big Bully: the Story of Simon Kenton" to Teach the Inquiry Process Through Active Learning

 

By Lesley Barker

The FKCC books produced by the Kentucky Faith and Public History Education Project model the inquiry process for social studies for elementary and middle school students. Homeschoolers can use them for the same instructional goals as well. The first step in the inquiry process, as we discussed last week, is to ask good questions. Next, students are challenged to engage in independent research to hunt for the answers to those questions. Then, students must prove what they have learned by citing the evidence they have found. Finally, they should create a presentation that demonstrates what they have learned. These four steps are consistent with the objectives of a learning strategy known as “active learning”. It makes students responsible for their own learning while the teacher serves as a coach and a mentor along the way.

Here is how to use the first book of the Famous Kentucky Christian Club Series to model the inquiry process. Assign your student to read the first chapter of Big Bully: The Story of Simon Kenton by Lesley Barker (available as a paperback or a Kindle edition here). This book illustrates how a team of four fourth graders researched the life of this Kentucky pioneer and then created a presentation for a Show N Tell competition. Stop after your student has finished reading the first chapter, “Ask Important Questions”. Discuss the questions that the children posed in the chapter. Ask the student what made the question useful for researching  the life of this famous man. Get the student to predict what tools the children in the story may use to find the answers to the questions. Assign the student to read the second chapter, “Hunt for Facts”.  When the student finishes reading this chapter, talk with them about whether their predictions were accurate. Ask if they were surprised by any of the strategies the children used in the book. Next assign them to read the third chapter, “Use Proof”. After they are done, discuss why it is important to cite evidence for what they claim. Before you assign them to read the last chapter, “Show N Tell”, ask your student to predict what the children in the story will create to try to win the competition. Read the last chapter. Then assign the student to draw a picture of the display that the children in the book created. Ask what your student likes about it; what they would change to make it better and if they think the display should win the prize.

This series of four discussions can be spread over one week. The discussions work to introduce your student to the inquiry process. They also serve as social studies lessons about frontier Kentucky. They can also be a series of reading comprehension lessons. Once your student has read and critically considered the inquiry process the children in the book used to make their presentation, you can challenge your student to research the life of another famous Kentucky Christian. The Kentucky Faith and Public History Education Project posts a “trading card” for a different person each Monday on our Facebook Page. You can print these cards and use them to assign a research project to your student.

Questions Lead to Learning

 By Lesley Barker

Marble head of Socrates on display at the Louvre Museum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socrates)

You have probably heard of the Socratic Method. But you may not have heard of the term “essential question” when applied to a unit plan of study in the classroom. Sometime, you certainly have been told that “there is no bad question”. Questions are strategic tools to promote active learning, independent critical thinking and problem solving skills in students.

Socrates lived in Athens, Greece in the fifth century BC. A philosopher and educator, he remains required reading in college philosophy classes today. He made a huge impact on western thought. He used questions to teach his disciples. This instructional approach has become known as the Socratic Method. It does not lecture nor provide the students with the right answers. It uses questions to lead them to express and then to discover whether their initial assumptions and opinions are flawed and, if so, to come up with better positions that can be logically defended[1]. This requires active learning on the part of the students. They cannot study the lecture notes to pass the test. Instead, they become engaged in a dialogue that results in new and deeper understanding.

Posing an essential question is another way that good teachers assist their students to become independent critical thinkers. An essential question frames a big idea that underlies all the lessons in a unit of study. Its goal is to provoke the students’ curiosity so that they will participate fully in the instructional process. There are three core criteria inherent in a well-stated essential question according to veteran teacher, Jeffrey Wilhelm[2]. The question has to be “interesting and compelling” to the students. It has to stimulate debates and conversations that result in enhanced understanding. It implies that the students must employ the methods of professionals in the field. Wilhelm states that “the secret to teaching may be as simple as asking students good questions and then giving them the opportunity to find the answers.”[3]

There is no bad question. Even when a student asks a question that seems rooted in their frustration, skepticism or negativity, a good teacher learns to receive such questions with respect, returning a meaningful question to flip the conversation to a more productive one that lures the student to a better starting point for learning.

We at the Kentucky Faith and Public History Education Project are guided by this essential question: What impact has Christianity and individual Christians had on the history and culture of Kentucky? This question is framed for K-12 public school students who may otherwise be unfamiliar with Christian beliefs and practices. Everything we are working to produce: the easy-reader chapter books about famous Kentucky Christians, the participatory website, and the walking trail that leads to a re-imagined early 19^th century camp meeting, is meant to trigger increasingly more complex objective questions in the students. If we were producing a spiritual experience we might lead with a statement like “You must be born again” but we are producing an educational experience that exposes students to what “born again” people have achieved since the 1790’s in Kentucky.

As you homeschool or expand the education your children are receiving, may this post challenge you to experiment with asking good questions that lead your children to discover truth for themselves.

 

---

[1] Elizabeth Garrett. “The Green Bag”. 1998 in The Socratic Method. University of Chicago Law School. ONLINE. law.uchicago.edu/socratic-method. ACCESSED 10/10/2020

[2] Jeffrey Wilhelm. “Essential Questions”. Scholastic Teacher. ONLINE. https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/essential-questions/ ACCESSED 10/10/2020.

[3] Ibid.

Using History to Teach Children Critical Thinking Skills

By Lesley Barker PhD

There are too many people, too many cultures and too many events in the earth’s past ever to do justice to teaching history. Even just to document the three years of Jesus’ ministry in Palestine would, in the words of the Apostle John, “if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written”[1]. Of course, it is important to give our children a foundation that includes a basic overview of the past and a more detailed timeline of the history of the United States. This provides building blocks for them to become competent adults who take their civic responsibilities seriously and who understand the ideas that repeat as tropes and metaphors in our arts and literature.  Besides building this general knowledge base, teaching history or social studies is one of the most powerful ways to introduce children to critical thinking skills.

Critical thinking skills allow us to discern between ideas that have merit and those that are manipulative or shallow. They are the tools we need to evaluate what is being used to persuade us to adopt a certain position, vote for a certain candidate or buy a certain product. They give us the ability to test our own ideas and conclusions against objective facts or time-tested convictions. They help us defend our own positions using logic, facts and without becoming judgmental or emotionally over-wrought.

Here are four steps that model using critical thinking skills in the teaching of history which can be used at any grade level: 1) ask important questions; 2) look for facts to answer the questions; 3) show proof; and 4) communicate what you learned or concluded. Set up a new topic with a brief introduction or by showing a picture. Then ask the student what they already know, or think they know about the topic. Make a list of these statements. Follow up by asking the student what new things they want to learn about it. Keep prodding until the student has been stimulated to generate a list of three or four questions that are essential to understanding the topic or the person being covered. Next, help the student to brainstorm what age-appropriate resources they can use to find the answers to their own questions. These may include their textbooks, the internet, subject-matter experts, visiting a museum or historic site, looking at pictures or going to a library. Require the student to keep notes on what they discover in these resources. They should be able to cite where they learned any one fact or opinion. Revisit the original questions in the light of the research done and assist the student to produce their own written, oral or creative statement to communicate what they have learned.

The Kentucky Faith & Public History Education Project models this inquiry process, (which, by the way, is at the core of the Kentucky State Academic Standards for Social Studies), in our FKCC Book Series. Each 32-page easy-reader introduces one famous Kentucky Christian. Each book portrays a team of fourth graders who must prepare a show and tell presentation about this famous person. The team also must overcome a problem that typifies a childhood relationship challenge which connects to the famous Kentuckian’s biography. These high-interest books, coming soon on Amazon.com, are written at the second to fourth grade reading level. Homeschooling parents will find these helpful to communicate basic facts about American history while also modeling the teaching of critical thinking skills.

---

[1] John 21:25, King James Version

Making Self-Connections Helps Children Learn History

 By Lesley Barker PhD

There are at least three kinds of connections that can be leveraged to assist a child to learn something new: self-connections, world-connections, and book-connections. The most powerful connection to assist the learning process that you can trigger in your child is a self-connection. Before you can use this strategy, however, you have to build the cognitive tasks that underlie this process.  Making connections starts by sorting items into categories. Two year olds can become skilled at making connections when you combine a simple task like picking up the toys with a challenge: pick up all the red toys. Now put away all the toys with wheels. More verbal preschoolers should be able to look at two pictures and distinguish what is the same and what is different. As preschoolers become more verbal and observant, they can be guided to compare and contrast abstract items and ideas. This prepares them to make and talk about specific self-connections. When they are able to have these conversations you can use the strategy to introduce and motivate children to engage with new information. If an older child has difficulty sorting, organizing and differentiating between objects, they can still learn how to do this. It is important. Assign chores like putting away the silverware correctly or folding the socks. Move from these tasks to more nuanced conversations and activities that require these skills. Making self-connections starts with the ability to see similarities between the child’s life and experience and something else.

This is why the primary grade social studies curriculum starts by introducing major American holidays. The children are likely to have eaten a turkey on Thanksgiving or to have seen fireworks on the Fourth of July. A skilled teacher interviews the class to get the children to offer their experiences. Then the teacher builds on them. From the foods in a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, for example, the class can be guided to become curious about the very first Thanksgiving. It leads to a discussion about Pilgrims and Native Americans. Using pictures, the children can be led to compare and contrast the various elements of the first feast with the one they are familiar with.  From the red, white and blue decorations and the fireworks of the Fourth of July that most children have experienced, they can be prompted to ask what we are celebrating. This, of course, leads to a discussion of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War. Next, the children may be introduced to a holiday from another country such as the Jewish feast of Purim, for example. The teacher may suggest that Purim has many similarities to Halloween and ask the students to figure out what they are and how the two holidays differ.

By asking key questions, a teacher may provoke elementary school children to contribute some personal memories or experiences that connect to new social studies topics. In the easy-reader chapter books about Famous Kentucky Christians, for example, we have been careful to model this process. Simon Kenton, an early Kentucky pioneer, could have been described as a bully prior to his decision to become a Christian. In the book, Big Bully – the Story of Simon Kenton, by Lesley Barker (available on Amazon.com), fourth grade Keith realizes that he has been behaving like a bully like Simon Kenton and that he wants to change. If you were about to introduce your elementary school child to the life of Simon Kenton, you could ask if they had ever been bullied or if they had ever bullied someone else. This requires them to make a self-connection. From that discussion, next you could say that you want them to think about the life of Simon Kenton and to decide if he was a bully or not and why. This gives your child a motivation to remain engaged with the new material that is based on their self-connection.

Social studies and the study of history, in general, rely on the accumulation of facts about past events, people and places. Of course, dates are part of what must be learned. Dates and timelines are ways to organize and associate one fact with another. When you assist your child to look for, identify and discuss the self-connections they associate with the facts and people in the social studies curriculum, they will remember both the details and the big picture better. They will start to see how the subject is relevant and they will be prepared to understand more complex concepts as they come up.