Samples of Student Work: 4 Square ChartsSpecific assignments using 4-square charts, and samples of student work on those specific assignments. Industrial Revolution ChartsStudents looked at three sources as a class and chose three sources while reading independently. Two of the sources were videos (Oliver, directed by David McLean; The Triangle Factory Fire Scandal). The third source was Dickens' Oliver Twist, read aloud. Independent reading included testimonies to British commissions investigating working conditions in factories. The teacher checked for basic comprehension of documents through class discussion and by collecting the charts. A quiz followed the document-based activities: students had to match a worker's specific concerns to an Industrial Era reformer they learned about in the textbook.
Russian Revolution ChartsStudents compared two accounts of the execution of the Romanov family. The first was a clip from the television series The Great War and the Making of the Twentieth Century by PBS. After drawing or describing the most vivid picture in their heads from the video, they evaluated the methods used by the filmmaker in the box next to their picture. Then the class read one of two texts about the execution (self-selected): Robert Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra, or a much longer selection from The Fate of the Romanovs. In the box next to each source, students analyzed the methods used by the author of the account they read. The debriefing focused on which source gave the best information about the execution. Notably, no matter what text was read, students agreed that the text was more accurate than the video and could articulate reasons for the video's abbreviated version of the executions.
World War II ChartsThe teacher modelled the 4-square chart using the opening monologue from the movie Patton. This allowed students to ask questions about how to use the chart. On a different day, students selected a collection of WWII document reproductions. This could be either a manila envelope with primary source documents from the Library of Congress, or from the book From Flight Decks and Foxholes: World War II through Letters. The students could read as many or few sources as they wanted in a single class period (50 minutes).
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