Student work for my early Cold War StoryMap assignment

This week I assigned my students to create a StoryMap to demonstrate their mastery of key events of the early Cold War era.  I blogged about that assignment a few days ago here, and the first student work is coming in.  Click here to see one terrific example.

What I really like about this assignment is that it requires the students to drill down deeper than if they had simply filled out a worksheet, or even if we had discussed these events in class.  StoryMap is a presentation tool, and there are other fine presentation tools to use with our students.  The fun is mixing it up so that every new assignment looks fresh.

My Early Cold-War StoryMap assignment

It's always hard to find the right balance between what I expect students to do on their own outside of class with what I hope to accomplish with them in class.  Recently I've been focusing on developing skills (reading, writing, and critical thinking) in class, and shifting the responsibility of mastering content to the students.  (Of course in practice it's never that simple.  The skills we practice in class always are driven by the content we are studying, so the two always mesh.)

Here's my workflow for our unit on Cold War origins: The bulk of our lessons this week are focused on an extended whole-class activity with a set of primary source documents.  The activity involves reading a series of 2-3 documents, ascertaining their meaning, then writing a paragraph comparing the two while answering a question.  We then move to the next series of documents, do the same activity, then compare that second series with the first.  Finally, to tie everything together, we do the same thing one last time, then write an essay incorporating and synthesizing all nine documents.

At home, students keep up with their textbook reading (there will be a reading quiz), and complete a small project.  For the assignment, I gave the students eight Cold War events to discuss and describe.

1. Yalta Conference
2. Potsdam
3. Formation of the United Nations
4. Truman Doctrine
5. Marshall Plan
6. Berlin Airlift
7. Formation of NATO
8. Korean War

To learn about these eight events, I pointed the students to the extraordinary materials from the U.S. State Department's Office of the Historian for background information.

The students are to present their findings in a StoryMap.  StoryMapJS is a form a presentation software, and a StoryMap lets you tell stories visually on a map.  I've used StoryMapJS earlier this year and loved it.

You can see a link to the project here.

A great student project: Using a map to tell a story

One of my best new assignments this year involved my students telling stories with maps.  The story they told most recently was the steps from African-American bondage to the abolition of slavery.

Here was my workflow:

1. In Part I, students were assigned to make a list of twenty events relating to the African-American experience in America, beginning with the first forced migration of Africans to North America and ending with ratification of the 13th Amendment.  For each event, students had to
1. Name it (e.g., Stono Rebellion)
2. Describe it (3-4 sentences) using their own words
3. Say when it happened (1793)
4. Say where it happened on a map (South Carolina)
5. Include a link to an image or YouTube video that relates to that event.  Example: This link is to a historical marker discussing the Stono Rebellion.
2. In Part II, students took that list of twenty events and used them to make a StoryMap.  I've blogged about StoryMapJS before.  It's a storytelling tool created by the Northwestern University Knight Lab.  Designed for journalists, it's perfect for students as well.  Here's my favorite YouTube tutorial (8:46) on how to use StoryMapJS.

Click on the link to see the first student project I received for this assignment.  One reason why I like this assignment so much is that StoryMaps are easy to create!  How easy?  I gave my students ten days to complete this assignment.  Yet only hours after I assigned it today (a Sunday), I received the first one.

Summarize key events in African-American History through the lens of one city

Montgomery, Alabama, is clearly among the most consequential cities in America in terms of African-American History.

Just take a look at some of the things that occurred there:

• A slave market operated there.
• The Confederacy was organized there.
• It was the capital of the Confederacy for four months in 1861.
• Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was pastor at a church there.
• Rosa Park's arrest and trial for disorderly conduct was held there.
• Dr. King's address to a crowd of 5,000 people resulted in overwhelming support for the bus boycott.
• Federal judges authorized the Selma-to-Montgomery March and Freedom Rides there.
• The Selma-to-Montgomery March ended there.

You can use a terrific online resource from the Alabama Historical Association to help your students understand that historical era.

First, send them to this collection of Montgomery Historical Markers.  The list is presented in alphabetical order, so instruct your students to search for markers that relate to these four categories: African Americans generally, slavery, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights Movement.  While searching and sorting they should take notes on each event (emphasizing the event's cause and consequence).

Second, have them make a timetable of what they have learned.  They should use different colors to reflect each of the four different categories.

Third, they should plot what they learned on a map using StoryMapJS.  Here's a tutorial on how to use StoryMapJS.