Planning for omission, misconception and assumption
Have you had this happen to you?
Today I was teaching year 8. We are studying the English Reformation, looking at change and continuity over time. In particular today we were asking what changes came about when Henry made himself the Supreme Head of the church, and the size of those changes. At the end of the lesson we reflected on what had changed and at least five students told me that the church had seen quite a big change because different people were going to church now Henry was the Supreme Head. ‘Errrmm, what?’ I inwardly puzzled whilst kindly asking “Where did you learn this?” The answers I got back each time were essentially ‘when the Pope was the head, one type of person went to church and with Henry another type’.
Now as an NQT I wouldn’t have been able to make head nor tail of this. But in NQT2 I’ve got a teeny bit of insight. What’s happening is what goes on BETWEEN the rhythm of the lesson, when the tune’s not playing. When you stop talking or the worksheet gets handed in, those year 8 heads don’t just stop thinking. They make links. Or they make sense. Either linking the things that don’t yet make sense. Or linking the things that didn’t get joined up for them by you.
And there it is. A glaring omission: it’s what I didn’t teach; they didn’t understand enough about the importance of King and church (as sources of power). The mistake the children have made is that they think that people have a religion and stick to it as people tend to do today (or perhaps as they are free to do in Britain today). The idea of changing your religion because the King says so hasn’t got a place in their minds. By not understanding this they downgraded the nature and extent of the change: they simply thought with each new leader you get different followers.
So my notes to self…
A) Think about what’s happening in the children’s heads: what do they bring to the lesson (and not just from last year’s History!)? For example what assumptions from their world today might they bring? Try to work from their assumptions as their assumptions and my teaching material have to intersect.
B) When deciding what history topics to teach, be absolutely clear about the prerequisite knowledge and understanding the children will need to do the thinking we are hoping for. Then plan where they’ll get that prerequisite knowledge. It doesn’t have to be another unit - but instead could be a relatively straight forward homework task. (I should have done something on the power of kings and the all-encompassing nature of the church.)
C) When deciding what to teach, think about what we will NOT teach just as carefully. What omissions might that ‘not teach’ list lead to - and will this be a problem later down the line in term 3, or a year later for example? What I guess I’m getting at here is try to anticipate what sense children will make of the ideas and topics we teach, and the likely misconceptions. We can’t identify misconceptions all the time but it’s an important question to have in mind as it helps to intervene faster when we spot it. For example with regards the English Reformation, we don’t have any work on the power of Medieval or Early Modern Kings; nor do we have anything on the role of the church in everyday life (we used to but took it out…). If I had thought about the possible misconceptions that such omissions would lead to (as I outlined above) I would have been able to build an activity or two into the lesson series to make sure the children didn’t give me one of those “oh no” moments!
Esther
One Response to “Letters to a New History Teacher: No. 6”
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Esther’s blog identifies one of the hardest things for new teachers to deal with – identifying misconceptions students may have. We all build up a mental check-list of the most likely misconceptions and use them as part of a holy trinity of planning elements – what do I want children to take away from the lesson, how will I help them to understand this (the activity bit) and what ideas might they already have – the helpful and unhelpful? When you’re starting out you don’t have that back catalogue of past misconceptions to use so it’s an important element of discussion with experienced colleagues – what might the children have in their heads that will trip them up [at A level and GCSE as well as KS3]?
When I read Esther’s blog a couple of ideas fell into my head so here they are in outline.
Next time – ask the whole class early on how many of them would have gone to church in the middle ages – and why? Use the opportunity to recap the importance of Hell/Purgatory as well as diagnosing their assumptions about who went to church. For an activity on the importance of the idea of purgatory see
http://www.thinkinghistory.co.uk/ActivityBase/SpendLessTimeInPurgatory.html
Later on you could ask half a dozen students to be the entire population and give them tabards (all the same colour) to indicate their Catholicism – then along comes 1534. Do they all change tabards for a different colour? Despite misgivings yes, virtually everyone did – and you could then set a research task using textbooks to see when other tabard changes took place and create a timeline using students’ research rather than giving them a completed timeline. You could make this more intriguing by asking how you’d represent in colour the more extreme of Protestantism of Edward VI’s reign – dark blue/orange instead of pale blue/yellow for Henry VIII. [Better to get them thinking about this than just telling them what the colours represent]. If you create a timeline make sure that it’s also linked to children’s ages – if you were 12 in 1534, how old would you be in 1547, 1553, 1558. This helps create a stronger sense of duration.
One of the real problems of teaching about the Reformation is making it personal and involving – somehow ‘significant’ topics can feel harder to treat in a personal manner. It’s worth considering starting ‘at the end’ i.e. with the impact on individuals before going back to explore why their lives were changing. I have a hankering to start with the death in 1586 of Margaret Clitherow, a Catholic martyr but an ‘ordinary woman’ (not a bishop who might be expected to die for his faith). What mattered to her so much that she died for her faith (and it includes her daughters so has an age-related value)? Maybe start by looking back from Elizabeth’s reign – what changes would Margaret’s family have seen since 1530s? What would have alarmed them most/felt strangest? Which events most affected them [e.g. dissolution]? Another research task using textbooks – groups as family taking different reigns? More on this ‘starting at the end’ approach at
http://www.thinkinghistory.co.uk/ActivityBase/DissolutionOfTheMonasteries.html
The outcome of all this? Why these changes mattered so much to people in the 1500s, why they acted as they did and what this tells us about the period. History, as ever, is about people. But enough! I fear I’ve written more than Esther!