Read This Before You Teach Today
An effective & simple teaching strategy for any age and subject
You are a teacher.
The weekend is drawing to a close and the ‘Sunday Scaries’ have set in as you realise your lesson plans for the week are lacklustre at best and incomplete at worst.
I have an idea that will help.
It works.
It is super simple.
It works for any grade level and any subject.
It is the Story Map.
The Story Map Graphic Organiser
Story Maps are a type of graphic organiser. They map content and help the student to identify the flow of events and the interconnected nature or relationships between ideas, events, or characters within an organised framework.
It’s like systems thinking for beginners.
You are busy. Let’s get right to the model.
You can edit these templates on Canva here.
As you can see, the story maps could work for a variety of ages and subjects. Here are a few thoughts on usability:
- Illustrate a plot in a novel in an English literature class.
- Identify the work flow of an experiment in a Chemistry class.
- Showcase the context, causes and consequences of a war in a History class.
- Show the relationship between political decision making and a humanitarian crisis in a Politics or Civics class.
- Highlight the causes and implications of climate change in a Geography class.
The Story Map Sentence Starters
If you are looking for something even more simple, I have another strategy that will get your students thinking critically and creatively, communicating, and collaborating.
McTighe and Silver (2000) showcase one case study where a teacher used the following story map with great success with her classes. It goes like this:
Someone….Somewhere….Wanted….But….So….Then….Therefore….Finally….
This strategy is just like the one above but instead of mapping the story in a graphic organiser, the students are encouraged to write the story in a series of sentences.
They could do this in groups of eight, with a student writing one sentence before passing the paper to the next student or adding to the previous sentence on a Teams chat if online.
I asked my students to explain the impact of Brexit. This is what a paired group came up with using the story map sentence starters:
Example of the strategy in action
{Someone} Prime Minister, David Cameron
{Somewhere} made an announcement outside 10 Downing Street in London
{Wanted} to call a referendum asking British citizens whether they thought Britain should remain in the European Union [EU]. He said it would be a ‘simple choice’.
{But} The question of whether the UK should leave the EU is a complex and nuanced issue.
{So} Some people voted without really understanding the implications of leaving the EU.
{Then} The result was announced in 2016. Britain would leave the EU. 51.9% of the electorate voted to leave and 48.1% voted to remain.
{Therefore} Britain changed its relationship with the EU and one area of impact was seen in relation to trade and border delays.
{Finally} Although the impact of Brexit will take many years to fully realise, it is believed that Brexit will lead to at least a short term negative economic decline and greater friction in relation to trade, employment and investment.
With this second strategy you would only need to write or project the 8 sentence starter words on a board and set your students off.
To save you time, I have created an editable Canva template for you to project or share with your students. This presentation shows the 8 sentence starters.
Access it freely here.
What the story map reminds me of is the famous quote attributed to Richard Feynman:
If you can’t explain it simply you don’t understand it well enough.
I hope this has helped with the ‘Sunday Scaries’, which as all teachers know, can actually afflict us on any day of the week.
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