CCOT Teaching Tools
CCOT—SCAFFOLDS AND FEEDBACKCCOT Tool One of the main supports we provide within the CCOT Practice Progression—and with all our historical thinking practice progressions—is what we like to refer to as a thinking tool. Some people call these smart tools or cognitive tools. A cognitive tool might be a poster, a rubric, a graphic organizer, a mnemonic device, or a mix of a few of these, which help students become familiar with the steps they should take to engage in each practice. Over time, students will rely upon the tools less, but they’re always there to support them. CCOT ToolEach activity in the CCOT Practice Progression includes the CCOT Tool. This tool was conceptualized by World History Project pilot teachers. It uses a fun and active process in which students place sticky notes on a simple graph to display continuities and changes for certain periods of time in history. The placement of sticky notes (and the option to put someone else’s in a new position) helps foster lively classroom debate and discussion, not something that is always easy to elicit when working on CCOT.
2CCOT Feedback FormAlongside the cognitive tools, we provide Feedback Forms. These forms break down the progression of skills that students need to master in order to advance their aptitude with each thinking practice. These can be used to help you not only evaluate how well students are progressing, but also to guide instructional decisions based on student success or need for specific intervention. Each CCOT progression activity includes a CCOT Feedback Form for you to use to evaluate student work (or for you to have them conduct peer- or self-review of their work). Note that in many activities, parts of the Feedback Form are grayed out. This is because not every activity asks students to meet all of the criteria on the Feedback Form. You’ll find this to be particularly true of those that occur earlier in the progression.CCOT ToolSo, how do we know when students have learned each practice well enough that they can rely less on the tools and are able to see the interplay between each practice? One indicator might be that they successfully meet all the criteria on the Feedback Form. However, there is more to making this determination than what is written on a form. At OER Project we believe that teachers are the best judges of when and if students can do disciplinary thinking without explicitly using the thinking tool. Some students will successfully collapse the steps in a routine, employ disciplinary language, or create a concept map without referencing the tool. In such cases, the teacher might not require them to use the tool. However, for other students, often in the same class, the teacher will determine there is great value in encouraging or requiring them to use a tool in doing the work of historical thinking. OER Project provides our best guess about each typical learning progression but gives teachers (who know their students best) the flexibility to modify and adjust our suggested sequence, tool, or Feedback Form.
CCOT Activities PlacementOriginsEra 1Era 2Era 3Era 4Era 5Era 6Era 7Lesson 2.4: IntroductionLesson 3.6: Early Humans to EmpiresLesson 4.2: Empires to Regional WebsLesson 5.4: Regional Webs to the First Global AgeLesson 6.4: The First Global Age to the Long Nineteenth CenturyLesson 7.5: Era Comparisons1200Unit 1Unit 2Unit 3Unit 4Unit 5Unit 6Unit 7Unit 8Unit 9Lesson 2.3: IntroductionLesson 3.3: The Global Tapestry to Transoceanic ConnectionsLesson 4.3: Transoceanic Connections to RevolutionsLesson 5.4: Revolutions to IndustrializationLesson 7.4: Empire to Global ConflictLesson 9.4: Unit Comparisons1750Unit 1Unit 2Unit 3Unit 4Unit 5Unit 6Unit 7Unit 8Unit 9Lesson 1.2: IntroductionLesson 3.2: Revolutions to IndustrializationLesson 5.3: Labor to Colonialism and ResponsesLesson 6.2: Imperialism and Colonialism to WWILesson 8.2: World War II to the Cold WarLesson 9.4: Unit ComparisonsAPUnit 1Unit 2Unit 3Unit 4Unit 5Unit 6Unit 7Unit 8Unit 9Lesson 1.1: IntroductionLesson 3.2: Networks of Exchange to Land-Based EmpiresLesson 4.3: Land-Based Empires to Transoceanic InterconnectionsLesson 5.6: Transoceanic Interconnections to RevolutionsLesson 7.5: Consequences of Industrialization to Global ConflictLesson 9.3: Unit Comparisons