Simplifying and condensing information to the bare essential facts can sometime be challenging for students. I read this blog post by Glenn Wiebe on the PERSIAN graphic organiser and knew I wanted to try it with my I&S students.
As it was the end of the unit I didn’t give much scaffolding to the task – we spoke about the definitions of the categories and what which isn’t really enough for the EAL students – so it was really just a trial to see what they would come up with. This is the best example from the class and I think this shows the possibilities of the organiser. The student used images from Google (not the best but we will work on that later) and the cartoon images generated by Storyboardthat.
Here are the suggested topics categorised under each term.
Political
- Structure
- War
- Treaties
- Courts/Laws
- Leaders
- Popular participation
- Loyalty to leader
Economic
- State control on trade/industry
- Agriculture/Industry importance
- Labor systems
- Levels of Technology
- Levels of International Trade
- Gender and Slaves
- Money System
Religion
- Importance on societal interaction
- Holy Books
- Beliefs/Teachings
- Conversion – role of missionaries
- Sin/Salvation
- Deities
Social
- Family order – patriarchal, matriarchal
- Gender Relations – role of women, children
- Social Classes – slavery
- Entertainment
- Life Styles
Intellectual/Arts
- Art and Music
- Writing/Literature
- Philosophy
- Math/Science
- Education
- Inventions
Area/Geography
- Location
- Physical
- Movement
- Human/Environment
In the comments section of the post some suggested a different organiser using SPICE which I might try next time – especially considering the integrated nature of History and Geography in the MYP Individuals and Societies subject.
SPICE stands for;
- Social: transformation of Social structures
- Political: state building, empires, and conflict
- Interaction: between humans and the environment
- Cultural: development and interaction of Cultures
- Economics: creation, expansion, and interaction of Economic systems
UPDATE: Unfortunately I have stopped using StoryboardThat now that I am teaching primary school. Not that this wouldn’t be an excellent tool to use but that the compatibility of StoryboardThat with iPads is so clunky and “glitchy” as my class says, that we decided as a class to not use it. We wrote an email to StoryboardThat with a detailed list of specific issues and they explained that they are working on the platform to improve compatibility. Unfortunately, until these issues have been addressed we will be using BookCreator to make comics.
Is there anyone else using a comic creator on iPads they can recommend as an alternative to StoryboardThat?
