Make DBQ Work for You!Understanding and Adapting

Document Based Questioning in the English/ Language

Arts Classroom

Carrie Thomascthomas@wths.netwith extensive support, inspiration, and resource material from:

Michelle Fischetti, Valentina Rodino, and Vince DeSecki

Why Incorporate Document Based Questioning?

• Builds critical thinking skills (including analysis, inference, and synthesis) while teaching content

• Supports good writing• Great introduction to research skills• Meets the needs of varied learners• Easy to modify and adapt• Great for evaluations (connects

to Common Core, College Readiness, and Marzano Strategies)

• Aligns in style with the PARCC exam

What is Document Based Questioning?

A way to present content that fosters critical thinking skills, pretty much a tour of the

various levels of Bloom’s

Taxonomy.

Within a DBQ lesson, students are presented with several “documents”

and follow up questions.

What are some ways Apple products are enhancing the classroom experience?

What data could you cite to persuade your school to switch to electronic texts?

Documents can be excerpts from traditional texts, charts, maps,

photographs, even video clips or songs.

Follow-up questions challenge students to think critically about the document and respond with claims they support using the document itself.

Often, though not always, a DBQ ends with a prompt that asks students to write and support a thesis using the evidence in the documents.

The writing can take the form of a brainstorm, a complete essay or other summative writing activities, such as a letter, pamphlet, or blog article.

The DBQ Project (www.dbqproject.com)

is a company that produces pre-packaged DBQ lessons and

activities for a variety of subject

areas.

In this text, Artie, the author and co-protagonist of the story, reflects on the success of his first (of two) comics that tell the story of his father’s holocaust experience. The books are set in several time periods that weave together: World War II, the 1970s when Artie interviews his father, the 1980s after his father

has passed away and Artie is left with only recordings and a daunting writing task.

1. Which events are currently taking place in Artie’s life? How can you separate out what is current from the flashbacks? 2. How does Artie feel about his life, currently? How can you tell? 3. How do the pictures symbolically show the past intruding on the present?

Survivor’s guilt presents a major roadblock to recovery. Just when the individual with survivor’s guilt begins to make great strides in recovery and rejoin the rest of society or when a successful achievement is attained, a crushing feeling of guilt can overwhelm them, ruining that moment of success and achievement.

The individual is overwhelmed by panic attacks, sudden deep depression, and feelings of tremendous guilt and self loathing. This can send the individual right back to square one. Why does it happen?”

When one achieves a great milestone in life or recovery, they should feel pride in self and a sense of achievement. The individual says to himself, “wow! I did it! I have come so far and have been successful!” This is a moment to look back and assess where one has been and how far one has come.

For the person with survivor’s guilt, looking back includes remembering the traumatic event that changed them forever. Looking back in this way involves remembering those people who didn’t survive the event, those who lost their lives, those who never recovered.

4. List the characteristics of survivor’s guilt, and mark them in the passage. 5. What behavior patterns would you look for in an otherwise successful person if you suspected he suffered from survivor’s guilt?

6. Does Art suffer from survivor’s guilt? Support your answer by combining evidence from both documents in the lesson. Feel free to provide your support in the form of a list.

STEP 1: Identify your topic.Survivor’s Guilt as depicted in

Art Spiegelman’s Maus.STEP 2: Determine what your objective(s) is/are for students regarding this topic.

Student will be able to evaluate Artie’s behavior patterns in comparison to the clinical description of survivor’s guilt in order to either diagnose or exclude the

diagnosis. Students will identify details in both story and image to support their

diagnosis.STEP 3: Create a critical thinking question or prompt that relates to your topic and objective(s).

Does Artie suffer from survivor’s guilt?

STEP 4: Compile credible sources (reading excerpts, charts, graphs, other data forms) that relate to your objectives (usually a minimum of 4 sources).

a. excerpts from the Crary article

b. page 41 & 42 from Maus 2

c. infographic about survivor’s guilt

STEP 5: For each document, create scaffolding questions to get students focused on the specific elements of the document that related to your key objectives.

a. list and annotate characteristics/ differentiate between “healthy” behaviors and SG-related behaviors/ b. separate timelines/ explain relationship between past and present/ identify SG-related imagery in illustrationsc. ok, this doesn’t actually exist…

It is clear that Artie suffers from survivor’s guilt because he exhibits the clinical symptoms.

Artie is successful but plagued by past trauma.

Doc: A, C, F

Artie suffers from profound depression.

Doc: A, B, CArtie self-medicates to deal with stress.

Doc: A, B, D, E

Making DBQ Work for YouTalk to the people around you and brainstorm some ways you could change or adapt the DBQ model to meet your needs:

Lose the essay

Introduce content

Debate

Feeling like every research assignment culminates in an essay is terribly daunting. Lighten it up, build skills (and, seriously, less grading…)

True to the backward mapping/ Understanding by Design model, this approach allows students to build schema naturally as they work through the lesson. This is a great way to supplement fiction texts and work in those non-fiction skills!

Culminate with a debate or spectrograph wherein students can verbalize their opinions and ideas rather than writing.

Jigsaw

DIY

Other process driven writing

Split the sources up among groups of students to study and present to their classmates.

Experienced or advanced students can create their own DBQ activity. Focus on locating and evaluating sources as well as proper documentation.

Consider ending with a process-driven business letter, advertisement, or pamphlet

Keep in touch and let me know how you use DBQ in your classrooms!

cthomas@wths.net