The Decision Making Process/News Analysis Guide

These are more activities I got from my mentor teacher. They can be combined as a great critical thinking process that force students to analyze a large problem one piece at a time. Doing the News Analysis prior to the Decision Making Process is good because students can usually connect understanding to a contemporary issue more easily than to a historical one. In other words, the News Analysis Guide is good scaffolding for the Decision Making Process. I have used both in all my social studies classes to analyze historical, economic and legal issues. It is good to dissect problems in a way that shows students that historical and contemporary events are not inevitable but many outcomes could happen instead. It is important for students to realize that people make decisions that produce the outcomes that occur today and in the past. You have to model the process for students before they do it themselves and they will continue to need guidance the first few times they do it. It is good to have students work in small groups to discuss the positive and negative aspects of possible solutions to the problem. Once students have experience with the process they will be able to do it independently. I plan to use the Decision Making Process more frequently in the future and for each of my U.S. History units to delve into a major issue for each time period.