There are 7 components of a DBQ unit:
1. The Hook: getting students to think about the topic
2. Background Essay: providing context and a purpose for learning
3. Pre-bucketing: organizing thoughts
4. Document Analysis: carefully examining documents (primary and secondary sources)
5. Bucketing/Chicken foot: deciding on main points and which documents support them
6. Thrash out: students are discussing the evidence found on each document and how it supports arguments
7. The Essay: a 5-paragraph essay, from graphic organizer to final copy
I do the hook, background essay and pre-bucketing with the whole class. The students lead the discussions though and I guide when needed. We do the first document together as well. I like to set the tone here. The documents are charts, graphs, pictures, journal entries, excerpts from books or articles. I thought my students might have difficulties locating the evidence in the documents. Nope. They are great detectives! I send the other documents home as homework and we discuss/analyze them in class the next day. The copies of the documents are littered with their notes and questions and highlighting. There are questions to answer on the bottom of the page. Text-dependent questions. Another buzzword in education these days. TDQs. The students must use the documents to answer questions (it's the evidence!). Doesn't that just scream Common Core?!
After the document analysis, the class gets together to discuss the question and the categories that the documents create. For Valley Forge, our buckets were survival, Congressional support, and not wanting to be a "summer soldier." The students decided which document supported each category. There were only four documents in this mini DBQ, but two of the documents were contested about how they supported a claim, so it was a good conversation.
Once we had our documents categorized, the students went through a graphic organizer with sentence starters that set them up to write their 5-paragraph essay. I was so impressed with their writing! They were impressed with their own writing! Check out the website of the DBQ Project and be amazed. Below are some photos of my students's essays.
