Now that everyone in your class or group has reviewed background information on the Little Rock Nine, it's time to develop expertise. The wide range of historical events, integration strategies, and opinions mixed up in the topic of desegregation makes it necessary for us to look more deeply into it.
Analyzing the issues involved in desegregation and searching the Internet for related material helped to shape six main areas into three separate roles:
- Historians
- The Little Rock Nine & Changing Times
- Education, Race & the U.S. Supreme Court
- Social Scientists
- Understanding Integration Strategies
- Society's Response to Integration Strategies
- News Reporters
- Investigating Current Events
- Polling Local Opinions
A Word about Grouping
It's important to pause for a moment before choosing roles and groups. Factors like time, access to the Internet, reading ability, motivation, etc., should all be considered when students or teachers decide how to divide and group students. There is no one way to do this. Each class situation is unique, so students and teachers should work together to problem-solve what works best for them. Read the guide for ideas on how to try a variety of things, from having six different classes work collaborative, each taking on only one role, to having five or six whole groups working within one class.
Getting Started
Use the instructions below as a suggestion. Reflect on your local situation and goals to guide your final decisions. Again, each role can be adopted by anything from one person or a pair of students, right up to an entire classroom.
- Decide how you will tackle groups, as one class working collaborative with other classrooms of students or as groups of 5-12 students working as one group (you then may have 2-6 of these groups within one class).
- Choose, negotiate, accept a particular role to adopt.
- Go to the page set up for your role and read through the instructions.
- Complete the tasks assigned to your role, using Internet links and scaffold pages to help you.
Now go to it!
Click on the role you're going to become an expert in and get started.
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Created January, 1999
Updated November 9, 2004
Created by Tom March,
tom at ozline dot comApplications Design Team/Wired Learning