Prompt Thinking: Zoom In
Primary sources offer unlimited opportunities for students to use critical thinking skills, vocabulary, and background knowledge.
Zoom-In gives students just a piece of an image to spark curiosity and requires students to look for evidence before rushing to inferences and opinions.
Overview
During Zoom-In, P-12 students uncover a primary source, text, artwork, student work or any other image piece by piece in order to look closely and use background knowledge to build understanding.
Student curiosity is prompted by an overarching question and guiding questions support students in observation, interpretation, and evaluation as small pieces of the image are revealed one at a time.
Students use evidence and subject-specific vocabulary to support their inferences. Finally, students reflect on their overarching essential question to further their understanding of the primary source and place the source in a larger context.
Further investigations may include related historical sources, readings, interviews, and/or field trips that ask students to test their inferences and understanding with new sources or problems.
How to create a Zoom In activity:
1. Start with an Investigative Question:
What might this source tell us about ____?
How does this source confirm or change your thinking about ____?
2. Spiral Guiding Questions:
2a. Look Closely: Observation Questions
What do you see?
Describe who/what you see in this image.
What new people or things do you see?
2b. Activate-Build Background knowledge, Use Vocabulary in Context: Interpretation Questions
When do you think this image was taken?
Make a hypothesis about what is happening in this picture.
What do you think happened before this picture was taken?
2c. Reflect and Wonder: Evaluation Questions
How did your perception of the image change as you saw more of it?
Why do you think this image was created?
What questions do you have?
3. Reach for “Big Picture” Understandings:
What does this image say about the relationship between _______ and ______?
Based on this image, how can you explain the impact of _______ on ________?
What do you understand about the role of __________ in our nation’s history?
How is _______________ applied to _______________?
4. Corroborate or Test Ideas Through Additional Research
How do these sources confirm or change your thinking?
Zoom-in Inquiry creates irresistible invitations to be curious. Reflect on the thinking process by asking students to identify comments and actions that were heard or seen during Zoom-in Inquiry that showed someone being curious by:
Wondering,
Asking questions
Observing closely
Finding problems
Being playful