1. Part III of IDM: Sources
Dr. John Lee | NCSU
Dr. Kathy Swan | UKY
Arkansas
June 2015

2. Part III: Sources This session What is the nature of sources?
What are sources? What makes a source disciplinary? What is the relationship between sources and tasks? How do sources support work with knowledge and skills?
What are the instructional uses of sources?
Spark curiosity/Build knowledge/Construct arguments
What should teachers think about when using sources?
Selecting sources/Scaffolding /Adapting sources

3. What are sources?
Sources provide information that is useful in answering questions.
Three characteristics of sources
Information contained in a source
Composition of a source
Perspective or bias of a source

4. What makes a source disciplinary?
Sources have features that are distinctive within the disciplines.
Examples of disciplinary sources and processes include:
Political Science – Legislation evaluating public policies
Economics – Data and statistics quantitative reasoning
Geography - Maps and GIS data spatial reasoning
History - Oral history and diaries perspective

5. What is the relationship between sources & tasks?
IDM tasks are anchored by sources
Sources and tasks must work in tandem

6. Source work follows C3 Inquiry Arc
If students are asked a COMPELLING question……
In the middle are the
FORMATIVE TASKS
(Content and Skills)
Students answer in the form of a SUMMATIVE
ARGUMENT
Sources

7. Part II: What are the instructional uses of sources?
Sources can be used to:
Spark curiosity
Build knowledge
Construct arguments

8. Sparking Curiosity
Using sources for the purpose of curiosity & engagement.
Focusing on relevance and what we know students care about.
Can be used throughout the tasks but often used within Staging Activities in IDM.

9. Uncle Tom’s Cabin Inquiry
“Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.”
American Note-Books of Nathaniel Hawthorn, May 18, 1848

10. Uncle Tom’s Cabin Inquiry
Kailash Satyarthi

11. Discussion Do you use sources to spark students’ curiosity. If so, how
Discussion Do you use sources to spark students’ curiosity? If so, how? If not, how might you start?

12. Building Knowledge
Sources in an inquiry contain the disciplinary knowledge (content and concepts) students need to complete tasks.
Students use disciplinary skills when building knowledge.
Students gather information from the sources during an inquiry.

13. How do the sources support the building knowledge?

14. Constructing Arguments w/ Evidence
Inquiries result in arguments.
Sources contain information that can be used as evidence in an argument.
Students need support determining what information should be used in an argument.

15. How do the sources support the argument?

16. Featured Source from 4th Formative Task

17. Preparing sources for use in an inquiry
When using sources in an inquiry teachers should consider the following:
Selecting sources
Adapting sources
Scaffolding

18. Selecting Sources
Selection of sources requires deep knowledge of content.
Where can we find the sources?
Archives, libraries, collections
Online
Through collaboration and sharing
Students should encounter a variety of source types.

19. Selecting Sources

20. Selecting Sources
The sources selected for this formative task include a summary of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, four excerpts from the book, and two illustrations.
Featured Source A, the summary, was found at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center at In selecting this source, the authors of the inquiry were looking for a brief, authoritative, and readable summary of the book.
Featured Source B includes excerpts from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The text excerpts in Featured Source B were taken from a version of the book available on Project Gutenberg at Passages were carefully selected to represent the supporting question, as the passages focused on Stowe’s descriptions of slavery.
Featured Source C includes two illustrations from the first edition of the book and were found in an online project available at the University of Virginia and developed by professor Stephen Railton at These illustrations were selected to extend and punctuate the text passages and to provide students with a different modality through which to learn about Stowe’s depiction of slavery.

21. IDM Lab™

22. Your task
Find a source that would help stage your compelling question.
Find “featured sources” to help support your formative performance tasks.
Ask yourself: What sources would help students become curious, build background knowledge, construct arguments?

23. Preparing sources for use in an inquiry
This session
When using sources in an inquiry teachers should consider the following:
Selecting sources
Adapting sources
Scaffolding

24. Adapting Sources Excerpting: using just a portion of the source.
Modifying: inserting definitions or changing words in the text.
Annotating: additional descriptions or notes added alongside the text.

25. Discussion: Where do you stand with modifying, adapting, excerpting sources?

26. Annotation Excerpt Featured Source for Formative Task 1
Summary: Fugitive slave Eliza is speaking with a friendly white woman who has taken her in after escaping Kentucky and crossing the Ohio River into the free state of Ohio. Eliza left after she found out that her master was going to sell her son Harry to an unscrupulous slave trader. Eliza and Harry are eventually joined by her husband George in Canada.
"I have lost two, one after another,--left 'em buried there when I came away; and I had only this one left. I never slept a night without him; he was all I had. He was my comfort and pride, day and night; and, ma'am, they were going to take him away from me,--to sell him,--sell him down south, ma'am, to go all alone,--a baby that had never been away from his mother in his life!"
Annotation
Excerpt

27. Summary: In this illustration, Eliza comes to tell Uncle Tom and his wife Chloe, that Tom and Eliza’s son Harry have been sold to a slave trader. Eliza had just overheard the news from her master Mr. Shelby that the trader would arrive in the morning to take Tom and Harry away. In a panic, Eliza plans that night to run away.
Annotation

28. Sources require scaffolding
This session
Scaffolds provide novices with support for complex academic work.
Toolkit scaffolds were designed to support formative and summative tasks.
Analyzing sources in an inquiry involves literacy work.
Again, source work is not easy.

29. Scaffolds throughout to help guide students reading

30. Scaffolds throughout to help guide students reading

31. Questions
Tasks
Sources

32. Summary: Sources IDM features three instructional uses of sources
Sparking curiosity,
Building knowledge, and
Constructing arguments with evidence.
When using sources in an inquiry teachers should consider the following
Selecting sources,
Scaffolding, and
Adapting sources
This slide provide as a summary of the session.
Session three focused on the nature of sources and the instructional uses of sources.
Sources contain information useful in answer questions, they are disciplinary in nature, relate to the tasks in an inquiry, and support work with content, concepts, and skills.
IDM features three instructional uses of sources.
sparking curiosity and initiating an inquiry,
building concept and conceptual knowledge through the use of disciplinary skills, and
constructing arguments with evidence.
When using sources in an inquiry teachers should consider the following.
Selecting sources
Scaffolding
Adapting sources

33. IDM Lab™

34. Your task
Now that you have located some sources, let’s spend some time preparing the sources.
Modify/Excerpt/Scaffold sources to better engage students.
Use the IDM Quick Guide to Gathering and Using Disciplinary Sources.