From Role Playing to Decision Tree

1. From Role Playing to Decision Tree Teaching American History #4 12 October 2010

2. ROLE PLAYING What Is It? • It can be a simple announcement to a class: “It’s February of 1861. The state of Virginia has convened a “Peace Congress” in Washington D.C. You will each represent a state. Your goal is to prevent the further break-up of the union. Seven states have already seceded and are drafting a constitution. They refused to come claiming that they were foreign countries, however, for our role play, they will be included.”

3. It can also be very complicated with students doing research about their state, formulating resolutions, debating, and deliberating. For this kind of Role Play, it is useful to give students a list of questions they should be able to answer about their state and a list of common dates and events between 1820 and 1861 that might affect their views. These questions and lists can be more or less inclusive depending on the grade level.

4. Sample questions for representatives of a state: • What is your economy like? • Is slavery legal in your state? • What are the demographics of your state population? • What was your view of the Compromise of 1850? Kansas-Nebraska Act? Dred Scott decision? John Brown’s Raid? • Can you imagine any compromise with the states opposed to your views? How significant is Lincoln’s election to your state? • How do you feel about secession?

5. The role play falls into three parts: • 1) the preparation for it (thinking about a part or perspective, doing research if applicable; • 2) the playing it out; • 3) the debriefing (discussion of what happened as well as how the students felt about what was happening, including comparison of their outcome vs. the real outcome).

6. To do a Role Play, you need: • a known outcome; • any number of points of view about that outcome; • some plausible or actual meeting for the discussions to take place; • some agreed upon procedure for trying to reach decisions.

7. In this case: • outcome = dissolution of the union; • points of view = states; • meeting place = Virginia convened Peace Congress in early February 1861; • procedure = with Virginia presiding, discuss how to avoid dissolution of the union and reincorporation of the states that already left.

8. What Are the Goals? • Students gain greater familiarity with key facts and a more complex understanding of the reasons for a major historical event. • Overall, they gain a more sophisticated understanding of why individuals and groups act as they do. They become aware, for example, of intangibles like time, the power of ideologies, emotions, the interplay of personality and circumstance. For example, imagine doing the last two weeks of August 1914 where country representatives can only communicate by telegram…

9. How Do You Do It? • Plan at least two class periods. You need time to explain the situation and divide up the roles. Students can act as individuals or in groups depending on the exercise and the size of the class. • You need a minimum of one period to play out the situation. The best ones go for two or three periods. If possible, have a student preside. This avoids having the students looking to you when they express a point of view. • The debriefing is essential, especially the comparison of their outcome and the real events that transpired. If you feel that essential ideas were not explored, this is the time to bring them up.

10. Assessment of the Activity • In watching the role play, and in the course of the subsequent debriefing, it should be obvious what the students did and did not learn. • Written assignments can form part of the assessment, for example, the preparatory questions and the student’s answers. A prompt could be given after completion of the Role Play and before the debriefing discussion: why did they have this outcome, and how is it like or unlike what really happened?

11. Decision Tree What Is It? • A Decision Tree takes a major event and the list of events leading up to it and offers students an opportunity to consider different responses by one or many groups at key points along the way. • Presented with the actual response, they then consider the reasons for that response and what might happen next. It is a “tree” in the sense that each event prompts a range of possible responses, like the trunk of a tree and its branches. • Underlying each step in the process is the question, why? Why did it happen this way and not that way?

12. For example, a Decision Tree could ask “why was there a Civil War in the US? It could begin with the election of Abraham Lincoln, a “Free Soil” Republican as President in November of 1860. That is the fact. Then students consider: What would be the reaction of the different states? Or focus on just one state, the key decision of South Carolina.

13. Possible Responses for South Carolina: • Secede as it threatened to do in 1832; • Work with other states in Congress for a constitutional amendment protecting slavery in new territories; • Confer with other Democratic states to formulate a united response and press for extension of the Missouri Compromise line to all territories, including California even though it had already been admitted as a state.

14. Then give students the actual response, a new fact. South Carolina seceded from the Union in December, 1860. Discussion of reasons for that decision. Then provide a new opportunity for response: What would President Buchanan do?

15. The Tree can be made more or less complicated, depending on the number of events to be considered. More detail means more complications, and requires more class time. Discussion of the possible response can also be more or less structured. Students might be divided into groups, such as: representatives of the different states; members of different economic and social groups; leaders of the political parties.

16. How To Do It? • A Decision Tree is similar to a Role Play in that it explores why events happened as they did. • It is different from a Role Play in that it usually presents the events in much more detail and the possible responses are structured by the teacher. • A Role Play, at its best, is completely student directed. A Decision Tree is more like a guided discussion, similar to a Socratic dialogue.

17. To do a Decision Tree • You need a major event and a standard account of the lesser events leading to it. • Then, it is like making up a multiple choice test. • You list a fact; • you formulate real or imaginary responses; • and then go on to the next event …responses…and so on.

18. Resources for a Civil War Decision Tree These two web sites give more than enough detail to formulate a Decision Tree for the events leading up to South Carolina’s secession and the outbreak of war when Lincoln ordered troops sent to reinforce the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. • www.mrlincolnandfreedom.org • www.tulane.edu/~sumter/index.html The second site is set up with “Problems” and possible responses posed as “Questions.” This could be used as a modified Decision Tree for the older grades.

19. Underlying Goals A Decision Tree is meant to answer a big historical question. In this case: Why was there a civil war in the United States? It can also highlight a particular interpretation of events, such as one of those presented in Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction.

20. An Unusual View of Events? For example, the class could explore the idea that Lincoln caused the Civil War. The web site created by Tulane, uses Lincoln’s decision to fire on Fort Sumter decisive. We tend to take his decision for granted. In fact, however, Lincoln could have let the fort be surrendered. The Confederate States of America could have coexisted with the USA. The creation of two nations out of one larger one would not have been an odd event in the nineteenth-century, or for the Western Hemisphere. Lincoln’s view of the role of President as preserver of “the union” has no obvious basis in the Constitution or in his oath of office. His publicly expressed sentiment that “a nation half slave and half free” could not survive did not reflect the views of most politicians.

21. Goals and Assessment of the Activity Both goals and assessment strategies are similar to those of a Role Play. In a sense, however, the debriefing is happening all the time as each event and its response is discussed. The simplest assessment instrument is a pre-activity answer to the question: “Why was there a civil war in the United States?” and then a post-activity answer.

22. Web Resources • The Miami technology gurus offered a site that could be adapted for use for history. For those so inclined, go to: http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/quandary.php P.S. If you know of others, or find others, please pass them along!