Teach Better - Work Less - Achieve More: Archetype Four Square EduProtocol

As a social studies teacher, the Archetype Four Square EduProtocol would be a great resource to help students learn about some of the most note-worthy individuals across time and space. World history is full of archetypal characters and situations. Consider revolutions: English, American, French, Haitian, Latin American, Mexican, Russian, African, not to mention more modern historical kerfuffles like the Cuban Missile Crisis, Watergate, and more. You don't have to have a doctorate in Jungian psychology to identify historical figures with personalities that have been prevalent since the dawn of time. If you students need help connecting people from the past to the people of today, this is the protocol for you! The Archetype Four Square protocol helps students apply what they have learned from a unit of study by sorting historical figures into conceptual tropes or familiar characters and situations. Characters might include the hero, the mother figure, the innocent, the mentor, the sidekick, the scapegoat, and the villain. Among the situations, we have the quest, the task, the hero's journey, the initiation, and the return.

Academic Goals

• Deepen analysis skills with historical figures
• Improve student elaboration on historical context and settings
• Strengthen social emotional learning by teaching social awareness, perspective-taking, empathy, appreciating diversity, and respect for others with social studies content

Teacher Big Ideas

You may find it helpful to design knowledge to place historical figures into character and situational archetypes. You may wish to provide icons and definitions of terms for your students so they don't spend too much time hunting for the perfect image.

Prepare for the Activity

Make sure students have a wide variety of sources to consult when they review the accomplishments of their historical figures or situations. Students can practice identifying the steps in the hero's journey using a 30-second political campaign video or radio spots. This does not have to be a text-based activity. Provide students with a summary of the topic or content.

Instructions

1. Provide students with a Frayer-like template and a list of the characters or historical figures that they will need to sort conceptually into character or situational archetypes. Do not ask them to do both at the same time when you are starting out. That task is better performed with the Hero's Journey EduProtocol.
2. Help students with their reasoning skills. For example, "This description makes it sound like Pancho Villa is a Robin Hood archetype because he wanted to take land from the Terrateniente and give it to the poor of Villistas." Model as much as possible using figures from across the curriculum.
3. Consider letting students work out their reasoning in small groups. They will argue over the definitions provided, and that is good practice.
4. Remember, there are really no right or wrong answers here. This protocol hits all of the Four Cs but requires students to collaborate and communicate to apply their knowledge into a new conceptual area. Yes, some students may be off base. Try asking them some questions to steer them back on track instead of giving them the answers.

Key Points to Remember

A mental model is a visual representation of how something works. Mental models help us understand complex thinking. They shape the connections we make with the world's intricacies. We use them to simplify complex ideas and ramifications. Hattie, Stern, Fisher, and Frey (2020) provided a mental model on learning transfer for social studies teachers. It uses a simple three-step process to help students grasp the structure of any subject or topic. First, students acquire an understanding of individual concepts, then they connect two or more concepts in a relationship, then they transfer them to new situations. The Archetype Four Square asks students to use critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity as they consider how their historical knowledge applies to new situations.

Adapting for AP

Some students are so excited when they identify a connection between a historical figure and an archetype that they forget to explain why making the comparison is important. This is key when providing analysis. Tell your students what it means! Explain why this feature or aspect is so important. The end-of-year AP tests in history require students to identify, compare, and evaluate multiple perspectives on a given historical event in order to draw conclusions about the event. The AFS protocol allows students to practice this type of thinking in a low stakes, collaborative classroom setting.

ELL Tips

Despite deficits with academic vocabulary, second language students are very familiar with the narrative structure. Narratives represent shared understandings of human experience. Narrative writing helps students develop audience awareness, organizational skills, and the ability to select and use specific, concrete details, all of which are key in informational and argumentative writing. In short, the AFS EduProtocol levels the equitable playing field in literacy instruction and helps students improve their writing with all types of text. The Archetype Four Square protocol will help students at all levels demonstrate that they can transfer their learning from one subject (English) to another (History). When students start to see that all of their subjects are connected, they become more engaged learners.

Adapting for Middle School

Students in middle school will need quick, direct instruction on archetypes before this lesson is implemented. It's best to share a quick definition of the word archetype along with some student examples. Students in a sixth-grade class used this lesson as a processing activity after a study of famous Egyptian pharaohs. The sixth graders did great with applying the archetypes to the pharaohs and using evidence and reasoning for their decisions. However, students struggled with connecting a modern-day person to the archetype. Practicing making connections across historical people and events is what the Archetype EduProtocol is all about.

Eighth-grade students completed an Archetype lesson combined with an Iron Chef. During this quick lesson, students could choose to read biographies and seven different founding fathers who were present at the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Students designed a slide based on what they learned about their figure. They listed five facts, included a picture, and applied an archetype to the character to their founding father. Since this was a quick lesson, the archetype characters were created to fit with the biographies of the signers.

Modifications

Think of Archetype Four Square as a baby step toward using the Hero's Journey protocol. The teacher provides the narrative and asks the students to fill in the archetypal characters and explain why each historical figure represents that type. Teachers provide archetype definitions and icons, and students find pictures of the historical figures and add a three- to five-line explanation that describes how the character fits the archetype. Have students add a blank slide explaining their reasoning for each historical figure.

See the slide deck below for detailed instructions and examples, and feel free to make a copy of the template.