Diamond 9: Why was maintaining law and order difficult in the American West?

This critical thinking skills activity has been designed to provide stretch and challenge for students studying why it was difficult to maintain law and order in the American West. .The key theory underpinning this type of strategy is that when we rank items, either statements, objects or images, we are required to make explicit the over- arching relationships by which we organise our knowledge and connect our learning. If you are looking for a more traditional exercise then please check out my card sort matching exercise on this topic, which can be downloaded from my TES shop. This resource will easily work alongside any main steam textbook or resource on this topic.

The resource includes nine diamond shaped cards which include a range of factors which explain it was difficult to maintain law and order in the American West. The document is provided in Microsoft Word so you can edit the resource if you wish to customise it further by changing any of the key factors that I have included. Once students have cut out the cards out they are set three tasks including:

1. Remove any reasons that you don’t think are important. Record and explain why you have removed them.
2. Arrange the remaining diamonds to show any links that you can find between the different reasons. Record and explain your reasons.
3. Make a smaller diamond shape using the four most important reasons to explain why it was difficult to maintain law and order in the American West. Record and explain the reasons for your choices.

At each stage students should be feeding back to their group or the class and explaining their choices. The discussion and explanation around the choices that they have made are critical in helping them develop their thinking skills as well as their understanding of this topic.

The aims and objectives for this lesson are:

Theme: The American West
Know: What were the key reasons why maintaining law & order was difficult?
Understand: What roles did social, economic, geographical factors as well as the values and attitudes play of the people at the time, play in making law enforcement difficult?
Evaluate: Which was the most important factor?

WILF - What Am I Looking For?
Identify and describe: what were the main reasons why maintaining law and order was difficult?
Explain: What roles did social, economic, geographical, factors as well as the values and attitudes of people at the time, play in making law enforcement difficult?
Analyse: Which was the most important factor?

Kind Regards

Roy