Start With Skills

It’s the beginning of the year. You’re still learning kids’ names. You’re still teaching classroom procedures. You’re still waiting for everybody to have their supplies. You’re still feeling the back-to-school total exhaustion.  

You’ve just started content and realized that your kids have no historical thinking skills. They look at you blankly when you even suggest that such a thing as “historical thinking skills” exist (even though you KNOW their social studies teacher from last year and you KNOW that they learned those skills.)

How do you know that they have no historical thinking skills (yes, those skills do exist!)? People who struggle with historical thinking skills often...

• ...Believe that there is only one answer to historical questions
• ...Talk about history in terms of “good guys” and “bad guys”
• ...Think history is boring and are bored with facts
• ...Wonder why  we need to learn history at all
• ...Think that all history is knowable (and that it’s all in the textbook)
• ...Believe that there is only one side to the story
• ...Can’t distinguish a good source from a blog by a weirdo
• ...Don’t have evidence to back up their claims

It’s time to adapt

The Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) has put together some fantastic, adaptable, brief mini-lessons that are fun and engaging -- and that teach historical thinking skills.

Some you could do in 10 minutes as a turn-and-talk and then debrief. Some would be more in depth.

But if you want to set the stage for the year and teach your students historical thinking skills explicitly and intentionally -- I would try these.

--Side note! These will make everything you try to do with historical thinking easier throughout the year. The will give the kids the skills they need in your class and on The Test.  

Check it out.

*Disclaimer. You will need to set up a free account with SHEG, if you haven’t done so already. Don’t worry. They won’t spam you or annoy you with email.

1. Lunchroom Fight: A fight breaks out in the lunchroom and the principal needs to figure out who started it. But when she asks witnesses, she gets conflicting accounts. Helps students understand how we know what we know about history and gets into using and evaluating sources.
2. Snapshot Autobiography:  What is history? And why do historical accounts differ? In this lesson, students create brief autobiographies and then reflect on the process to better understand how history is written.  
3. Evaluating Sources:  Are all historical sources equally trustworthy/ How might the reliability of a historical document be affected by the circumstances under which it was created? In this mini-lesson, students sharpen their ability to source documents and learn to think critically about what sources provide the best evidence to answer historical questions.
4. Make your case!: This lesson is about the skill of corroboration. To practice this historical thinking skill, students  evaluate and corroborate different accounts of who vandalized a locker room and who started a fight in a lunchroom.

Like building your classroom culture and your relationships with students, building historical thinking skills is something that takes a little time in the beginning of the year but that pays off greatly as the year goes on.

Try one and let me know how it goes! As always, I love to hear from you! newmantr@pcsb.org

-Tracy