A Tale of Two News Shows

I know YOU know that people are often judged based on their choice of news outlets. “I don’t believe the liberal media” or “he heard that on Fox News”.

Did you know that this isn't new? Before the US Civil War, there were separate mailed newspapers that went to people with different political views. This whole Fox News vs. MSNBC thing isn’t new. There were entire newspapers devoted to journalistic obliteration of Andrew Jackson and entire newspapers devoted to supporting him. Often the separate newspapers were actually funded entirely and openly by political parties!

There are always multiple views on any issue, particularly on political and social “hot topics”.. There are always different ways to look at an issue or an event.

Just ask four different kids about the most recent campus fight and you will get four different stories. Add in the AP or nearby teacher or hall monitor and you have another set of stories.

Then, wait a week and ask about that fight again. Chances are, with time and perspective, that you will have some slight variations on that fight.

Then, ask someone’s mom. Or a student from another school. And you will get yet another side to the story.

Finding the middle ground between multiple sides of the story is what CORROBORATION is all about.

Corroboration is about establishing what is most probable by comparing the documents together. It recognizes disparities between accounts.

How can I teach my kids to look at corroboration between documents and accounts?

Here are some good prompts/questions to use to help kids dig into the corroboration...

• What do other documents say?
• Do the documents agree? If not, why?
• What are other possible documents?
• What documents are most reliable?
• The author agrees/disagrees with . . .
• These documents all agree/ disagree about . . .  
• Another document to consider might be . . .

This is, again, a Civic Literacy skill. It’s a reading skill. It’s what Common Core asks for. It’s what the LAFS ask for. It’s what the FSA asks kids to demonstrate. It’s what we want our voters to do. IT’s what we want ALL citizens to do -- not just the “advanced” kids or the “magnet kids” or the college-bound.

We want ALL kids to understand and master the skill of corroboration!

How can we continue to give kids intentional practice corroborating? As always, I love to hear from you! Email me at newmantr@pcsb.org

-Tracy

Context

My kid went nuts when we couldn’t find his blue shorts. It had to be THOSE blue shorts. Both of my kids stayed up waaaaay too late. They looked ridiculous. So did I. I let them roam all over someone else’s neighborhood and talk to strangers who looked weird. They ate more sugar than their small bodies could handle and wound up literally running in circles to work some of the sugar out of their systems. Some neighbor had a scary movie playing on a projector on the outside wall and both my kids had nightmares. We went home at the obscene hour of nine o’clock, it was too late for baths,  and the whole family was in tears by ten.

It was so much fun!!!!

“It” was, of course, Halloween.

Context. It makes all the difference.

The difference between “#parentingfails” and “pretty average” is in the context. The question of  Halloween or Regular Wednesday Night has a pretty big impact on your understanding.

Context is an area where a lot of our kids struggle. We as teachers struggle with teaching context sometimes, too. It’s hard to tell the difference between context and content.  What “stuff” about history or government or economics is the important “stuff” and which is just contextual “stuff”.

If you’ve ever showed your students a throwback Thursday picture, only to have them giggle and wonder at your hair or clothes, you know how important context is.

Context is JUST as important in social studies, too.

• The Constitution did not originally give every adult citizen the right to vote, of course.  Originally, the states determined who could vote, often choosing only land-owning, white men over age 21, often about 6% of the population.

The context behind that is a powerful piece of that understanding. The context of gender, race, power, money, and language in the original electorate was essential to understanding that limited enfranchisement

• The beginnings of Buddhism as a reaction to Hinduism is a huge reason that Buddhism caught on in the first place. That context of a stratified Hindu society is what makes Buddhism stand out. It’s different. It’s a reaction to its historical context.
• The Scientific Revolution is only a “revolution” in the context of the previously religious understanding of the universe.

Without context, it’s impossible to understand an “impact” or an “effect” -- because there has to be some context, some THING to be impacted or effected.

So, every single time we bust out a document in class, kids should use some context. There are plenty of ways to do this (APPARTS, Doc Analysis Sheets, etc.) but here are the questions that SHEG (Stanford History Education Group) asks us to use ...

• When and where was the document created?
• What was different then?
• What was the same?
• How might the circumstances in which the document was created affect its content?

If you’re looking for some quick prompts to practice contextualizing documents, SHEG gives us a few to start with:

• Based on the background information, I understand this document differently because ...
• The author might have been influenced by ___ (historical context).
• This document might not give me the whole picture because...

If you read last week’s WW email, you know we talked about Sourcing. Contextualization is interwoven with sourcing as we look at the people and circumstances around the CREATION of the document to inform our understanding.

Again, this is not just a HISTORICAL Literacy Skill. It’s a Civic Literacy Skill. It’s a Citizenship Skill. It’s a Media Literacy Skill. It’s a Social Media Skill. It’s a Personal Relationship Skills.

It’s a life skill.

Looking at the context of a document is crucial to understanding it. We need to help our students use context when they read the news or a listen to a candidate or watch something online.

Let’s get them in the habit of asking those context questions every time they come across a document. I think it can be powerful in understanding history and current events.

How do you ask your kids to contextualize? Do you do it frequently? How can you tuck in these questions every time you bust out a document?

AS always, I love to hear from you. And Happy Halloween. Don’t let the Candy-Hangovers get you down tomorrow!

-Tracy

The Source

Imagine that you got a letter in the mail (with students, I pretend that they found a note in the  hall or in their lockers). Imagine that this letter or note said horrible things about you. Imagine that it accused you of doing terrible things and it called you awful names.

Now, think about who wrote it. You would deal with that letter or note differently if it was from a friend you had a disagreement with ... differently if it was from your ex ... differently if it was from your current significant other (and you thought everything was ok) ... differently if it was from your sibling ... differently if it was from a coworker  ... differently if it was from ANOTHER coworker... differently if it was from a complete stranger!

Sourcing matters.

It matters when you look to see what news outlet a Facebook link comes from. It matters which parent sent which email. It matters what author said which quote. It matters which individual made which comment on your social media. It matters what think tank funded which study. It matters which PAC paid for which ad. It matters which organization sponsors what website.

It also matters whether the document is from the Egyptian pharaoh or the Egyptian slave or the Kushite trader or the Israelite slave in Egypt or the British historian or the Greek enemy.

Sourcing matters.

For every document, we always ask:

• Who wrote this?
• What is the author’s perspective?
• Why was it written?
• When was it written?
• Where was it written?
• Is it reliable? Why or why not?

The way we read and understand a document (or even a secondary source, really) depends on sourcing. Just as in the letter/note example, you would deal with that mean and nasty letter differently if it was your ex than you would if it was a coworker.

How would you react if it was your ex that wrote that letter (for some of us it might have been a long time ago and we might be surprised that they even remembered that we exist!)

How would you react if it was your sibling that wrote that letter? (it probably depends on how that relationship with your sibling is these days)

How would you react if it was your significant other wrote that letter? (assuming that things were generally good between you)

It depends on what you know about the author -- or about his time period or about her culture about his location or about her group/organization.

Sourcing matters.

It is the first step in our historical thinking skills AND it is a crucial piece in the civic literacy -- AND it is the a big part of the ELA/LAFS standards.

If I can challenge you this week to do one thing it’s this:

Have your kids dig into the sourcing information of EVERYTHING THEY READ.

They need to be in the habit of looking at the source for Social Studies, for ELA, and for Civic Life.

Teach them how to look at the source of current events, historical documents -- even textbooks!

Did  you read the article a few years ago about the Texas textbook that said that enslaved persons fought FOR the South in the Civil War?

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2010/10/20/130693482/va-textbook-claims-blacks-fought-for-south-in-civil-war-source-the-internet

Uhhhhh ....  No.

That textbook writer (OMG that was a textbook writer!!!) pulled info off a Sons of the Confederacy website that has no evidence to support its claim.

It can happen anywhere that people are not careful. If we don’t look at the sourcing information, we don’t understand the author’s point of view.

That doesn’t mean we’re sourcing documents to see if they’re RIGHT or not, TRUTHFUL or not. It means we’re sourcing them to see where the author is coming from.

If you have never seen the SHEG Lunchroom fight lesson on sourcing, it will make this sourcing stuff make MUCH more sense. https://sheg.stanford.edu/history-lessons/lunchroom-fight . You need a login, but it’s free and some of the highest quality Historical Thinking stuff out there!

Goal for the week: Be more intentional about sourcing everything with kids -- including secondary sources! If you make it a good habit, kids will get in that habit too!

Questions? Thoughts? Awesome ways you source documents? As always, email me. I want to hear all about it!! newmantr@pscb.org