Sourcing a Primary Document

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Engraving, "Eureka," 1866, Library of Congress
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This historian think aloud shows a historian reading an edited statement by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) regarding the 1925 Scopes Trial. Specifically, this 73-second video shows a historian considering the source of this document and generating questions, before launching into the document’s contents.

The accompanying audio commentary, Using the Think-Aloud, points out what the historian is doing so viewers can see why her questions and processes are called historical thinking. These two features work together to help viewers visualize thinking processes that are usually implicit and hidden.

Why Did It Happen? Making Claims about Cause and Effect

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For more information

Christie, F., & Derewiank, B. (2009). School Discourse: Learning to Write Across the Years of Schooling. New York: Continuum.

As we ask students to become more sophisticated in their historical thinking, we expect them to move from reporting historical events to explaining and interpreting them. Making claims about historical events requires a shift in writing that requires new language tools.

Many students, especially English learners, will require more support in the form of explicit instruction in writing explanations about relationships between events and conditions in history. One central relationship in history is cause and effect.

Reading Like a Historian

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The Stanford History Education Group produced these lessons and materials as part of the Reading Like a Historian (RLH) curriculum. Three introductory lessons draw upon familiar, real-life situations to help students understand historical thinking and prepare them to do inquiry using primary and secondary sources. For example, one lesson positions students to understand sourcing by having them reason through why witnesses to a lunchroom fight might tell different stories about what happened. Also included here are resources for teaching the historical thinking skills of sourcing, contextualization, and corroboration. These include handouts that remind students what questions they should ask as they analyze documents and a helpful skills chart with useful prompts and descriptions (see "Classroom posters).

Close Reading of a Primary Document

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Lithograph, "Search the Scriptures," N. Currier, 1835-1856, Library of Congress
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This student think-aloud shows a student reading a speech by former Louisiana Governor Huey Long. During this 72-second video, the student reads the document out loud. She slows down when she encounters difficult passages and asks questions when she encounters problematic language or logic. This example of close reading reveals a student considering the meaning of a document as she reads it. The accompanying written commentary explains what the student is doing and why such a skill is critical for reading complex historical texts. These two features work together to make explicit reading strategies that are usually hidden.

The speech may be downloaded here.

Scholars in Action: Analyzing 19th-Century Letters

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Scholars In Action presents case studies that demonstrate how scholars interpret different kinds of historical evidence. These letters were written by labor activist, reformer, and entrepreneur Sarah Bagley in 1846 and 1848 to Angelique Martin, a prominent reformer and champion of women's rights. Bagley advocated on behalf of the young female workers employed in textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, and elsewhere in New England, and was also involved in campaigns for women's rights. Her career, and these letters, reflect the ways that movements for women's rights, factory workers' rights, and the abolition of slavery intertwined in the 1840s and 1850s, including debates comparing the working and living conditions of slaves to those of northern factory workers.

Nature Transformed: The Environment in American History

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Detail, Nature Transformed
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This collection of essays, commissioned from distinguished scholars, is designed to deepen content knowledge and offer fresh ideas for teaching. Essays begin with a thorough overview of the topic. “Guiding Discussion” offers suggestions on introducing the subject to students, and “Historians Debate” notes secondary sources with varied views on the topic. Notes and additional resources complete each essay. Essays include links to primary sources in the National Humanities Center’s Toolbox Library and are part of the larger TeacherServe project.

Visitors can browse 17 essays, divided into "Native Americans and the Land," "Wilderness and the American Identity," and "The Use of the Land." These focus on the changing ways in which North Americans have related to the natural world and its resources. Topics include, among others, “The Columbian Exchange,” “The Effects of Removal on American Indian Tribes,” “Cities and Suburbs,” and “Environmental Justice for All.”

Useful for teachers looking to expand their content knowledge beyond the information and viewpoints presented in textbooks, and to get a taste of historians' debate over the interpretation of history.

Children’s Voices from the Civil War

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Photo, "Camp of 31st Pennsylvania Infantry near Washington, DC," 1862, LoC
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Why do it?

Textbooks, which feature the passive voice and condensed versions of momentous events, rarely capture the passion and drama of the past. By supplementing the textbook with documents that show how real-life children experienced historical events, the teacher can engage students' interests and can also offer multiple perspectives on historical events.

As an example of this approach, consider children's experiences during the Civil War. Although Joy Hakim's excellent textbook A History of US (volume six, War, Terrible War), touches on how the war affected children's lives, students can gain a much deeper understanding through analyzing additional primary sources. Documents such as period photos and excerpts from letters help students reconstruct what children experienced during the Civil War.

Young girls were pressed into service as nurses when their farms and villages became battlefields.

The destructive swath of "total war" drew children into its path as they witnessed violent death, looting and burning of their homes and farms, and occupation by the enemy. Boys as young as 13 enlisted as drummer boys, and while official recruitment policies required that a soldier be at least 18, many younger boys conveniently added a few years to their age or received permission from their fathers to enlist. Young girls were pressed into service as nurses when their farms and villages became battlefields.

What is it?

After reading a section of the textbook, students analyze primary sources showing how children their age experienced the events described in the textbook. In this lesson, students examine excerpts from letters written by teenagers who witnessed or participated in Civil War battles, and they analyze period photographs to consider the extent and ramifications of children's involvement.

Teachers can adapt this approach to other historical topics by supplementing with the appropriate primary sources.

Example
  1. To gain background knowledge, students read Chapter 16 of War, Terrible War, "The Soldiers.” Ask students to consider the following questions as they read.
    • How did adolescent boys experience the war?
    • How did adolescent girls experience the war?
  2. As you discuss the chapter with students, help them understand the mixture of excitement, optimism, boredom, homesickness, and terror that many young soldiers describe. Students may note that the chapter does not discuss how adolescent girls experienced the war.
  3. Assign students to teams or pairs. Distribute copies or display the photograph, "A Soldier and His Family." Explain to students that this photo was taken early in the war (1862) in the camp of the 31st Pennsylvania Infantry near Washington, DC. Ask students to speculate and discuss with their teammates the following questions.
    • As a child, what do you think it would be like to live in a Civil War army camp? What responsibilities might the young girl pictured have?
    • What does the photograph tell you about living in such a camp? What details in the photo support your impressions?
  4. Distribute the sheet "Children’s Voices from the Civil War" to student pairs or teams. Students discuss the quotes with teammates, and answer the following questions.
    • How were boys' and girls' experiences of the war similar? Different?
    • How did enslaved children view and experience the war?
    • How did the war change the lives of the children being studied?
    • What character qualities did these youths demonstrate in their response to war?
    • How does it change your perspective to read the quotes from the boys and girls?
Why is this a best practice?

Comparing the textbook with additional primary source documents expands students' knowledge, breathes life into the text, and introduces the voices of those left out of the text—in this case, girls. While women did not officially serve as soldiers, some accompanied their husband or fathers to army camps or were pressed into service as nurses when battles raged near their homes. Supplementing the text with voices of young soldiers gives students a broader picture of how boys self-reported their reasons for enlisting and their experiences.

For more information

The photo, "A Soldier and His Family," is available on the Library of Congress website.

Hakim, Joy. A History of US. Vol. 6, War, Terrible War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Student handout, Children's Voices from the Civil War.

TR Workbench

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What is it?

What is it?

TR Workbench is a web authoring application that allows users to create single pages or full sites, portfolios, and classroom and conference presentations—"any content you could imagine!"—and save them.

TR Workbench features include integrated use of text and images, tools for image manipulation, and ample facility for substance-laden content. Easy drag-and-drop tools promote coherent content and graphic quality. Projects can also be downloaded or embedded in a blog, wiki, ning, or ordinary HTML screen. There's no software to download and Workbench is compatible with Firefox, Explorer, and Safari.

Founder, Ron Gwiazda, started TR Workbench after 27 years in the Boston Public Schools as a teacher, department head, and curriculum and program developer. According to Gwiazda, his goal "has been to create the software that we wished that we had while in school, software that would allow non-technical teachers and students to collaborate, create and share all kinds of online content."

This concern is reflected in introductory, teacher-narrated videos which not only take the user through the mechanics of establishing a site, but explain the teaching methodology, lesson module progression, and relevance of selected resources.

Getting Started
...our goal is to create the software that we wished that we had while in school...

Ease of use and technical support are hallmarks of TR Workbench and geared to a variety of student and educator needs. Tutorials explain how to create a classroom group, control permissions and privacy for different kinds of use and access, and talk about how group members may work collaboratively on specific projects.

Workbench tutorials are comprehensive and step-by-step, and incorporate a learning-by-doing approach supplemented with thorough explanations. It's an excellent program for beginners and the advanced alike.

An extensive collection of tutorial materials occupy their own searchable site.

A site blog talks about updates and projects and offers tips and tricks.

The basic free use of the site limits the number of projects and web screens. A special subscription for a teacher and 20 students costs $46 per year (February 2009 quote); additional blocks of 10 students are $15 each. This subscription level offers a variety of tools for group projects. Information about opening a block of school accounts including students, teachers, administrators—any school staff—is available on request.

Examples

Third graders through graduate students currently use Workbench. Current projects include school and teacher websites, digital publications, and a diverse array of classroom and conference presentations. Examples of the variety of student individual and group work and teacher presentations are available on the TWorkbench website. They are flash presentations accessed and viewed via a browse page.

Educators may also contact TRworkbench about free accounts. Gwiazda can offer large blocks of accounts free to teachers and programs with a keen interest in experimenting with online collaborating, creating and sharing, and will offer tech support as needed.

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Date Published
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The Tenement Museum website provides engaging and entertaining ways to introduce young students to primary sources.

The Tenement Museum website provides engaging

The “Elementary School Lesson” found under “Primary Source Activities” uses a family photo, a postcard, a report card, and a passport to examine the life of Victoria Confino, an immigrant girl at the turn of the 20th century.

Because these sources are mostly visual, they allow easier access for young students and English language learners than text-dense sources.

    The lesson provides useful guiding questions for the teacher:
  • when helping students examine the documents.
  • After students have discussed the sources,
  • they are asked to write a paragraph about Victoria’s life.

Michael Yell on a Strategy for the Use of Textbooks in the History Classroom

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Photo, Graffiti Archaeology in Getlein's Living with Art, otherthings
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[The readers] fundamental purpose is to understand the text, to grasp what is being said from the point of view of the person writing.

—Richard Paul

In recent blogs I have written about teaching strategies for involving students in inquiry and using primary sources, strategies that I have found engage students and help them “enter into” the content. And while we should be engaging our history students in inquiry by using primary sources, we also have textbooks that we are to use in our classes. Can we use the textbook in thoughtful active ways, ways that help the reader understand the text, or is “read these pages and do the chapter questions” part and parcel of history instruction?

This blog will examine a teaching strategy, and some variations, that I have found make reading text material a more engaging, interactive, and thoughtful learning experience for my students. The strategy is known as GIST.

G.I.S.T.

Generating Interactions between Schemata and Texts is a rather imposing name, but my 7th graders have no difficulty grasping this acronym. I learned this strategy this past summer in a workshop put on by two of my district’s ELL staff, but soon found that it benefitted all of my students. I often use this strategy when using the textbook, and have also adapted it for DVD clips and use with primary sources.

Can we use the textbook in thoughtful active ways, ways that help the reader understand the text?

When using GIST your students read a passage in a text, and then discuss the section. During the review they find and note a small number (four or five depending upon the size of the reading) of key concepts or terms that they consider most important to understanding that reading. Finally, using their own words, students write a summary of the reading which uses those key terms. Those terms are underlined or highlighted in their summary.

When first using the strategy, it is important to model it. My students are in groups and so I give each group a paragraph about a topic we are studying. They read through it together, and, when the reading is complete, underline/highlight what they feel are the key terms.

I have the same paragraph written on my Smartboard. We talk it through in class, and use the highlighting function to make note of their key terms (volunteers come up and do the highlighting). Finally we write a summary in class that includes the highlighted terms.

Example

As an example, take these paragraphs from Joy Hakim’s A History of Us: War, Terrible War, 1855-1865. In this section, Ms. Hakim writes about President Lincoln’s address at Gettysburg. She begins with a few words about the main speaker of the occasion, Edward Everett:

He talks for almost two hours, without notes, in a voice deep and rich. Later no one seems to remember what he said, but they knew he said it well. There are prayers and other speeches, and the 15,000 listeners who sit or stand in the afternoon sun are hot and tired when the president finally rises, puts on his steel-rimmed glasses, and reads his few remarks. His is a country voice, and it sounds dull after the polished tones of an orator.

The speech was a failure; so Lincoln tells his friends, and so he believes. But he is wrong. The presidency has changed Lincoln. He has grown in greatness. He had learned to use words as a poet uses them—with great care and precision. He has been an able country lawyer with a good mind and a taste for jokes. Now he is much more than that. The deaths and the burdens of war are making him noble, and thoughtful, and understanding, and sad.

After students have read the passage, individually, in pairs, or small groups, I ask them to go back and choose the key terms and ideas that they feel are most important to understanding the passage. In this passage, for example, they might choose speech, failure, Lincoln, grown, noble.

Their final task is to rewrite the two paragraphs in a few sentences, using their own words, and including many, or perhaps all, of the key terms that they have listed. The key terms must be underlined or highlighted in their paragraph.

For instance, a student might write:

At Gettysburg President Lincoln spoke after Edward Everett, a famous speaker of the time. President Lincoln spoke briefly, and felt his speech was a failure. But he had grown from a small town lawyer to a noble president, and his speech reflected that growth.

Final Word

Although I only learned the GIST strategy this summer, it has become one of my go-to strategies for reading. Because work in my class is interactive, be it in pairs or small groups, students do at least part of the GIST reading assignment with others.

The basic ideas behind this strategy can be used with primary source readings by having students read the quotation, write the key words, and than summarize in their own words. Finally, it also works well with DVD clips. Set up the section for students to view, and then have them think about the section, decide on key terms, and write their summary.

The next blog will deal with my go-to strategy for using DVD or video clips in the classroom.

Give GIST a try, adapt the strategy, and make it your own.

For more information

Our Research Brief "Learning From History and Social Studies Textbooks" suggests other ways to strengthen textbook readings, while Teaching with Textbooks rounds up more entries on engaging with texts.

In Beyond the Textbook, historians take common points in textbooks' narratives, such as the Civil Rights Movement or the causes of the Civil War, and model opening them up with primary sources.