1775 Colonial Newspaper
Barbara Clark Smith asks five questions of a 1775 newspaper article published by a Patriot press in Providence, RI:
- What interests you about this newspaper article?
- What do you notice when you read this article closely?
- What questions aren't answered by the document?
- What advice would you give to someone reading this for the first time?
- What would you do to understand the context for an article like this?
This is an article that was in the newspapers, the Patriot press in the 18th century. I tend to find these normally by looking through newspapers, which are generally on microfilm or in special collections. This one, however, I found in a specific collection, which is called the American Archives, edited by Peter Force. And what Peter Force did, in the early 19th century, was go and collect records from newspapers, from state papers, committee papers, and gather them together in several volumes and publish them as part of forming a documentary history of the American Revolution. So, this is a report that appeared in the colonial press. I'm not sure exactly where, but my guess is Boston or Hartford. Possibly more than one press because they tended to copy reports from each other. That's how they got their news, from other newspapers. And it's a report from Providence, RI.
The reason I'm interested in this sort of document is that I'm trying to get a kind of "close to the ground" look at the American Revolution. I want to know what the Patriot movement was like. The movement from, say, 1765 through the Revolution of people protesting parliamentary taxation and legislation. And I want to know less about the leading men who met in conventions and congresses, and who petitioned the King. I know a fair amount about them. I want to know about people on the local ground, ordinary people, women as well as men, and I want to know what was it like for them to become Patriots. And the questions I would bring to looking at these reports and newspapers would include: What is this telling me about ordinary people's participation? Not just what ideas might they bring to joining the Revolution, or becoming a Patriot. But also what practices, what things did they have to do to be a Patriot? How do you practice being a Patriot? What does it really mean to join this movement? And what's it like, again, not in the official bodies that we think of as Patriot leaders, but kind of on the local ground, in this case in Providence, RI.
The first thing I was struck by was actually the last sentence, this image of this "Son of Liberty" going around the shops with his lampblack, which is the soot from oil lamps, a kind of black carbon soot. And unpainting the word tea. It certainly makes me think of more famous events, like the Boston Tea Party. Although that's a real destruction of other people's property, they throw tea that doesn't belong to them into the harbor in Boston. But this seems sort of a smaller offering of one's own tea. But nonetheless, something of a gathering, a really dramatic gathering, where Patriots are expressing their political views.
Elsewhere in the second paragraph it says a great number of inhabitants—you'd really like to know, how many, how many that is compared to all of the inhabitants of Providence. They mention specifically some worthy women. So we know in this case the word inhabitants includes women, which sometimes it might or sometimes it doesn't. It doesn't specifically mention anyone else. We get the impression though that this is not limited to people who were qualified to vote. Certainly if women are there, it's not limited to qualified town voters. And possibly therefore there were men and boys present—apprentices, servants, slaves, sailors, any number of people who would normally not be voting and acting politically in that way, even in a town meeting. But who could attend a marketplace to purchase things, or in this case to refuse to purchase or to give up things or to observe. So it's an interesting characterization.
One thing that I think is intriguing too is there's an argument about tea in this. It's not just a description saying people came to burn their tea. It describes tea for you. That it's needless, we don't need it. It's been detrimental to our liberty and interest and health. And that's intriguing because you can see the logic by which it's detrimental to Patriots' liberty and interest. They don't want to pay taxes on it. They don't think Parliament should be taxing this. Health is another question, and it's interesting that the Patriots raised this issue of how its supposed to be unhealthy just when Britain puts a tax on it, that's not really a common thought in the 18th century—that tea is unhealthy. In fact, people take it in part for medicinal purposes. But here it's really argued for the reader that it's needless, you simply don't need to have it.
There's other information here that you can begin to pick up. That in addition to throwing the tea in the fire, they throw in some newspapers and a printed copy of a speech by Lord North that they disapprove of. And you can go and track down what was Lord North probably speaking about. Rivington's paper, a New York paper, Rivington's a loyalist, and he's arguing on behalf of parliamentary power. Mills and Hicks. So it's interesting they throw those newspapers in the fire as well. So it's not merely getting rid of the tea. It's all that English stuff.
I think one thing to notice about it is this isn't the kind of newspaper report we would expect, that we would get, of this happening. Even though it's written in the third person by someone describing it as if he or she was there, very authoritative, "this happened." It offers opinions in places where we might expect that you'd interview someone. It doesn't interview Jane Doe and have her say, "Well, I'm really cheerful to be throwing my tea in the fire, because I don't need this noxious weed." It's the reporter telling you and the reporter using language which testifies to his—and I think we can probably use the male pronoun here—position. In reading these it's tricky. You will sometimes read pieces like this which talk about true friends of the country and lovers of freedom. And you'll discover the writer is talking about the Loyalists, the Tories, because, of course, they think too that they're the true lovers of America and freedom. So you have to sometimes read for a while to figure that out. In this case it's pretty straight forward, since they're burning Tory newspapers and throwing away tea and supporting the Sons of Liberty.
I'd really like to know more. What happened in organizing this? How did this come about? Who planned it and what was it like to attend and to observe? For example, alright, at noon you hear that you were invited to testify your good disposition to the Patriot cause by bringing your tea. Well, what does it mean if you don't feel like doing it? Does that mean if I don't bring my tea, my neighbors will, from here on out, know that I don't have a good disposition towards the Patriot cause. Does that label me a Tory who is sympathetic to Britain or to Parliamentary power?
Similarly, this point that there appeared great cheerfulness in destroying the tea. And that these worthy women made free will offerings of their stocks of the tea. Well, that's a nice description, but you do wonder about those women who maybe didn't want to burn their tea. None of that is covered. If there're women who said, "Not me, I'm keeping my tea," you don't find that out here.
And finally, I think the real clue to the question of coercion or not comes in the last sentence describing a spirited "Son of Liberty" going along the street with his brush and lampblack and unpainting the word "Tea" on the shop signs. Well, one wonders what the merchants, whose shops those were, where presumably they sold tea, thought about that. And it strikes me, that we don't have any information here, did he get permission from these merchants ahead of time? Or was this an act that put the merchants in a position where they would have to become quite unpopular with the Patriots if they decided to continue selling tea?
One of the first things I'd do is keep by me a dictionary so I could look up words, particularly a dictionary like the Oxford English Dictionary that has 18th-century meanings. Because often there's a word that will have changed in meaning. One example, they use the term, "the true interest of America." The term "interesting" which people in the 18th century would use to describe a situation, they say "that's an interesting situation." It doesn't mean, "I'm kind of interested in it intellectually," it means it involves people's economic interest, okay. They mean "interest" exactly in that sense almost all the time. And there are other examples, so one thing would be, don't be too far away from a good dictionary and preferably one that can tell you how things were used in the 18th century.
I'd certainly look for any references to people or events and make sure I knew what those were. Look in the history book, see if I could find out who's being referred to, who they assume everyone knows about. I'd go real carefully through the sentences, because 18th-century language, often the sentences are very long, with lots of different clauses which is complicated for us to understand today. And, certainly with newspapers at this time period, where they are either Patriot or Tory newspapers, I'd be looking for the point of view of the writer. In this case, the point of view is someone who's in favor the Patriots. So, that gives us the last thing which is I'd look for what isn't here. And in the case of a Patriot point of view well, we don't hear about anybody in Providence who disagreed with this. And there, we don't know if there was or was not someone. That's simply absent from this.
One is I would try to contextualize the immediate incident that's being described here, this particular event in Providence, RI. And, the way that I might do that is by looking at other events taking place in Providence, by supporting this document with other descriptions of the event. I would hope I could find in letters or diaries a description of this tea burning that took place in the marketplace. And I might particularly hope I could find a Tory, or a Loyalist point of view, somebody who was upset that this happened. And I'd go and look in diaries and letters around the time of March 2nd, and following, look for that.
The second is, after looking at that particular incident, look more broadly at other places where this took place. And it turns out if you just follow in the newspapers, and read diaries and letters from the time, tea burnings are not uncommon in 1775. A variety of them take place in New Hampshire and New Haven, certainly in the New England area, and on into the middle colonies, you can find examples of gatherings like this. So this kind of event is a second context.
The third context, I'd look at the kind of document this is, which is a report in a newspaper. And think a little bit about reading other newspapers, reading to see if this is typical or atypical. I think its reasonably typical. There are a variety of these similar reports of Patriot events in different newspapers of this time period. And to know a little something about how people are reading this. We know that newspaper subscriptions are skyrocketing at this time. And also that people are reading them in taverns. The taverns tend to subscribe. And even people who are illiterate or don't read that well, can have it read to them in taverns. So that's one of the ways this kind of document gets dispersed throughout the colonies.
And then finally I'd want to think carefully about the chronology, about the moment that this represents of March 1775. It's clearly a divisive moment and a moment when people are under some pressure, here in Providence and in other places, to take sides. To get out there and not to say, "I agree with this or that position, I agree with these rights." But vote with your feet, or in this case, vote with your tea. To show up publicly, and to denounce tea drinking and tea drinkers, and take a side and get off the fence. And that makes sense. It's March 1775, it's long after tea has been considered a terrible noxious weed that begins in the mid-1760s. It's after the Boston Tea Party, which is December of '73, so there's a precedent, these people know there's been destruction of tea, which has been very controversial. In some ways, they're maybe showing that they agree with the Tea Party. That they're having their own Tea Party, they're consuming it too, not by water but by fire. And it's after the retaliation to the Tea Party, which were the Acts to close down the port of Boston. The first Continental Congress has met and has encouraged people not to drink tea, so we know these people are supporting the Continental Congress, even though that that's never mentioned in here. And it's about let's see, a month and a little bit, before the outbreak of warfare, so its a very tense time in New England.
Ron Gorr's Trifecta: Primary Sources, Technology, and Student Interaction in One Activity!
![Detail, Wiki, Ron Gorr Detail, Wiki, Ron Gorr](/sites/default/files/image-blog-rgwiki.jpg)
As an A.P. U.S. history teacher, I often struggle to balance my desire/need to teach content with the seemingly endless changes to national and state standards, administrative expectations, current trends in education, and 21st-century learning, but by gosh. . . . I think I found an activity that will work.
Motivated by my gig as Teacher Representative for Teachinghistory.org, I tried to design a lesson that might accomplish multiple goals in one fell swoop, while also fitting into my current curriculum. In this case, I focused my energy on the Jacksonian Period, which is a unit that we traditionally fly though very quickly. My hope was that I could keep the pace of the course moving, but still allow the students an opportunity to experience a more contextual connection with the subject.
In 2010, I presented this activity with Jennifer Rosenfeld (Outreach Director for Teachinghistory.org) at the National Council for Social Studies Conference in Denver, CO. My specific objectives for this assignment were:
- Require students to use Teachinghistory.org to locate primary sources applicable to a specific period of history
- Read, analyze, and share those primary sources with their classmates (and me) by posting the information on a Wiki
- Engage in an online discussion about their sources
- Provide students a better contextual understanding of the historical period (in this case, the Jacksonian Period, 1824–1839)
- Complete entire project within a week in association with online chapter tests and in-class discussion
I think it is important to note that my objectives DID NOT include a stringent Primary Source Analysis component. I wanted the students to make their own assumptions and assessment of the sources versus focusing their attention on a worksheet. (However, If you feel more comfortable placing more emphasis on the formal analysis of primary sources, the National Archives has a fantastic set of primary source evaluators.)
The foundations for this project actually started earlier in the year with simple searches of the Teachinghistory.org site and one practice Wiki discussion surrounding electoral politics. But, for those of you who have never done a Wiki, blog, or other type of online discussion board, don't freak out. They are very user-friendly and odds are, the kids have already taken part in one. I prefer PBWorks, but there are many to choose from. See if your school or colleagues have a favorite.
I also spent some time going over online discussion norms. See the main page of my Wiki!
In class, I assigned one of four topics to each student: Corrupt Bargain 1824, the Nullification Crisis 1832–33, The Alamo 1836, and the Trail of Tears 1838–39. These topics were specific enough to focus, but generic enough to provide ample research.
Student were told to use the Teachinghistory.org website's History Content Gateway to find, read, and analyze ONE primary document pertaining to their assigned topic.
They were then asked to share their findings with their classmates via the Wiki by answering four basic questions about their source. If they completed this part of the assignment thoroughly and with attention to detail, they received 75% of the total points possible.
The final 25% was earned by engaging in a discussion (certainly defined differently by each student) with at least one other student in the class who had the same assigned topic.
To see the actual assignment, the Wiki, and the student responses, click the link below.
(Note: Wiki access requires a username and password. If you'd like to see the Wiki in full, follow the link, click the "Request Access" button on the right side, and fill out the form. It may take some time for you to receive a response. Alternatively, download this PDF of the page.)
While the online discussion is interesting and some student really got into it, there were quite a few who met the minimum requirement and moved on.
Since the existing curricular structure of this unit asked students to take an online quiz the night before we discussed the material in class, time for discussing the primary source activity was already built into my schedule. (We did have to add an extra half day to complete it!)
When the students came to class after completing the Wiki assignment, I simply asked each student to present their document in 1–2 minutes. Throughout this process, students who participated in the online component of the assignment were excited to continue sharing their ideas and opinions about the documents they saw. Other students were pulled into the conversation, and by the end of the day, we had not only talked about the four content-specific areas assigned to each student, but we had covered the entire scope of the chapter. In short, I replaced a lecture with an effective discussion!
Assessing the students was quite simple. I read their original posts and then I looked for their online discussion. I based their grades on my perceived effort and degree of detail they put into their posts. I did not formally assess their discussions, but I suppose I could in the future.
As far as my own assessment of the entire project, here are some of my observations and thoughts:
- Throughout this entire process, I found that most of my students enjoyed the online aspect of the assignment.
- I loved that I was able to incorporate all of these primary sources into an already existing unit.
- I really enjoyed the online discussions between the kids who really got into it. They were insightful and interesting to read.
- I use the online discussion portion as an opportunity to emphasize the difference between your academic online persona vs. your social persona. We discussed the importance of having an appropriate email address for jobs, colleges, teachers, etc. I discouraged texting shorthand and slang in academic discussions. I even went over proper techniques for complimenting, critiquing, and assessing other classmate's posts. I thought it was a fantastic side effect of this project.
Overall, I thought this assignment accomplished every one of the goals I set. I intend to repeat a similar assignment in the second semester. In addition, it is my hope that by building research competence in my students, I will be able to create a DBQ creation exercise for the latter part of the school year. (See one of my upcoming blogs for more information on that!)
I hope this information was helpful and please feel free to contact me (rmgorr at comcast dot net) with any questions, comments, or concerns. I'd love to hear how you use primary documents in your classes.
Interested in starting up a Wiki of your own? Read our Tech for Teachers entry on Wikis for ideas on how to get started.
Our Weekly Quizzes Return!
![Photo, 070305, March 5, 2007, COCOEN daily photos, Flickr Photo, 070305, March 5, 2007, COCOEN daily photos, Flickr](/sites/default/files/image-quiz-blog.jpg)
Teachinghistory.org's weekly history quizzes have returned! Ellen of New York won our first quiz of 20102011, with the most correct answers to questions on school buses, PBJs, pencils, and other school standbys. This week, test your knowledge of early North American artifacts.
Each of our weekly quizzes gives you the opportunity to test your knowledge on a different U.S. history topic—and the chance to win a prize! If you're one of the top-scoring entrants, your name will be entered in the week's drawing. The entrant chosen at random receives a Teachinghistory.org flash drive.
Maybe you've taken a quiz and think your students might benefit from taking it, too. Browse through all of our past quizzes, and download a PDF for classroom use or have your students take the quiz online! Our past quizzes are now live online—take them, and receive your score instantly, with corrections for any answers you missed.
Topics for past quizzes range from Martin Luther King, Jr. memorials to pirates to women in the West. Keep your eye out this year for quizzes on the Stamp Act, the Crash of 1929, spies, and more. Also be on the lookout for new types of quizzes! Later this year, we will add new interactivity to the quizzes. Keep your eyes open!
History Education News 06: Analyzing Images
![Cover, History Education News 06 Cover, History Education News 06](/sites/default/files/HEN06.jpg)
As the new school year begins, turn to Teachinghistory.org for inspiration and resources! This month, we mail out the 6th issue of History Education News, our print newsletter. Filled with website and article recommendations, this issue tells you where to go to find resources and ideas for engaging your students with visual primary sources. From paintings of Paul Revere's ride to iconic Civil War photographs, learn how other educators have used images in class and discover archives of images you can use yourself.
In this issue, we also introduce a new section of the website, Digital Classroom. Digital Classroom spotlights new online and hardware tools showing up in classrooms across the country, such as interactive whiteboards and social media. Check it out for overviews of tools and videos of classroom use. Look for the section to grow in the future!
To request a copy of the newsletter, fill out our subscription form.
Causality in History Textbooks
![A selection from an American History textbook. NHEC A selection from an American History textbook. NHEC](/sites/default/files/causality.jpg)
In a 2005 study, Mariana Achugar of Carnegie Mellon University and Mary J. Schleppegrell of the University of Michigan set out to examine how language shapes knowledge in history. Specifically, the authors looked at how the language used in history textbooks influenced the study of causality, that is, the link between particular actions and specific outcomes. They discovered that certain texts that set out to explain cause and effect contained wording that might prevent students from understanding this important concept.
The researchers focused on two historical accounts. One, from an eighth-grade textbook, concerned the expulsion of the Cherokee from Georgia. The other discussed causes of the Great Depression and came from a tenth-grade textbook. Since the writing in both was typical of middle and high school texts, Achugar and Schleppegrell looked for linguistic patterns that might help students draw a connection between cause and effect.
First, they identified two kinds of passages: accounts and explanations. An account was defined as a chronological narrative in which cause and effect emerge as a natural sequence of events, while an explanation frames events in an organized way, highlighting the key factors students should focus on.
To their surprise, the researchers found that the language in the explanatory passage (the one about the Great Depression) was no more help in explaining causality to students than the account about the Cherokee. While the "explanation" was organized differently, it suffered from the same problems that plagued the "account" of the Cherokees' removal. Both texts relied heavily on abstract nouns, failed to use explicit language linking cause and effect, and frequently employed the passive voice in describing events. Consequently, both passages created the impression that the course of history was somehow inevitable. Language, it seems, matters a great deal in shaping ideas about causality.
In the passage on Cherokee removal, the text constantly resorted to abstractions: It referenced Cherokee "resistance" without exploring what that resistance looked like or why it was unsuccessful. While the Great Depression text did focus on causes, it too used overly abstract language. Phrases like "economic overproduction" and "lessening demand" held little meaning for students trying to connect certain actions with specific actors.
As the researchers explained, rhetorical connectors, such as the word "because," can help students draw a direct link between cause and effect. Unfortunately, few of these connectors appeared in either text. They focused on "what happened," but stopped short of establishing the causal relationships that would help students understand why these events took place.
In each text, the use of the passive voice (a less direct, bold, or concise form of expression using wordy phrases like "it could be," "there were times that," "it was said," etc.) creates the appearance that events in question were inevitable. The eighth-grade text relates how the Cherokee were expelled from their land by the Georgia State Militia, but never identifies motives for ordering the tribe's removal. Similarly, in the high school passage on the Great Depression, the passive voice creates the impression that things were bound to turn out the way they did. The text cites an "uneven distribution of wealth," but never explores how or why that was the case.
Whatever their grade level, students can begin to think critically about what kind of language is used in their textbooks.
- Pick out a textbook passage that will allow students to see how certain words and phrases obscure or disguise historical causes.
- Read it together as a class.
- Either as a class or individually, have students piece together cause and effect in that passage. What particular actions led to what specific outcomes?
- Returning to the textbook passage, ask students how the language could do a better job of revealing historical cause and effect.
- As a class, develop strategies for reading textbook passages. What do students need to watch out for? Are there places where they need to slow down while reading? What clues would help them piece together the story for themselves?
Each textbook passage contained linguistic flaws that obscured the meaning of historical causality for the event in question.
Take this excerpt from the passage on Cherokee removal, which conceals some of the actors and actions it is attempting to detail:
In the spring of 1838, U.S. troops began to force the removal of all Cherokee to Indian Territory. While a few managed to escape and hide in the mountains of North Carolina, most were captured. . . . Georgia took the Cherokee’s farms, businesses, and property after they were removed.
Nothing in this passage would help students understand why the state of Georgia took farms and property; it lacks the kind of connecting language ('because," "in order to") to directly give a reason or rationale. The use of passive voice in sterile phrases such as "after they were removed" makes the process of Cherokee removal seem inevitable.
The textbook section on the Great Depression also obscures causality:
In the late 1920s, the world economy was like a delicately balanced house of cards. The key card that held up the rest was American economic prosperity. . . . The rising productivity led to enormous profits. However, this new wealth was not evenly distributed.
While the passage does offer specific causes for the Great Depression, by relying on clichés and abstractions like "rising productivity" and "house of cards" it creates the impression that these were innate economic qualities instead of the result of human actions. Like the passage on Cherokee removal, the use of passive voice ("new wealth was not evenly distributed") disguises how individual actions led the U.S to economic disaster, and never questions how such an outcome could have been avoided.
Mariana Achugar and Mary J. Schleppegrell, "Beyond Connectors: The Construction of Cause in History Textbooks," Linguistics and Education 16 (2005), 298-318.
Reading Multiple Sources in History Class
![A student studying multiple sources. NHEC A student studying multiple sources. NHEC](/sites/default/files/multsource.jpeg)
The call to use primary documents to teach history comes from many quarters. While teachers are urged to use multiple documents in their classrooms, they are rarely told how to use them. To understand how students learn from multiple documents, researchers Steven Stahl, Bruce Britton, Mary McNish, and Dennis Bosquet observed how students approached different sources to make sense of a controversial historical event.
First, researchers asked 44 students in two Advanced Placement history classes to read multiple documents about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. The documents represented a range of views and genres, from a Viet Cong cablegram to the actual Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The students were told that once they finished reading, they would be asked to either describe the topic or develop an opinion about it. Students took notes as they read. After they read the documents, some students wrote a brief essay describing the event, while others put forth an opinion about the incident.
The students' notes revealed they had read all the documents in the same way and with one goal in mind: searching for basic facts and information. The researchers concluded that simply presenting students with multiple documents, regardless of any assigned purpose, did not enrich the students' understanding. Rather, students needed to be explicitly taught how to analyze and interpret documents.
A skilled historian doesn't simply accept a document as fact, but rather probes it, searching for bias and perspective: Who wrote the document? To what end? When? Where? To develop students' historical understanding, researchers recommended they be taught the same approach, incorporating specific elements:
- prior knowledge about the topic
- experience working with different types of documents
- explicit instruction in interpreting documents
- explicit instruction on using evidence when writing
This study supports the idea that documents play a central role in history education. But if students are expected to do the work of an historian, i.e., make sense of a variety of texts, they must learn how to navigate different types of documents in new and more meaningful ways.
- Teach and explicitly model such historical reading skills as sourcing, contextualization, and corroboration. To see historians
modeling these skills, go to Examples of Historical Thinking in the Clearinghouse. - See Historical Thinking Matters and sample lessons and activities in the Clearinghouse that help students look at multiple sources in the same way historians do.
- Use the textbook for necessary background information
- Use primary documents to enrich the textbook's account.
Excerpt from text, "The Vote that Congress Can't Forget"
For more than two decades, the Congressional vote that lawmakers most often cite as the one they would like to take back is their 1964 vote for the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the resolution that was used as authority for the war in Vietnam. Only two Senators and no Representatives voted no.
Student # 25's Notes
The vote that lawmakers would most like to take back is the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in which two Senators and no Representatives voted no.Excerpt from Student # 25's Essay
The vote passed unanimously in the House of Representatives and 80 to two in the Senate in approval of military action against the North Vietnamese (Viet Cong).
Cynthia Hynd, "Teaching Students to Think Critically Using Multiple Texts in History," Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 42, no. 6 (1999): 428436.
Daisy Martin and Sam Wineburg, "Seeing Thinking on the Web," History Teacher 41, no. 3, (2008): 305319.
A more thorough description of this approach is also available online.
Steven Stahl, Cynthia Hynd, Bruce Britton, Mary McNish, and Dennis Bosquet, "What happens when students read multiple source documents in history?," Reading Research Quarterly 31, no. 40 (2000): 430Ѿ457.
The History Classroom: Connections Between Instruction and Assessment
![A high school student completing an in-class assignment in a MD AP History Class. NHEC A student completing an in-class assignment. NHEC](/sites/default/files/historyclass.jpeg)
Most educators use test results to measure student learning, but what are the connections between how students perform on tests and what goes on in their classrooms? Do certain teaching strategies help students score better on state tests? Julie Smith and Richard Niemi (of Oakland University and the University of Rochester, respectively) explored these questions in their 2003 study of National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) U.S. history results and student survey data. In particular, Smith and Niemi focused on whether taking history courses involving more active and extensive text analysis results in better test performance.
Beginning in 1986, the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) has overseen the development and implementation of the NAEP test in US history. Administered to fourth, eighth, and 12th graders across the nation, these tests contain multiple-choice and short-answer questions focused on themes and periods of American history. There are also questions that measure historical thinking. Smith and Niemi's study featured the 1994 test scores of 12th graders. They compared students' test scores with responses to a questionnaire about classroom practices that students filled out as part of the NAEP assessment.
Smith and Niemi found connections between the number of history courses students took, the content of the curriculum, teachers' strategies, and test scores. As the researchers expected, students taking more history classes scored higher on the NAEP. Of greater potential significance for history teachers, Smith and Niemi determined that classroom instruction is closely related to test performance. Students who had experienced "active instruction" such as complex writing tasks, in-depth reading, and extensive use of student discussion in their classrooms performed better on the NAEP. Specific examples of active instruction linked to high test scores included:
- reading primary documents
- small group discussion and projects
- student presentations
- creating research reports
- using a number of resources such as computers, film, maps, and globes
- Develop lessons and materials that go beyond traditional use of lectures and textbooks.
- Create reading and writing activities focused on primary documents.
- Allow time and space for group work, discussions, and projects.
- Organize curriculum and instruction that balances breadth and depth. Pursue a variety of historical themes and topics throughout the year.
Often referred to as the gold standard of large-scale history tests, the NAEP assessment includes three types of questions: multiple-choice, constructed response, and extended constructed response. The questions below appeared on the 1994 US history test.
Multiple Choice
"There passed by here about 200 men who marched down to the powder-house, took the gunpowder, and carried it into the other town and hid it. The reason they gave for taking it was that we had so many Tories here, they dared not trust the town with the gunpowder. (Abigail Adams)
The quotation above provides evidence for which statement?
a. Abigail Adams was a supporter of the British.
b. British soldiers stole gunpowder from Abigail Adams.
c. Many people in Abigail Adams' town did not support the Revolution.
d. A number of American soldiers were quartered in Abigail Adams' town.
Constructed Response
Religious groups played a major role in many of the reform movements of the 1800s and early 1900s. Select one reform movement (such as the abolition movement, the temperance movement, or the settlement house movement) and identify two reasons that religious groups were important to this movement.
Extended Constructed Response
"Our reconstruction measures were radically defective because they failed to give the ex-slaves any land." (Frederick Douglass)
Describe briefly the way in which Douglass's statement helps explain the rise of sharecropping in the South after the Civil War. In your answer, be sure to define the term sharecropping.
Julia Smith and Richard Niemi, "Learning History in School: The Impact of Coursework and Instructional Practices on Achievement," Theory and Research in Social Education 29, no.1 (2001): 1842.
Using Document Based Questions with Struggling Readers
I am a ninth grade teacher in a racially diverse lower income school. My problem is that my students are not great readers but I want to do document-based questions with them. I looked online and the DBQs released from the College Board are WAY too hard for my kids. Should I just try to jazz up our textbook or can you suggest places to look to find documents that my kids can decipher?
Kudos for looking for ways to engage your students with challenging historical tasks. Teaching students how to craft interpretations from multiple sources is central to history but it is hard, and even harder when students struggle with reading.
You may need to raid existing DBQs and tailor documents and tasks for your students. Consider starting small--use two documents that clearly contrast with one another to help students learn how to approach documents and read them closely. For a model of this, see the warm-up activity at www.historicalthinkingmatters.org. See this page for the same documents that have been further modified to make for more accessible reading.
Don't be shy about excerpting documents or using a smaller sample from an existing DBQ. This can help students understand the nature of the task and give them practice with reading, analyzing documents, and crafting arguments.
There are some helpful printed resources out there. Try the dbqproject.com. They have books of DBQs in both long and short versions.
Another resource to consider is Mindsparks.
Thanks for your question and good luck!
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