Tag: historical thinking

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Class 3: Historical Thinking Skills

Historical thinking skills lesson

Our class begins with a review of the Sam Wineburg reading and TEDEd flipped lesson Who is the historian in your classroom? (That will also provide a chance to discuss the efficacy of flipping content.  What are the challenges and opportunities for that approach?)

Today we begin our study of historical thinking skills based on the work of Sam Wineburg and the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG). We will focus on three key historical thinking skills – Sourcing, Contextualization, Corroboration. See Historical Thinking Chart  (pdf in English and Spanish at SHEG).

We will get inspired by some SHEG lessons from their collections Reading Like a Historian and Beyond the Bubble.

Here’s what a Google From looks like: Photograph – Zulu Chief
Here are some student designed SHEG-inspired lessons that are delivered using Google Forms
  1. Reconstruction Cartoon – Thomas Nast
  2. Photograph – “War is Hell”
  3. Film clip – Charlie Chaplin film clip
  4. Political Cartoon – Votes for Women
In class Practice
Click image to go to curated collection of historical sources to practice using Google Forms | Source
Assignment 3 | Completed Posts 19A-3

Design a mini lesson based on one of the historical thinking skills in a Google Form and embed into your next post.

Google form lesson should include:

  1. Title
  2. Document to be considered – image or video (or short text passage)
  3. Archival source of document (be sure it’s in public domain)
  4. One or more questions for user to answer.
  5. Instructional goal

Then get embed the Google form in post (more instructions below). Be sure your blog post has:

  1. Title for your mini-lesson. Why not make it catchy?
  2. Featured image (could be created with your archival photo)
  3. Embedded Google form
  4. Brief reflection on the mini lesson, historical skill or use of Google form in classroom
Tech resources for lesson

More tips on using Google forms here

How to get an embed code for your Google form

How to HTML Snippets to embed your Google form into WordPress post. Note in this example I begin by getting the embed code from a Padlet. Once you have the any embed code on your “clipboard” you can use HTML Snippets in WordPress

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Class 4: Crafting a Lesson

Crafting a Lesson

This class will begin with a review of the learning activities designed by students in our last assignment. Next we will discuss critical components of a good learning activity.

Assignment 3

Students will develop and deliver a 30 min lesson in their assigned class

  • 9/24 – Nicole, Nick K, Gabe
  • 10/1 – Jana, Nick C, Jordan

Students should also do a blog post that previews the lesson – noting:

  • target audience
  • content (what will be studied)
  • process (what will you do – what will students do)
  • resources for lessons
About the lesson
The lesson should a historical thinking skills lesson. Specific content of lesson is up to you. If you can get the timing right, we can offer you feedback before you use it with your students.
  1. This lesson should be delivered as if we were your class.
  2. Your peers will serve as participant observers noting lesson content, nature of the student task, lesson delivery and student workflow.
  3. Feel free to design a flipped lesson in advance and let the class know of your plans and required viewing.
  4. If you have a significant amount of reading required, send it to us in advance.
  5. After your delivery of the lesson go back and edit your post with synopsis of what you learned from our class feedback.
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Class 2: Historical Thinking Skills

Historical thinking skills

Our class begins with a review of the Sam Wineburg reading and TEDEd flipped lesson Who is the historian in your classroom? (That will also provide a chance to discuss the efficacy of flipping content.  What are the challenges and opportunities for that approach?)

Today we begin our study of historical thinking skills based on the work of Sam Wineburg and the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG). We will focus on three key historical thinking skills – Sourcing, Contextualization, Corroboration. See Historical Thinking Chart  (pdf in English and Spanish at SHEG).

We will explore search techniques with a focus on finding public domain or Creative Commons licensed content. For more information on public domain searches visit our edtech methods toolkit / Digital Hygiene

ASSIGNMENT 2 | Completed work

(Will cover 2 weeks)

a. Watch three videos at  Teaching Channel – Sourcing, Contextualization and Corroboration. See how to teach these skills in the classroom. You’ll be “teaching” a demo lesson 9/24 or 10/1.

b. Get inspired by some SHEG lessons from their collection Beyond the Bubble.

c. Design a mini lesson based on one of the historical thinking skills. Gather historical source(s) that could be used by a teacher to teach one or more  historical thinking skills. Sample posts from earlier class.

  1. Featured image and title for your mini-lesson. Make it catchy!
  2. Indication of one (or more) of the historic skills to be studied – Sourcing, Contextualization, Corroboration.
  3. One or more historic documents to support the lesson. Brief historical text can be inline text in the post or longer passages could be uploaded as pdfs. Any image content should be in the public domain. 
  4. Cite the source(s) with title, creator (if available), date of creation, and URL hyperlink back to source material.
  5. Guiding questions for students to use with document(s)
  6. Brief reflection of how the document(s) and question(s) should reinforce the targeted historic skill(s)

Log into each others’ posts and leave some comments about how the historical gallery could be turned into a learning activity. In our next class we will continue that discussion.

Here’s how to do a public domain image search, insert image into the post and add a hyperlink

If you have a collection of images for your post – you can put them all into a WordPress Image gallery using this tool. (Or just insert as image into the post.)

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Class 6: Teaching Historical Thinking

Teaching historical thinking

Today we begin our study of historical thinking skills based on the work of Sam Wineburg and the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG). We will focus on three key skills – Sourcing, Contextualizing and Corroborating. See historical thinking chart (pdf at SHEG).

Our class is based on assigned work:  Sam Wineburg reading and TEDEd flipped lesson Who is the historian in your classroom?

Three student teams will present their jigsaw lessons on specific skills:

  • Sourcing – Taran and Paxton
  • Contextualizing – Nancy and Kelly
  • Corroborating- James and David

Next, we will practice our historical thinking skills and see some options for delivery using a shared Google Doc – Japanese Incarceration and a shared Google Form – Zulu Chief Photograph.

Assignment 6

Each student will design a lesson using one or more historical thinking skills. They are free to use hard copy delivery or a digital format. The lesson should be posted in accessible form in a blog post.

Video tutorials: Using Google Docs | Using Google Forms 
More on Google tools in our edMethods Toolkit

Students should be prepared to “teach” their lesson with peers taking the role of students. (E.g. Introduce their lesson as they might to their class).

Lesson  / Post should include:

  1. Title
  2. One or more historic documents. Could be text, image, video.
  3. Source information and URLs for all documents used.
  4. Introduction and background as needed.
  5. Questions.
  6. Instructional goal that indicates one (or more) of the historic skills to be studied – Sourcing, Contextualization, Corroborating.

Image credit: Adobe Spark