Category: Classes-17

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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

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Class 5: PBL From Ideas to Action

PBL-from ideas to action

In today’s class we will finalize our brainstorming and bring some focus to our Holocaust Memorial Project.

Assignment 5

All student will complete this Sam Wineburg reading and flipped lesson Who is the historian in your classroom? Created at TEDed using a video from Stanford History Education Group. (SHEG)

Students will work in one of three study groups. Each group will design a 20-min presentation on one of the following three historical thinking skills- Sourcing, Contextualizing and Corroborating.

I recommend that students create an account at the Teaching Channel and use these three lesson clusters – Sourcing, Contextualizing and Corroborating. Each features an explanatory video as well as supporting material in the lower right of the screen. In the upper right, a “My Notes’ section allows you to take timestamped notes on the video and export for sharing with your project partner.

Jigsaw Lesson: Next week in class, each study group will be expected to teach their peers the principles and a few effective strategies for teaching their assigned historical thinking skill.

Blog post: Each partner of study team can share the same blog post which will provide some context or detail about their lesson to the class.

Image credit: Adobe Spark

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Class 4: Mission-Driven PBL

This week class will meet at Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education (OJMCHE) to tour the exhibition and begin discussion of our project to serve as instructional design consultants creating lessons for visitors to the Oregon Holocaust Memorial.

With historical memorials in the news and neo-Nazis on the march, this community-based challenge will allow us to use a PBL approach to explore instructional design with purpose. More

Here’s a few links that can guide assist our work:

  • After Charlottesville: Public Memory and the Contested Meaning of Monuments (Facing History and Ourselves) is central and raises some interesting essential questions beginning with “What is the purpose of memorials and monuments? What impact do they have on us and the way we think about history?” Link
  • Guidelines for Teaching about the Holocaust (US Holocaust Memorial Museum) reflects approaches appropriate for effective teaching in general, are particularly relevant to Holocaust education.  Link
  • Entry point for OJMCHE Oral history collection  Link
  • Echoes & Reflections: Teaching the Holocaust / Inspiring the Classroom Link
Assignment 4

See completed Assignment 4 here

Write a brief post the will serve as a reflective starting point for your work on this project. Due Sunday 9/24.

It could include:

  • ideas for memorial lesson design
  • reflection on memorial visit (you can build on email you sent me)
  • reflection on memorial or museum visit
  • opportunities or concerns
  • reaction to PBL as instructional approach
  • Something else

Image credit: Adobe Spark using photo detail of Oregon Holocaust Memorial by Peter Pappas

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Class 3: Teacher as Curator

Teacher as curator

Skillful curation is based on skills across Bloom’s Taxonomy – a good grounding in lower order understanding of content, analysis of theme, evaluation of appropriate content and assemblage into a new context (or exhibition). This class will explore how history teachers can be skillful curators – designing engaging experiences where their students can “be the historian.”

This class will open with a lecture / activity that explores three elements of curation: Teacher as curator handout  1MB pdf

  • Select the artifacts
  • Think like a historian
  • Scaffold the content
Assignment 3

See completed student assignments 3 here

Students will curate a small exhibit of at least 3 artifacts. There should be a clearly stated theme and artifact labels and / or explanatory text as needed. Choose to do an exhibit based on any historical theme that interests you. Historical artifacts could include images, audio or video – but all should be in the public domain.

…. Or get creative and choose a theme based on artifacts in your possession – for example how would future museum goers understand three objects from your Star Wars collection or cooking utensils? (if you choose this approach, take photos of the objects you have.)

Please complete your post by Sat 16. All students should look at the other exhibits and leave a comment on at least one. Did you “get” what they were trying to say? Suggestions?

All students should use AdobeSpark to create featured image. It’s a very useful tool for creating striking title slides with public domain content.  ( I use them for most of my featured images in this blog). I’ll explain how to use in class.

Image credit: Adobe Spark