Category: Student Posts

Historical Thinking Skill: Contextualization

Objectives: Examine and Question

Understanding the Lesson:

In today’s lesson, the class will read two primary source documents to examine  and question the diverse experiences during the 14th century Black Death. By using these two documents the students, by the end of the class will be able to answer:

“How did people understand the plague during the 14th century and did it reflect other fundamental  views of the time?”

Prior Knowledge:

Before this lesson, students will have prior knowledge will include understanding political, social, and religious aspects of the 12th-14th century, the background information of the plague (spread, cause, death toll) along with being able to pull out information from texts. After this lesson, students will be able to take their prior knowledge and use it to understand how the plague was experienced, how people tried to cure it, along with how the plague did encompass social, political, and religious aspects of medieval times.

Procedures:

To begin the class, students will define illness in groups of four. After  five minutes of small group discussion, I will open the discussion to the class. This question will then be followed by what students know about sanitation during the of the black death, which will be prior knowledge. I will do this so students begin to connect the dots that doctors in the medieval times did not understand medical treatments, which is a huge aspect of the plague. Overall, the first 15 minutes of class should be to get students thinking about modern-day illness’ and how different the experience would be in the 14th century.

During this time, I will hand out the two different documents along will completing a Compare and Contrast worksheet about the two primary source documents (to be noted: students are not working on compare and contrast, instead they are working on how to examine and question documents to come to their own conclusions). The compare and contrast worksheet will be a guide/aid in helping them learn a new way to evaluate.

Following our class discussion, students will either read the document individually, with a  partner, or as a group (with the teacher). The students will then work on highlighting and taking notes:

 Understanding the Black Death Original Documents

Depending on their mastery of compare and contrast, the students will work in specific groups (individual, partner, or group) to fill out the worksheet. The worksheet includes working on skills of contextualization, examining and questioning :

Plague Worksheet

The key questions that students should be able to answer are:

• Did the two documents have different perspectives on what caused the plague?
  • What would cure the plague?
• What do these two documents illustrate about people religious, social and political beliefs during the 14th century?
• How was a doctor’s perspective changed from the time fo the Bubonic plague to modern-day?
  • Does it indicate why the plague killed so many people?

 

Lastly, we will move to the key question of the day, “How did people understand the plague during the 14th century and did it reflect other fundamental  views of the time?” This will be a class discussion, where students should be able to examine their answers and question the  different perspectives, to come to the conclusion that the plague did affect political, social, and religious aspects of the time.

 

The class will end with a ‘exit slip’ where students have to write on a sticky note on the conclusion they came too from the day’s activity.

 

Reflection: 

This lesson was fun to create but super new for me. I usually stick to more modern history (18th century-modern) so, I had to step out fo my comfort zone a bit. I found my inspiration for this lesson  on Stanford History Education Group and made it my own. As a whole, I think this lesson would be super fun to implement in my classroom because  students are able to work at their own pace and comfort zone.  I believe this lesson helps students reach a higher level skill of evaluating, without making it intimidating. At the same time, I am confident that students will naturally question their thinking during this assignment because the primary source documents have some pretty insane comments, which are beyond interesting. All in all, I had a great time creating this lesson and I believe it would be  very successful in a classroom.

 

Sources:

Lesson: SHEG

Document A: University of Paris Medical Report

Documents A/B: Black Death Documents

Understanding the Lesson:

In today’s lesson, our class will read and source two primary documents to contextualize domestic unrest during, and in response to, the Vietnam War. Using these documents, students will answer the question:

“Why did many Americans oppose the Vietnam War?”

Students’ prior knowledge on the subject includes Cold War foreign policy (Containment), U.S. entry to the Vietnam War, and the Civil Rights movement of the mid-20th century. Following this lesson, students will be able to synthesize ideas from two primary documents to formulate a hypothesis for why many Americans opposed the Vietnam war.

Procedures:

To begin the lesson, I will raise the following questions to contextualize this lesson within the overall unit:

Why did the United States enter the Vietnam War? Where does this War fit in the context of the Cold War overall? And, What is happening in the U.S. during the early 1960s as the U.S. formally enters Vietnam?

As the students discuss the questions, I will hand out the Anti-Vietnam War Movement Timeline and Graphic Organizer. As discussion on the above questions continues, students will have time to complete the first question on the graphic organizer.

Next, students will open the attached documents on their device, printed copies made available for those who prefer them. As a class, students will read aloud the first document, followed by a short discussion. Students will fill in graphic organizer as they read. When done with the first document, we will have a brief discussion of their findings.

Click here – both documents in plain text format found here (citations below).

After this discussion, students will read the second document aloud as a class. After a brief discussion of this document, we will discuss the following questions further:

• Why did MLK and John Kerry oppose the war?
• Why did anti-war sentiment grow after 1968?
• Based on what you read, who opposed the war in Vietnam? Was it mostly college kids?
• Using all the documents, why did many Americans oppose the Vietnam War?
• Considering the context, can you speculate what those Americans who supported the war said?

Lastly, we will move on to formulate a final hypothesis of the initial question, “Why did many Americans oppose the Vietnam War?” To close, I will ask students to share their hypotheses, using the historical skills of source and context to support their answers.

Reflection:

I loved creating this lesson. In most of my own schooling experience, I learned history primarily from lectures and videos. After creating this lesson, I now see how learning through discovery offers a more meaningful, personal touch to history. Additionally, learning by this method helps students to develop critical thinking skills as opposed to passively “absorbing” information. The development of these skills alongside learning course content encourages a meaningful learning environment that will serve the students well for a lifetime. I am curious as to how I can find additional primary sources, including pictures, cartoons, letters, etc., to use in future classes.

I became more excited about history while creating this lesson, I hope the students pick up on some of that excitement as they work through the lesson as well.

Sources:

Lesson adapted from: SHEG

Document 1: Martin Luther King, Jr. “Beyond Vietnam,” April 4, 1967, Riverside Church in New York City. http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm

Document 2: John Kerry, testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, April 23, 1971. http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Resources/Primary/Manifestos/VVAW_Kerry_Senate.html

Featured Image: Robert Joyce papers, 1952-1973, Flickr

 

Description: 

This mini-lesson gives students a chance to use their historical thinking skills to take a deeper look at what was happening in the US government during the Cold War and the anti-Communism scare.

Directions: 

Read this telegram (see additional pages via the link) from Senator Joseph McCarthy to President Harry Truman, use these questions as a guide during your reading:

• Why do you think McCarthy chose to write this telegram? What were his goals?
• What does this document tell you about the events occurring in our government when it was written?
• What are McCarthy’s demands? Who does McCarthy accuse of being a spy?

Next, read President Truman’s unsent response and discuss the following questions:

• Discuss the general tone of Truman’s response, what could you infer his opinions about McCarthy are at this time? Why?
• Do you think McCarthy and Truman agree on the problem that is happening at this time? Why do you think they have such different responses to the same issue?
•  Why do you think Truman left this response un-sent?
• How do you think the events unfolding in these two documents are reflected in society today?

Document Source: Telegram from Senator Joseph R. McCarthy to President Harry S. Truman; 2/11/1950; President’s Secretary’s Files (Truman Administration). [Online Version, https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/telegram-from-senator-joseph-r-mccarthy-to-president-harry-s-truman-with-trumans-reply, September 10, 2018]

Skills used: 

Sourcing, Contextualization, Corroboration

Reflection:

These documents are important historical documents because the words come right from the mouths of two powerful players in history. The documents are meant to show two very different positions on the same subject, allowing for corroboration and a fuller understanding of the politics at this time in American history. Reading them and exploring the questions about their varying opinions allows for discussion around the various viewpoints of the Cold War and America’s uneasiness about Communism as a whole. Both documents allow for broad contextualization about the events and fears occurring in America at the time. The discussion question regarding what students could infer about the events in the government allow for contextualization as well. Sourcing is practiced when the students are asked to discuss why McCarthy chose to write the telegram, and why Truman never sent his response.

 

Skill: CONTEXTUALIZATION

7^th grade Social Studies

Students will already have background knowledge of the middle ages and the influential role the church had in Europe, from previous lessons.

The following pictures and mini-lesson will introduce us to the Scientific Revolution. The Scientific Revolution refers to the time frame between around 1550-1700 in Europe, where historical advances were made in science, mathematics, physics, anatomy, astronomy, etc.

The first picture comes from a book written in 1543 by Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, called “On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres”.  Copernicus is typically thought to be the man whose ideas sparked the Scientific Revolution.

Title: On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres
Author: Nicolaus Copernicus
Year: 1543
Link to source

 

Title: Universe on the Model of Copernicus with Sun in Center
Artist: Andreas Cellarius
Year: 1660
Link to image source

Both pictures display Copernicus’ heliocentric model of the universe. Students will observe and notice the sun is in the center of these maps.

Questions for students to answer:

1. How did people think the universe worked before Copernicus’ book was published?
2. What do you think inspired Copernicus’ ideas?
3. How do you think the church responded to Copernicus’ ideas and these pictures? Why?
4. How do you think the general public responded?

Further guiding questions include:

1. Copernicus chose not to publish this book (and release his drawings) until right before he died, 30 years later. Why do you think he did this?
2. How do you think this is going to impact future ideas, and contribute to the Scientific Revolution?

Reflection:

Before doing this assignment, I had not given much thought to these historical thinking skills. Of course, I was aware of them, but I had never thought about how I would implement these skills in my class, or even the importance of these skills. With contextualization, I believe it gives students a chance to get the “big picture”. It forces students to think not just about the document in front of them, but also what is going on in the world during this time, in turn creating a more colorful story.

Looking at Copernicus’ pictures, students realize their significance when they put it in the context of 16^th century Europe, where the ideas of the church rule the land and we are thought to be the center of the universe, and how revolutionary Copernicus’ ideas were.

When students are pushed to think deeper into history, not only will they learn more, but I believe they will also enjoy the process of learning.