Tag: Sam Wineburg

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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 5: Historical Thinking

PhrenologyPixOur 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 skills – Sourcing, Contextualizing and Corroborating. See historical thinking chart (pdf at SHEG).

We will practice our historical thinking skills using a shared Google Doc – Japanese Incarceration and a shared Google Form – Zulu Chief Photograph.

It will give us a chance to compare both formats for delivering a lesson. (Note: While we could have done either as a hard copy worksheet, this activity gives us a chance to work with a two Google tools.)

Assignment for Class 5

You will each design a historical thinking mini-lesson based on the two sample lessons we did today. Both demonstrate Beyond the Bubble assessment model. All mini lessons should constructed as either a Google Doc or Google Form. (Note: a source video can only inserted into a Google Form).

See completed student work here SHEG-16

Students should be prepared to “teach” a brief lesson. (E.g. Introduce their lesson as they might to their class).

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

  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.
  7. How you would expect a proficient student might answer the question

Need some historical content for your lesson?
Check out our edMethods Toolkit-Finding Documents

Image credit: Phrenology diagram Wikipedia
Source From People’s Cyclopedia of Universal Knowledge (1883)

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Class 4: Historical Thinking

PhrenologyPixOur 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 skills – Sourcing, Contextualizing and Corroborating. See historical thinking chart (pdf at SHEG).

Assignment for Class 5

You will each design a historical thinking mini-lesson based on the Beyond the Bubble assessment model.

We will use this assignment as a chance to create a shared Google presentation. I’ve prepared some brief Google Presentation video tutorials. You can find them at this YouTube playlist / Working with Google Slides.

Here’s the Fall ’14 project that you can look at (but not edit). Can you do better?

Note: each of you will be contributing to the same Google Slides presentation. I’ve listed your names in alphabetical order in the presentation. You will turn that name placeholder slide into your mini-lesson title slide. You will insert additional slides in your section of the presentation as needed.

All mini lessons should include

  1. Title slide for your mini-lesson. Make it catchy!
  2. Your name as author of the mini-lesson on your lesson title (your lesson will take multiple slides in the presentation – have your name in small font at bottom of each slide)
  3. Target students – by grade level
  4. Indication of one (or more) of the historic skills to be studied – Sourcing, Contextualization, Corroborating
  5. One or more historic documents. Text, image and videos can be inserted into the slide. Longer documents can be linked to via URL or saved in Google drive with link to it.
  6. Source URLs for all documents used
  7. Essential question
  8. Scaffolding questions for students to use with documents
  9. Brief description of how the documents and scaffolding questions should reinforce the targeted historic skill(s)

I’ve collected some great websites that include many of the major archives from around the world.

Best Sites for Primary Documents in World History

Best Sites for Primary Documents in US History

Image credit: Phrenology diagram Wikipedia
Source From People’s Cyclopedia of Universal Knowledge (1883)