HISTORICAL THINKINGA lesson on WHY and HOW

we study history

WHY STUDY HISTORY???WHY STUDY HISTORY???• Your opinion???• Civics, repeat the past, humanization• How do we study history???• Textbooks…etc.• Too simple and absolute• “All history is the history of thought.”

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.” — Thomas Jefferson

• Draw any US historical figure and label it

• Where do we get evidence?• Textbooks – why don’t we like them?

– “one truth”– Downplay sources and evidence– Parents!!! :-/

• “Primary sources” = GOOD!• ANYTHING from that time period• Secondary sources = EVERYTHING ELSE!!!• New evidence changes the story• Analyzing CONFLICTING evidence

– Not clear cut

• Understanding evidence in the context of the time

How to study APUSH???

• There is a FRAMEWORK with KEY CONCEPTS and historical CONTENT to illustrate comprehension.

• Your job is to utilize your knowledge of content to prove you know the concepts within the framework.

• You will do this through MC questions, SA questions, LEQ’s, DBQ’s, etc.

FRAMEWORK• This is where you live now. Get

comfortable.

KEY CONCEPTS• If you can fill in these concepts you

are golden!

HISTORICAL CONTENT• What do you fill the concepts in with?

Funny you should ask.• Content consists of:– People, events, geography, inventions,

innovation, artistic movements, civil rights movements, political conflict, institutions, like freaking everything that ever happened!

SKILL 1: HISTORICAL CAUSATION• This skill asks students to identify and compare

basic causes and/or effects and then distinguish between both short and long term causes and effects. Students should eventually move from describing causes to analyzing and evaluating the interaction of multiple causes and/or effects

SKILL 2: PATTERNS OF CONTINUITY & CHANGE OVER TIME

• This skill asks students to recognize, describe, and analyze instances of historical patterns of continuity (what remains the same) and change (what has altered) over time. The main purpose is to see and relate patterns in certain historical periods with larger historical processes or themes

SKILL 3: PERIODIZATION• Students must be able to organize history in

discrete periods. Historians identify turning points and recognize significant political, economic, social, cultural, or environmental factors. Changing periodization can change a historical narrative. History is extremely fluid, this is the recognition of changing circumstances. Compare similarities and differences based on prompt.

SKILL 4: COMPARISON

• Students need to have the ability to describe, compare, evaluate multiple historical developments within one society, one or more developments across or between different societies, and in various chronological and geographical contexts

SKILL 5: CONTEXTUALIZATION

• This is the ability to connect historical events and processes to specific circumstances of time and place and to broader regional, national or global processes.

SKILL 6: HISTORICAL ARGUMENTATION• Define and frame a question about the past to address

that question through the construction of an argument. A plausible and persuasive argument requires a clear, comprehensive, and analytical thesis, supported by relevant historical evidence. In addition, argumentation involves the capacity to describe, analyze, and evaluate the arguments of others in light of available evidence.

SKILL 7: USE OF RELEVANT HISTORIC EVIDENCE

• Describe and evaluate evidence about the past from diverse sources (including written documents, works of art, archeological artifacts, oral traditions, and other primary sources) and requires students to pay attention to the content, authorship, purpose, format, and audience of such sources. It involves the capacity to extract useful information, make supportable inferences, and draw appropriate conclusions from evidence.

***REMEMBER TO PAAC***

SKILL 8: INTERPRETATION

• Describe, analyze, evaluate and construct diverse interpretations of the past, and being aware of how particular circumstances and contexts in which individual historians work and write also shape their interpretation of past events.

SKILL 9: SYNTHESIS• Develop meaningful and persuasive new

understandings of the past by applying all of the other historical thinking skills, by drawing appropriately on ideas and methods from different fields of inquiry or disciplines, and by creatively fusing disparate relevant, and sometimes contradictory evidence from primary sources. Additionally, synthesis may involve applying insights about the past to other historical contexts or circumstances, INCLUDING THE PRESENT.

• Explain how the event asked about relates to another event in history