Start with a Question

You are in the midst of the most important personal and professional challenge of your life.  Everyone doubted your abilities at the outset, but you've actually had more successes than anyone expected... perhaps even beyond what you believed yourself.  You could win this thing! This was the thinking of General Robert E. Lee in 1863 as he planned to go north and execute a stunning victory in enemy territory. Gettysburg. Unfortunately for Lee, Gettysburg would turn out to be a devastating blow to the Confederacy, and it would be just the thing President Lincoln needed to rededicate the Union cause.  So my students needed to find out why. Why was Gettysburg a turning point in the Civil War? Just as the opening paragraph of this post was meant to create suspense around the Battle of Gettysburg, I want my students to see the drama and suspense behind every document and piece of evidence we study in class. What creates suspense more than movie trailers? Here's how we m...

Crafting study of the American system of slavery for my 15 year old sophomores is always daunting.  Slavery is an affront to human dignity.  Teenagers feel little connection to this level of depravity.  I wanted them to experience an emotional reaction to the antebellum slavery debate, rather than to just learn about it as an obligatory part of their studies. To that end, today we did a document study of three different primary source opinions on the morality of slavery thanks to excerpts compiled by  The DBQ Project . The Sources We looked at excerpts from: Frederick Douglass's "The Meaning of the Fourth of July for the Negro" George Fitzhugh's Cannibals All! or Slaves Without Masters Reactions to John Brown, from The Americans  by Gerald Danzer The Task I divided the class into small groups of 3-4 students and each group was assigned one of the 3 documents. But they were told they could not read the documents yet.  We have been working...

Teenagers send videos to each other all the time via iMessage, Snapchat, and YouTube. Why not teach them to make videos that answer deeper historical questions? The document based question (DBQ) is a staple in most middle and high school history classrooms, but your day-to-day document analysis can be humdrum. To add interest and encourage students to create something unique based on what they've learned, I asked them to produce videos that explained their document's importance. The DBQ Project has a great American History Mini-Q that asks "The Battle of Gettysburg: Why was it a Turning Point?"  It contains four excellent documents that range from maps to letters to statistics. Step 1: History Recall In a previous lesson of this unit, students analyzed statistics about the North and South at the outset of the war and created infographics . I asked them what they remembered about the advantages and disadvantages of both sides. In another lesson students c...

I've used the National Archives document analysis sheets , the guided questions and charts from the DBQ Project , and lots of other formats of primary source analysis with my students.  They are all excellent tools, but they aren't FUN for kids.  I want students to be fascinated with evidence from history the same way I am.  I want them to see a connection between what a document says and what life may have been like for the people who wrote those words.   I've posted in the past about how non-traditional note-taking can be more valuable for student learning than previously thought .  I thought I'd apply that concept to primary source analysis. Last week I asked them to create some kind of image representation of a primary source document and how it helped answer our essential question: Was the Antebellum North really morally and economically opposed to slavery? You see, my New England students have traditionally been taught that the South favored slavery...

Maya city of Palenque The Maya were an impressive people. They built massive stone pyramids and temples throughout huge cities without the wheel or beasts of burden. They organized and conducted commerce via a complex system of roads throughout their geographical area of the Yucatan Peninsula and beyond. They used terracing, raised crop beds, and slash and burn to grow plentiful crops to feed a growing population in less than ideal agricultural conditions. Maya number system The created a complex calendar that calculated the 365 day year and used a combination of math, astronomy and science to be more accurate than any civilization on Earth at the same time. They were the first to contemplate and use the concept of "zero" in their system of mathematics. But which achievement is the most remarkable? Using the Document Based Question information from the DBQ Project and my own knowledge of technology, my students presented their arguments tech-styl...

How can I turn my history students into detectives? One of the most valuable skills we can teach our history students is to use evidence from the past to develop their own opinions about historical events.  One popular program that many high schools use is the DBQ Project .  Students use textual and visual primary and secondary scholarly sources to answer a question.  For example, my sophomores recently had a class debate based in the evidence from the DBQ entitled " North or South: Who Killed Reconstruction? " Essentially, students use evidence from experts and first-hand witnesses to solve problems, just like a detective would.  The program has a fabulous reputation and student essays that result are well-thought-out and evidence-based.  Unfortunately, one small pitfall of the program is that it requires a lot of paper and not much technology. Why not combine technology with historical evidence analysis? I found a great website that enables student to do t...