Planning the Thinking Like a Historian Unit

What would you most want your students to remember from their time in your history class? The STAAR review? Important dates? A sequence of the eras? A particular pattern in history? The order of the presidents?  All of which I would propose can be found with a quick search of the Internet. What students can’t search for, are skills. How to source information. How to corroborate information. How to articulate and identify points-of-view. How to scrutinize sources. How to craft informed opinions based on evidence.

Students practice these skills throughout the history courses in the various contexts, but when are students explicitly taught these skills? The Thinking Like a Historian Units in Grade 7, 8, World History, and U.S. History in the TEKS Resource System were designed to give time to explicit instruction of historical thinking skills, or a review of those skills, and a check for student understanding of those skills.

Fortunately, there are several resources to facilitate teaching these skills to the students and I want to take this opportunity to showcase those resources.  So lets look at some here.

The Library of Congress is another great resource for teaching with documents throughout the year and don’t forget the resource section of TEKS Resource System for the Thinking Like A Historian resource.

Have fun engaging your students as historical detectives.

Photo From the Library of Congress is of African-American and Native American students in Ancient History class by Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1899. 

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