How to Think Like a Historian
What...and Why?
Time and Place
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Sources
Think Like a Historian
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Standards and Essential Questions
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"The First Days of School"
In this lesson, students examine the brevity of life and how it produces an urgency to "Carpe Diem" in our lives, classes, and relationships. Like Soren Kierkegaard once remarked, "Like can be understand backwards but it must be lived forwards." We watch a series of video clips that are then unpacked and applied. Learning Goal: Consider the brevity of life and it's implications on how we will live and work. Essential Question: What are you going to do with your dash? |
Lesson Plan
Presentation Table Tent Questions Interest Survey Dead Poets Society Emperor's Club Bucket List |
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.....
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Bucket List Clip
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How will history remember you?
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Just a video for fun to follow my claim that I know you exist.
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What is History and Why Should We Study It?
In this lesson, students will receive a defense of the course. We will encounter a preliminary definition of history and then unpack several reasons it is worth their time and energy to study it. We watch video clips from "The Lion King" and a Saturday Night Live episode featuring Jerry Seinfeld as a history teacher. We also watch a clip from the Tonight Show in which Jay Leno goes "Jay Walking." "Not to know what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child." Students are introduced to the Marking the Text reading strategy when they read excerpts from essays written by C.S. Lewis. Learning Goal: Essential Question: What is history and why should we study it?
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Lesson Plan
Presentation History Quotes Sat Night Live Clip Jaywalking: Heritage Jaywalking Real? Miss Teen USA Little Mermaid Clip C.S. Lewis Excerpts Marking the Text Guide MTT Strategy Description |
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Thinking About Place
This lesson probes into the students' worldviews, understanding of the world they live in (both geographically and culturally) and introduces the Geography Theme for the year. Students construct a mental map of the world from memory and take an introductory quiz about the continents and oceans. Learning Goal: Examine the relationship between geography and culture for historians. Essential Question: How does where you live affect how you live and why does geography matter so much to historians? |
Lesson Plan
Presentation The World You Live In Map of Colton |
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Observation Versus Inference
This lesson Learning Goal: Essential Question: |
Nice or Nasty?
In this lesson, students begin to analyze and interpret a collection of primary and secondary sources in order to make and support a claim around the the central historical question, "Were Roman cities nice or nasty places to live?" Learning Goal: Analyze a variety of sources to construct a historical argument. Essential Question: What it nice or nasty living in a Roman city? |
Lesson Plan
Presentation Source Handouts |
Thinking About Time
This lesson focuses on the role of time (chronology and the various ways people have organized time in their civilizations) in history. We practice Marking the Text and participate in a Socratic Seminar. Learning Goal: Examine the importance of time for historians. Essential Question: Why is the way we think about and organize time important to historians? |
Lesson Plan
Presentation Map of Colton Consolation of Philosophy |
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Consider the Source
In this lesson, students are introduced to primary and secondary sources. They categorize sources and begin to evaluate what types of sources are likely to be more reliable. Learning Goal: Essential Question: |
Lesson Plan
Presentation Lunchroom Fight Evaluating Sources Little Mermaid Clip |
Summarizing Informational Texts in History
Lesson Plan Presentation |