Dedicated to relinquishing responsibility for learning to the students
Received a nice email from the folks at SlideShare this morning.
"Hi peterpappas, Your presentation "The Student As Historian – DBQ Strategies and Resources" is currently being featured on the SlideShare homepage by our editorial team. We thank you for this terrific presentation, that has been chosen from amongst the thousands that are uploaded to SlideShare everday."
Cute baby photo – tough competition!
Over the last few weeks I’ve been guiding teams of teachers on reflective classroom walkthroughs. During the course of one of our “hallway discussions” I asked a social studies teacher, “who’s the historian in your classroom?” After a bit of give and take, we concluded that in the traditional classroom, the students get to watch (and listen) to the teacher be historian.
That’s certainly what you would have seen early in my teaching career. I was the one doing most of the reading, reflecting and synthesizing of historic material. I thought my job was to distill it all and simplify for consumption by my students. It took me a few years to realize my job was to get the students to do the thinking. I have spent my career developing teaching strategies and assembling resources that foster the student as historian.
This downloadable SlideShare accompanies my workshop in “Teaching with Documents.” Don’t think of it as a presentation. It’s a online guide to resources and includes strategy illustrations from my workshop.
Questions feature a selection of primary and secondary documents, graphics, cartoons, tables, and graphs. Each is keyed to a historic theme and focused on an essential question of enduring relevance. They provide students with the exciting opportunity to move beyond the passive absorption of facts and enter knowledgeably into a managed archive where they can bring sound historic perspectives and analysis to bear on the challenges of the past and opportunities for the future.
More DBQ blog posts.
My site Teaching with Documents.
The Industrial Revolution began in Western Europe and eventually spread across much of the world. It transformed humanity’s age-old struggle with material scarcity by using capital, technology, resources, and management to expand the production of goods and services dramatically. In the United States, the period between the Civil War and the end of the nineteenth century was one of tremendous industrial and commer cial expansion. Americans have long had faith in the idea of progress, and many people viewed this dramatic economic growth as evidence of the superiority of the American system.
But while increased production did improve the American standard of living, industrialization concentrated great wealth and power in the hands of a few captains of industry. For the thousands of Americans who actually worked in the new factories, however, this economic revolution often meant long hours, low wages, and dangerous working conditions. As economic growth increasingly touched every aspect of American society, it created both new opportunities and new social problems.
Rural Americans Move to the Cities: explore the world of the rural men and women who moved to the cities in search of a better life. (pdf format)
Progress and Poverty in Industrial America: explore the impact of an economic revolution on rich and poor Americans. (pdf format)
Re-Defining the Role of Women in Industrial America: explore the ways social and economic progress impacted the role of women. (pdf format)
Images:
Election Day by CW Guslin, 1909
Sears Catalogue 1908
These questions are designed to give elementary students guided practice in working with primary and secondary source material. They target grades 2 – 6 and address a variety of common social studies topics. DBQ’s and CRQs help prepare students to do the work of historians and social scientists. For more of my posts for using DBQs in the elementary and secondary classroom click here. Hat tip to Kate Gillan, former K-8 Social Studies Director at East Irondequoit CSD and all the district teachers who produced this fine series of DBQ’s and CRQ’s.
Document Based Questions
Gr 2 Local History
Gr 3 Communities
Gr 3 Transportation
Gr 4 Colonial Period
Gr 4 Roles of Women
Gr 5 Civil War
Gr 5 The Iroquois
Gr 5 Government
Gr 5 Immigration
Gr 6 Classical Period
Gr 6 Eastern Religion
Constructed Response Questions
Grade 3 World Communities-1
Grade 3 World Communities-2
Grade 3 Maps
Grade 4 New York State History
Grade 5 Rainforests
Grade 6 Series
Image credit: Peter Pappas
While planning for my next document based question (DBQ) workshop, I discovered Historypin. It’s a great mashup of digital photos with stories layered over Google maps. Users can search images by geography / time and post historic photos with stories to maps. It’s fascinating to view historic photographs set against the backdrop of current Google map street view.
Here’s a circa 1894 photo I uploaded to Historypin showing a bridge crossing the Erie Canal in downtown Rochester NY. It’s layered over a functioning “street view” in Google maps.
In Historypin’s story section, I provide a brief history of the canal’s impact on the growth of the city.
Then I pose a question. “I wonder if the people in the old photograph still appreciated the canal’s role in creating the city of Rochester, or if they had come to see it as outmoded nuisance which divided the city in half?”
For more ideas for classroom see: image guide | story guide | teachers’ notes.
What I like most about Historypin is that it adds a new dimension to the DBQ approach to instruction – students don’t simply learn from historic documents – they get to document their world for future generations.
More from Historypin:
Historypin was created as part of our current campaign to get people from different generations spending more time together. From a lot testing, we found old photos are a great way of getting people talking about how their street used to look, what their grandparents were like and what’s changed (or not) over time.
We decided to create a website where people everywhere could share their old photos and the stories behind them, pinning them to a map of the world. We also thought it would be neat if you could compare these old photos with how the world looks today, making the site a bit like a digital time machine. So we asked Google if they’d help. They let us use their map and Street View functionality and helped us build the site.
The great thing about Historypin is that when they’re using the site, loads of people are spending time with someone from a different generation. Older people have attics full of old photos, younger people know when to click and when to double click.
