What is Thinking and Reading Historically?

What is Thinking and Reading Historically?

By Laura VanGemert

It's not only what we know about the past, it's how we know it because the past is hard to retrieve.

It's Not Only What You Know

Historical thinking is the reading, analysis and writing that is necessary to tell these stories.

​Thinking Historically

What is Thinking Historically?

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Thinking Historically

​How Does It Help?

Thinking historically helps us get closer to that past, to retrieve and construct a more accurate and complete picture of what happened and what it meant.

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1. Multiple Accounts and Perspectives

2. Analysis of Primary Sources

3. Sourcing

4. Context

5. Claim-evidence connection​

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​The Five Aspects of Historical Thinking

Multiple Choice

What are the Five Aspects of Historical Thinking?

• Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Kinesthetics, Psychology

• Multiple Accounts and Perspectives

  Analysis of Primary Sources

  Sourcing

  Context

  Claim-Evidence Connection

• Reports, Books, Newspapers, Obituaries, Transcripts

• Drawings, Photographs, Diaries, Recordings, First Person Accounts

Historical Thinking

​How to Think Historically

Many people think of history as a single account. But in fact we must use multiple sources to get as accurate a picture as possible about events of the past.

It is crucial that you as a student work with multiple accounts and learn to analyze and synthesize them.​

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No single account written from one perspective captures the complexity of the past.

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​Thinking Historically

Historical Thinking

​Primary Sources

Primary sources are original documents and objects created at the time under study. They are vital to reconstructing the past.

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Open Ended

What are primary sources and why are they vital?

Historical thinking includes learning how to read, question, contextualize and analyze these sources as they can tell different stories about the same event.

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​Historical Thinking

​Historical Thinking

When we study the Boston Massacre, we can study a report from a commanding officer that says that soldiers fired on the crowd of colonists without orders. We can then read a contrasting account from someone in the crowd, who remembers that officer giving those orders to fire.

Subject | Subject

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But we can't just assume that one is lying and the other is not. Instead, we have to ask questions about what these two eye witnesses had to lose or gain with their accounts, what interests were at stake...We consider things like how soon after the event and for what audience an account was written. We look for points of agreement and disagreement between te two contrasting accounts.

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​Historical Thinking

Things To Consider When Thinking Historically

​Primary Sources

To be useful in retrieving the past, primary sources need to be questioned and read closely.

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Open Ended

Why do primary sources need to be read closely?