Historical Thinking Skills - Global 9

Which document is an example of a secondary source?

• A Global history textbook

• A handwritten copy of the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln

• A letter from William T. Sherman to his brother Senator David Sherman

• An article written by Benjamin Franklin for poor Richards' almanac

-Use a variety of evidence

-analyze primary documents

-compare societies and regions

These actions help historians reconstruct a record of society by

• focusing on traditional interpertations

• making use of multiple perspectives

• separating history from science

• relying on a single argument

“People do not often create records for the benefit of historians. They produce them for other reasons.…”

— Chris Hinton, 1998

Based on this statement, historical sources often contain:

• evidence that can be biased

• facts that are completely balanced and reliable

• accounts that represent all points of view

• summaries that detail research about the distant past

Which historical thinking skill do the following questions most closely relate to:

Who created it? From what perspective or point of view? When was it written? Why was it written? Is it reliable?

• Contextualization

• Corroboration

• Sourcing

The following questions represent which Historical Thinking skill?

When and where was the document created? What was different then? What was the same? How might the circumstances in which the document was created affect its content?

• Sourcing

• Contextualization

• Close Reading

The following questions represent which Historical Thinking skill?

What do other documents say? Do the documents agree? If not, why? What are other possible documents? What documents are most reliable?

• Contextualization

• Corroboration

• Close Reading

• Sourcing

The following questions represent which Historical Thinking Skill?

What claims does the author make? What evidence does the author use? What language (words, phrases, images, symbols) does the author use to persuade the document’s audience? How does the document’s language indicate the author’s perspective?

• Close Reading

• Sourcing

• Contextualization

• Corroboration

Which of these sources is more reliable?

• A movie made about the Declaration of Independence in 2001

• A book written by a famous historian who is an expert on the American Revolution, published in 1999.

Comparing two or more sources in order to see if evidence agrees or disagrees with each other is an example of...

• Sourcing

• Contextualization

• Corroboration

• Close Reading

Understanding who the author of a document is, and examining his or her reliability is an example of..

• Sourcing

• Contextualization

• Corroboration

• Close Reading