Contextualizing

=Contextualizing: Situate the document and its events in time and place. = Encourage students to brainstorm the document's historical context, piecing together major events, themes, and people that distinguish the era or period in which the document was created. List students’ responses for the class to add to and refer to during close reading.

[|CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.3]  Analyze in detail a series of events described in a text; determine whether earlier events caused later ones or simply preceded them.
 * Key Ideas and Details**

== [|Standard 1: Chronological Thinking] == A. Distinguish between past, present, and future time. B. Identify the temporal structure of a historical narrative or story. C. Establish temporal order in constructing historical narratives of their own. D. Measure and calculate calendar time. E. Interpret data presented in time lines and create time lines. F. Reconstruct patterns of historical succession and duration; explain historical continuity and change. G. Compare alternative models for periodization.

Historical Thinking matters is the site for learning how to do history. This site uncovers the thinking process that historians go through when they do history. The site has four inquiry activity. Each activity has a lead question and a set of sources. There are questions to help students do close reading as well as examples of historians thinking about sources and students modeling the process in a think aloud model. This is a great link for teachers and students in the Spanish American War activity and shows examples of how students can figure out the context of a situation by exploring a source. http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/spanishamericanwar/0/inquiry/main/questions/1/

This is a great link for teachers and students in the Scopes Trial activity. It shows students how to put the document, a New York Times article in the specific time and place, 1925 America. It not only provides the document and questions to guide student thinking but it also provides historian Mike O'Malley discussing the cultural import of minstrel shows in the period. http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/scopestrial/0/inquiry/main/resources/45/

This is a great link for teachers and students in the Civil Rights Movement activity. It provides an example of a think aloud in which a student, Andrew, situates Bayard Rustin's Diary into the Civil Rights movement. http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/rosaparks/1/studentwork/ta1/