Sourcing

=** Sourcing: ** Think about a document's author and its creation. = Select a historical document, such as a diary entry, letter or memo, and provide students with copies. Model for students how to scan the document for its attribution, often at the end, as a first step instead of reading the text from beginning to end. Demonstrate how to begin questioning the source by posing questions to the class: Who created this document? When? For what purpose? How trustworthy might this source be? Why? (Wineberg, S., //Thinking Like a Historian, retrieved from // [])

[|CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.1] Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, attending to such features as the date and origin of the information. [|CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.5] Analyze how a text uses structure to emphasize key points or advance an explanation or analysis [|CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.9-10.8] Assess t he extent to which the reasoning and evidence in a text support the author’s claims.
 * Key Ideas and Details**
 * Craft and Structure**
 * Integration of Knowledge and Ideas**

Contents of Historical Thinking Standards for Grades 5-12 == [|Standard 2 : Historical Comprehension] == A. Identify the author or source of the historical document or narrative and assess its credibility.
 * National Center for History in Schools UCLA Overview **

This link is excellent for teachers and students. It provides a series of general questions to keep in mind while investigating a source. []

This link is an excellent resource for teachers for it breaks down sources into different categories and provides specific steps for investigating each sources. []

This link is excellent for teachers. It provides a variety of lesson plans using primary sources. Even though these are for Advanced Placement European History they can be modified for World History courses. []

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. It provides a couple of conflicting sources and poses specific questions to get students to think about a document's author and its creation. http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/spanishamericanwar/0/inquiry/intro/questions/9/

The Stanford History Education Group (sheg) is another excellent resource for students and teachers who want to learn how to "do history". It has 76 lessons in U.S. History and 14 lessons in World history to engage students in historical inquiry. Each lesson revolves around a central historical question and features sets of primary documents designed for groups of students with diverse reading skills and abilities (retrieved from http://sheg.stanford.edu/rlh). This particular link is to a WW1 inquiry. It provides conflicting sources and poses the question: Was appeasement the right policy for England in 1938?, pushing students to think about the document's author and creation. http://sheg.stanford.edu/appeasement