Description

Reading and Thinking like a historian is a step by step process that requires us to analyze a source to determine its worth and validity. In most elementary cases, we are taught to read and memorize dates and times of when events occurred and how they happened. However, as we learn to take a historian approach, we learn it is more involved than that. Once we start reading a document or primary source, we have to learn to formulate questions such as who is writing this? Authors point of views? Are they biased? Look for involuntary information that could lead us into a little more detail into the author's thoughts and reasonings. These can be defined as examples of sourcing. Then we will do some "close reading." This is where we go check our author's sources.

 Compare their sitings. Make sure the information is accurate and hasn't had any biased statements introduced to persuade the audience. This is also where we formulate answers to unanswered questions. Next, we will follow suit with Contextualizing. Information such as the geographic whereabouts of the author at the time the source can give us some insight as to the knowledge the author brings to the table. Where they at the actual event when it took place? Why did the author feel the need to write this? Who was the intended audience? This is the process in which we apply our prior knowledge and our newly gathered verified knowledge to interpret the setting within the historical reading. The last step to our newly developing historical thinking skills is corroborating.

 This is where we construct our interpretation of events based on all of our information acquired from multiple sources. We can now define the facts and inconsistencies and determine which documents are more reliable and trustworthy. We may find that some text does not agree with each other, but not necessarily nonfactual, but perhaps possibly stemming from different viewpoints.

Instruction Files