For Teachers
Stategies for Teaching Document-based History
The goal of these strategies and lessons is to engage students in working with historical documents. This idea of students working with historical document directly rather than just being told the answer is best demonstated below in the following video from Stanford University and their "Reading Like a Historian" program summary.
HIPPO is a new strategy that has been used in AP US History courses since the College Board redesign. This strategy also focuses on sourcing and contextualizing documents.
​
The Texas Education Agency has pulled together a variety of strategies for both examining primary and secondary source documents. The page also includes best practices that can be easily incorporated into your Social Studies classroom.
​
An additional way to explore documents is through the use of Close Reading Strategies from Matthew Pisker at the Understanding Lincoln website. An additional way to engage students at a very high level of critical thinking and incorporating primary source materials into their learning.
​
strategies and lesson plan
Lesson Plan
​
In my AP US History classroom, my intention is to use this content in smaller lessons as we study major topics throughout the 19th-century. However, this experience could readily be utilized as a larger culminating unit to examine Abraham Lincoln's role in United States History as well.
Essential Question:Use the Guiding Question on each tab to open that topic discussion.
​
Buidling Background Knowledge: Conduct a brief lecture on the particular topic of some essentialbackground points for each topic. Then show or have stuents watch the video featured on each page.
​
Reading and Guiding Questions: Direct students using the devices to examine one of the Lincoln Documents featured on the page. You may want students to work in pairs and have them work through the close reading organizer
​
Activity: Have students create in groups their own close reading video based on the models provided and using their close reding forms as a jumping off point.
​
Whole Class Discussion:Begin by showing videos and discuss the subtext of the documents with the students.​
​