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Cultivating Future Historians: Hands-On Methods to Engage Students in the Past

Oct 13, 2023
9:00 am - 2:00 pm

ROE #3 Professional Development Center
1500 W Jefferson St
Vandalia, IL 62471

Contact: Contact Us
Contact phone: 6182835011
 

Join Heather Nice, Director of Education at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, as she leads this exciting two-part session examining how we can nurture and grow our students' inner historians! Part I of this presentation will engage you in hands-on activities to explore your positionality, consider the challenges of traditional methods of history instruction, and examine effective strategies to make the process of history visible in your classroom. In Part II, Heather will lead you in a guided discovery of how to create exciting hands-on analysis activities for your students to facilitate the development of disciplinary literacy, learner-led inquiry, and higher-level thinking skills.

 

To ensure a quality experience, please bring a laptop or tablet to use during this session.

 

Outline

Part I: Teaching the Process of History

  1. Positionality Activity
  2. Objectives and Ground Rules
  3. Complicating how we think about history
    1. Facilitated discussions examining what history is and how we/our students define it; comparison to the same questions for science.
    2. Menti activity examining "Historical Methods."
    3. Discussion of Science vs. History Instruction
    4. Thinking about historiography and textbooks
  4. Deep dive into how we teach students to become historians
    1. Intro discussion of disciplinary practice
    2. Hands-on analysis from history education literature
  5. Simple steps to help students become historians (from our Thinking Like a Historian program)
  6. Synthesis Discussion - what does it mean to think historically and how does that benefit our students?

Part II: Building Source-Based Inquiries

  1. Hands-on activity to examine how we think about sources
    1. Resource share
  2. Discussion of primary vs. secondary sources and the notion of the "gold standard" vs. balance
  3. Two analysis activities, with a review of tips for teaching the analytical process
  4. Review of inquiries that are already out there
  5. Discussion of what teachers can create, what students can create
  6. Tips for finding original records
  7. Guided time to explore within inquiry framework
  8. Debrief and discussion
  9. Tips for getting started

This training will be held on October 13, 2023 from 9:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m. at the ROE #3 Professional Development Center. Registration will begin at 8:30 a.m. The cost to attend this training is $50/person and lunch will be provided. Each participant will receive 4.5 PD hours upon completion of the training.