How to teach history

There is no single 'best' way to teach history. Research suggests that good history teachers know the content, use a variety of approaches, explicitly teach the skills of historical inquiry and analysis, tailor learning opportunities to suit their students' stage of development, and encourage deep understanding.
Activities
There is room for a range of teaching and learning activities in the history classroom: a story well-told by the teacher, a museum display (actual or digital), model-making, the construction of timelines, comprehension and source analysis activities, oral history interviews, site studies, simulated excavations, problem-solving exercises, role plays and debates. Activities like these can be tailored to suit students' stage of development.
Approaches
Approaches to pedagogy can be teacher-centred or student generated, inquiry based or teacher directed, completed individually, in pairs, groups, or as a whole class, and involve digital resources to varying degrees. The important thing is that learning activities relate to each other, encourage historical thinking and lead to the learning goal in a coherent way.
Resources
A variety of resources should be used in the history classroom, including documents, photographs, artefacts and people (as guest speakers or interview subjects). Historical places make great resources: museums, monuments and heritage sites (actual or virtual), particularly in the local area. Film, historical fiction, works of art, history textbooks and history websites offer a wonderful range of resources. Resources can be provided by the teacher or students.
Putting it all together
To teach for historical understanding, teachers need to
become familiar with the historical content and concepts they need to teach
understand the skills and methods of historical inquiry
be clear about the learning goal (knowledge and understanding and skills)
plan a coherent learning sequence to enable students to achieve the learning goal

 Chronology

Chronology is the air history breathes. It enables pupils to place their learning within the bigger picture and better remember historical people, periods and events. Without chronology, children’s historical understanding will remain limited.  Read more

Teaching Primary History

Kate Smyth: history in the primary classroom (Video, 6:55)
Kate Smyth is a former primary school teacher and is currently Lecturer in Primary Method at Sydney University.

How do you teach primary history?

Some thoughts from Tim Lomas, Deputy President of the Historical Association.

• History can be made meaningful even to very young children
• Content is of importance but that this is underpinned by key concepts such as chronology, change, causation and evidence
• Variety is important
• Effective learning benefits from an enquiry approach
• Pupils should be introduced to a variety of source materials, including some from outside the classroom
• Understanding is improved by making links, comparisons and contrasts with the different themes and content covered, as well as with other curriculum areas

Evidence also suggests that many primary age pupils enjoy history when adopting these approaches. Consistently, surveys about pupil motivation and enjoyment suggest that they relish variety, active approaches, an emphasis on people and what makes them tick – as one teacher described it “a mix of the detective story and the soap opera”. The story still matters in history

Sir George Somers

A Voyage to Virginia in 1609: Two Narratives: Strachey's "

True Reportory" and Jourdain's Discovery of the Bermudas.  (Press link to View Downloads)

 

But see the goodness and sweet introduction of better hope by our merciful God given unto us: Sir George Somers, when no man dreamed of such happiness, had discovered and cried LAND

A True Reportory William Strachey

The Story of the Wreck of the Sea Venture - 1609

In 1609 he was made Admiral of the Virginia Company's Third Supply Relief Fleet, sailing from London and then Plymouth, bound for Virginia. The fleet of 9 ships, with Somers aboard the flagship Sea Venture, set sail from Plymouth with fresh supplies and additional colonists for the new British settlement at Jamestown. Also aboard were John Rolfe (who would become known as the husband of Pocahontas) and the governor-designate of the settlement, Sir Thomas Gates. On 25th July during a hurricane, the Sea Venture was separated from the main fleet and was wrecked off Discovery Bay, Bermuda. Somers and all aboard the Sea Venture were presumed dead by those who continued on to Virginia.
In fact, the ship was wrecked between two rocks or reefs and all 150 crew and colonists were saved. This marked the beginning of the colonisation of Bermuda, England's first Crown Colony. At the time Bermuda was known as 'Virgineola' in tribute to the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I. But with King James I now on the throne, the islands were renamed the Somers Isles, still today Bermuda's official alternate name.
To continue their journey to Jamestown the castaways needed new ships, so Somers and Sir Thomas Gates between them oversaw the building of the Deliverance and the Patience from the wrecked Sea Venture and local timber. There was no lack of food on Bermuda, and the castaways were able to live well on fish, sea turtle eggs, fruit and wild hog (which had been landed and left behind on the islands by Spanish pirates). So during their ten months on the islands, the crew and passengers started the Bermuda colony, building a church and houses.
Ships Lyme Regis plaque (HUK)On 10th May 1610 the two small ships set sail with 142 people and some supplies on board. On arrival some fourteen days later, they found the Virginia Colony almost destroyed by famine and disease during what has become known as the "Starving Time". Very few of the supplies from the Supply Relief Fleet had arrived (the same hurricane which caught the Sea Venture had also badly affected the rest of the fleet), and only 60 of the original 214 settlers remained alive.
Sir George Somers wrote to Robert Cecil reporting his shipwreck on Bermuda while on a voyage to Virginia, and telling of a famine at Jamestown so severe that people were forced to eat snakes. He planned to take the colonists by ship to Bermuda "the most plentifull place that ever I came to for Fishe, Hogges and Fowle". However the plan to abandon Jamestown was shelved upon the arrival of the fourth relief fleet commanded by Lord Delaware in July 1610.
It was only through the arrival of the ships from Bermuda and the arrival of the fourth relief fleet that the colony at Jamestown was able to survive.
Sir George returned to Bermuda in the Patience to collect more food, but he became ill on the journey and died "of a surfeit in eating of a pig", on November 9th 1610 in Bermuda. His heart was buried in Bermuda but his body, pickled in a barrel, was landed on the Cobb at Lyme Regis in 1618. A volley of muskets and cannon saluted his last journey to the church at Whitchurch Canonicorum where his body is buried.
The story of what happened to the Sea Venture is known through the work of Sylvester Jourdan, also from Lyme Regis, who was on board the Sea Venture and survived to record what had happened in a small book he wrote in 1610 called A Discovery of the Barmudas which was printed in London.
One of the backers of the Virginia Company was the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare’s patron, and it is possible that Jourdan’s book about the shipwreck on the mysterious island, ‘the land of devils and spirits’, was the inspiration for Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest.
Lyme Regis is twinned with St George in Bermuda, however the town is named after St George, the patron saint of England, and not Sir George Somers, founder of the colony of Bermuda.

Lorri Glover teaches at Saint Louis University, where she holds the John Francis Bannon endowed chair in history. She has written extensively about early America, from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth.  In the above lecture, she gives some an excellent background in the context of the 1609 voyage and its importance to our story.   Glover wrote the book 'The Shipwreck That Saved Jamestown: The Sea Venture Castaways and the Fate of America'

Black History
In the past, black history has often been marginalised and ignored by mainstream history. The study of this hidden past has developed into a large and at times controversial field in America, where it is known as black or African world studies.The area sparks much debate, as it tries to bring to wider attention, evidence and research which at times challenges the mainstream views of history.

Carter G. Woodson, often cited as the "Father of Black History."

 

Helping Children Make Sense of Their Time

James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, recently suggested: “...if we want students to understand what is happening in Ferguson, Missouri or the Middle East, they need an unvarnished picture of our past and the skills to understand and interpret that picture. “College-level work”  I think that a great Primary and Secondary teacher should also try and address this issue.  

 

History in schools, colleges and universities faces a  considerable challenge, despite the massive popularity of the past in the wider culture. There is abundant evidence that there is no sign that the great history boom is slackening, as any television schedule shows. Despite this popularity, History can often be squeezed out of the timetable or in danger of not reflecting an inclusive approach to encompass the wider story of our nation. In the above debate, some of these issues are explored as well as teacher autonomy and trust.

The application of historical thinking skills helps foster the new generation of civically minded individuals who can contribute to our evolving fabric of democracy here in Bermuda and the wider world.

Why Use Primary Sources?

Primary sources provide a window into the past—unfiltered access to the record of artistic, social, scientific and political thought and achievement during the specific period under study, produced by people who lived during that period.

Bringing young people into close contact with these unique, often profoundly personal, documents and objects can give them a very real sense of what it was like to be alive during a long-past era.

1. Engage students

  • Primary sources help students relate in a personal way to events of the past and promote a deeper understanding of history as a series of human events.
  • Because primary sources are snippets of history, they encourage students to seek additional evidence through research.
  • First-person accounts of events helps make them more real, fostering active reading and response.

2. Develop critical thinking skills

  • Many curriculum objectives support teaching with primary sources, which require students to be both critical and analytical as they read and examine documents and objects.
  • Primary sources are often incomplete and have little context. Students must use prior knowledge and work with multiple primary sources to find patterns.
  • In analysing primary sources, students move from concrete observations and facts to questioning and making inferences about the materials.
  • Questions of creator bias, purpose, and point of view may challenge students’ assumptions, this is usually a healthy process that develops a more critical approach to the subject.

3. Construct knowledge

  • Inquiry into primary sources encourages students to wrestle with contradictions and compare multiple sources that represent differing points of view, confronting the complexity of the past.
  • Students construct knowledge as they form reasoned conclusions, base their conclusions on evidence, and connect primary sources to the context in which they were created, synthesizing information from multiple sources.
  • Integrating what they glean from comparing primary sources with what they already know, and what they learn from research, allows students to construct content knowledge and deepen their understanding.

 

Document Analysis Worksheets

Document analysis is the first step in working with primary sources. Teach your students to think through primary source documents for contextual understanding and to extract information to make informed judgments.

Use these worksheets — for photos, written documents, artefacts, posters, maps, cartoons, videos, and sound recordings — to teach your students the process of document analysis.

Follow this progression:

  1. The first few times you ask students to work with primary sources, and whenever you have not worked with primary sources recently, model careful document analysis using the worksheets. Point out that the steps are the same each time, for every type of primary source:
    1. Meet the document.
    2. Observe its parts.
    3. Try to make sense of it.
    4. Use it as historical evidence.
  2. Once students have become familiar with using the worksheets, direct them to analyze documents as a class or in groups without the worksheets, vocalizing the four steps as they go.
  3. Eventually, students will internalize the procedure and be able to go through these four steps on their own every time they encounter a primary source document. Remind students to practice this same careful analysis with every primary source they see.

Don’t stop with document analysis though. An analysis is just the foundation. Move on to activities in which students use the primary sources as historical evidence, like on DocsTeach.org.

 

Worksheets for Novice or Younger Students, or Those Learning English

 

Worksheets for Intermediate or Secondary Students

Analyzing Documents

Teach students the process of document analysis, the foundation for working with primary sources.

Focusing on Details: Discussion Topic

Showcase one document while posing a question, comment, or directions for students.

Focusing on Details: Spotlight

Highlight a specific part of a document.

Focusing on Details: Zoom/Crop

Intrigue students about a particular document and give them practice forming hypotheses.

Focusing on Details: Compare and Contrast

Display two to four documents to prompt students to observe and point out similarities and differences.

Focusing on Details: White Out/Black Out

Teach students to use visual cues and context to understand a document.

Finding a Sequence

Present primary sources and challenge students to sequence them based on careful document analysis.

Making Connections

Present primary sources as a string of documents and help students make connections among those documents and the historical events they illustrate.

Mapping History

Link primary sources to locations on a map to practice spatial thinking and understand the impact of geographic factors in history.

Seeing the Big Picture

Pair documents concerning a historical event, concept, or figure with descriptions, questions, or other documents to impress upon students that the whole is derived of smaller parts.

Weighing the Evidence

Turn primary sources into historical evidence that students sort through and evaluate to draw historical conclusions.

Interpreting Data

Introduce students to primary source documents containing historical data and encourage them to consider the source, the presentation style, and the intended impact of the material.