History Developing students’ critical thinking skills through the documents-based study

2 The documents-based study  Key syllabus objectives  Key learning outcomes  Key terms

3 The documents-based study Developing students’ historical literacy – Terms used in the syllabus objectives and learning outcomes – Terms that may be used in documents-based questions

4 Thinking critically: learning to ask relevant questions of sources What type of source is the document? Who produced the document? Why was this document produced? In what circumstances was this document produced? When was this document produced? What can this document tell me? What questions can it answer/not answer?

5 Thinking critically: learning to ask relevant questions of sources

6 A card-sorting, critical skills activity Rationale What is involved

7 Assessing students’ critical thinking skills: the documents-based question Format and question styles Comprehension Comparison Criticism Contextualisation

8 The documents-based question, Prescribed topic: The pursuit of sovereignty and the impact of partition, Exemplar questions (HL and OL) The Treaty negotiations, October-December, 1921 Belfast during World War II The Eucharistic Congress, 1932

Belfast during World War II

11 The documents-based question Some comments from the Chief Examiner’s Report, 2011 Lack of familiarity with vocabulary used Failure to adequately refer to both documents, where required Students jumping to conclusions about bias

12 The documents-based question Marking scheme 2011 Comments on work of journalists as primary source material Marking indicators, Higher Level Marking indicators, Ordinary Level

13 Developing students’ historical literacy Helpful words and phrases Using writing frames to develop students’ historical writing skills

14 Developing students’ historical literacy A card-sorting exercise to help students structure an answer to an historical question – ‘Big points’ and ‘little points’

History