Women’s Rights in the 18 th and 19 th Centuries Angelia Moore The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History Cincinnati, February 2013

Spectrums  Allows students to assess and weight particular issues in a non-linear fashion  Points students to a narrative history that is more complicated than simple dates and facts  Includes multiple perspectives and degrees of experience  Examples for uses:  Enslavement to Emancipation (How free are you?)  Liberal versus Conservative (Note: our definitions of these are not the same for other time periods)  Other ideas?

Why Spectrums Work  Pulls on previous knowledge and requires weaving an understanding of the spectrum topic with evidence in the document excerpt to determine placement  Students like it because they can justify placement and argue for their position  Students don’t have to worry about dates and there is no real wrong answer (I don’t tell them this until the end)

Historical Literacy: The Basics Traditional direct instruction, worksheets, and memorization do not make for long term learning or provide students with any real set of thinking skills  Students are simply memorizing to survive testing  Most forget what they learned as soon as they test  Most test questions, even essay questions, give no credit to critical thinking skills!

Students who need more than memorization skills to hold on to history end up hating the subject  When they tell us “I’m not good at history” or, “I hate history”, etc. remember that what they are really saying is that they lack the ability to memorize things long term or don’t see the value of it  It is why many adults remember very little It is why many adults remember very little

 Historical thinking skills are a real set of skills  Students now are being asked to investigate narrative, informational, and opinion pieces as well as write them  We first have to find creative ways to engage them in a story and inspire them to uncover more of it  People who are passionate about history aren’t simply “good at it”- they connected to something, investigated more, and took ownership in the process of learning and in the content

Thinking, reading, and writing in history requires teachers to structure their classes, keeping these two statements in the front of their minds if they want student ownership of the material:  Basic content is uncovered by students, not simply delivered by a teacher  Student creativity with text and writing is tantamount to ensuring critical thinking and analysis has occurred Student creativity with text and writing is tantamount to ensuring critical thinking and analysis has occurred

Assessing Claims, Evaluating Assertions, and Developing Narratives  Memorization and memory are not the same things!  History classes have rewarded students for the first rather than the later  Move away from standardized questioning: This is the greatest challenge to CCSS!  If it’s easy to grade, it’s easy to forget!  Formulate questions that will not reward memorization (doesn’t mean that students shouldn’t study and be familiar with a time period)

Open Compare Contrast  Comes out of the Center for Critical Thinking in Boston  Even on a similar subject, historians differ in how they approach their subject  Open Compare/Contrast: Maylynn Salmon and Ellen DuBois  The tough part about this activity is deciding as a group what the categories for differences are and then fleshing those out  The important part of the exercise is identifying patterns in the similarities and differences  Keep your conclusion to “Ten Words or Less”

My Contact Information  Phone: Work: Home: Cell:  Personal: Work: