1. Historical Thinking in an Inquiry-Based Classroom OISE – Jan. 19, 2016
Risa Gluskin, York Mills C.I.
Blog: gluskin.ca

2. Requires familiarity with curriculum expectations
Less Is More
More emphasis on how we teach
More exploring through an inquiry method
Emphasize why things happened rather than what
Let go of some of the details
Do more with less
Requires familiarity with curriculum expectations

3. Historical Inquiry Interpretation Not always looking for one answer
Starts with good questions
As Jill Colyer and Jennifer Watt write in IQ: A Practical Guide to Inquiry Based Learning, a good inquiry question is “an invitation to think (not recall, summarize, or detail).”

4. Basic Principles of Historical Thinking
history ≠ the past
we do not need to turn students into historians, but rather, to help them understand how history is constructed
our interpretation of evidence, and what we leave out, changes the history we tell 4

5. The Historical Thinking Concepts
Historical Significance
Cause and Consequence
Continuity and Change
Historical Perspectives
Use of Primary Source Evidence
Ethical Dimensions of History
Overall Expectations
Inquiry Strand 5

6. Inquiry Skills Formulating questions
Gathering and organizing information, evidence, and/or data
Interpreting and analysing information, evidence, and/or data
Evaluating information, evidence, and/or data and drawing conclusions
Communicating findings and/or plans of action

7. Achievement Chart Thinking Application
- use of planning skills (e.g., finding appropriate primary sources)
- use of processing skills (e.g., interpreting and analysing, detecting point of view and bias in primary sources; formulating conclusions)
- use of critical/creative thinking processes (e.g., inferring, using historical thinking)
- application of knowledge and skills in familiar contexts (e.g., creating a product such as a poster)
- transfer of knowledge and skills to new contexts (e.g., applying historical thinking criteria)
- making connections within and between various contexts (e.g., past and present)

8. Research vs. Inquiry
Research
Inquiry
“Inquiry-based teaching is a profound change from business as usual. Inquiry-based teaching transforms the aims of schools from short-term memorization of facts into disciplined questioning and investigating.” (Wolk, 2008, p. 117)

9. Deep vs. Surface Learning
Active
Critical thinking
Reflection
Student-centred
Passive
Memorization
Acceptance
Teacher-centred

10. Critical Thinking and Criteria
Importance of criteria
Part of critical thinking is avoiding random thinking
Knowing why a decision is made
Having standards
Eventually students can develop their own criteria
It becomes a habit of mind

11. Learning Skills and Self-Assessment
Organization
Excellent
Needs Improvement
identifies, gathers,
evaluates, and uses
information, technology,
and resources to complete tasks
Consistently gathers information from reliable
sources and uses criteria to assess reliability and relevance
Accepts all sources as valid without investigating their reliability or relevance