Read, Think, Talk, Think, Write, Think, Repeat

I believe these are the keys to learning history. My job as a teacher is simple: guide and motivate students to read, talk and write every day, and to think all the while.   

Read

Reading is foundational to the study of history because history is made of texts. Reading sources is how you “do” history. Texts are stationary objects, so they are a better companion for the thinking student. The reader can interrogate text (e.g. reread, compare, cite) while video and audio formats tend to immerse you, making you a passenger along for the ride.    

Reading also builds background knowledge and vocabulary, which help drive comprehension. It’s easier to understand events – historical and present day – if we have them in context. 

However, in order to read well, students must… well… read.

I believe that reading is a skill that is best developed daily. So, reading will be a daily activity for my students – in class and at home.

When possible I will assign readings from selected primary sources or secondary sources. This is because curated, complex texts build reading and analytical skill.  This is also because there is so much amazing content in the world and so little of it is contained in textbooks. I will scaffold each reading with a short introduction that provides context and vocabulary.  All homework readings will also be available in an OCR’d PDF. This allows for text readers and easy copy and paste translation for English learners.

My classes will be structured so there is accountability for reading homework in the form of short recall quizzes and discussion. However, there will also be in-class reading and analysis providing participation on-ramps for students who skip reading homework.

I will also work hard to create a culture of effort.  While reading quizzes will be graded, they will be daily and low stakes.  Readings will vary in difficulty so that they are not a constant grind. Discussion is not a time for gotchas. Reading some is better than none.

Finally, I want my students to have a paper copy of their readings. I will be asking them to mark it up. Underline, highlight, write in the margins. Get to know the text by asking it questions: Who wrote it? When? Why? Does it line up with what we read yesterday?

Think

Everyone agrees that thinking is important. However, thinking historically isn’t natural. I have to teach it to my students.

When we study history, we tend to see it through the eyes of the present; we see events as inevitable and treat interpretation as settled fact. These are big mistakes. People in the past often believed and were motivated by things that don’t drive us today. We must work to understand their perspective as it existed for them. Similarly, the past was not inevitable. Historical actors had agency. Their actions mattered and influenced how things turned out. Finally, historical interpretation is a debate. While facts are settled, interpretations are argued. This is an active process that my students should participate in.

This will show up in the questions I ask and the skills I teach. When we study early encounters between Europeans and the Powhatan, for example, students will answer questions like “Why did the Powhatan kill the Spanish Jesuits but feed the English?” To answer it, students must consider the Powhatan as independent political actors, read sources for what they say and what they leave out, and build arguments from evidence. Wineburg’s historian habits, the C3 Framework, and Seixas’s Big Six give that work structure, without burying students in learning models.

Talk

The best reason for us to gather as a class is to explore our ideas in ways that are more interesting and more productive than if we are alone with our own thoughts. When we gather we have the opportunity both to express our thinking to an audience and to have our peers push our thinking in new ways.

I know it doesn’t always work like this.

Back when I was a student most of my verbal contributions were performative and did not meaningfully advance my own learning or that of my classmates. I typically just raised my hand and answered a question that required recalling a fact or offering a basic interpretation.   

Occasionally, my classmates and I had to give a presentation in front of the class. On those rare but dreaded days I would sit at my desk, engulfed in nerves, unable to focus on any of the other presentations until my turn came. Then I would go to the front of the class, blurt out my story and return to my seat as quickly as possible. From there I would be too busy basking in the knowledge that I wouldn’t have to do this again for a long time to listen to anything my peers said.

I don’t want it to go like this in my classroom.

The antidote: lower the stakes and turn up the opportunity.

In my class students will speak often and in meaningful ways. Because speaking will be routine, it will also feel less risky. Classmates will need to listen because they will be building the lesson on each other’s words.

My students will:

These activities will be part of the rhythm of the classroom. While I will design the lessons, students’ thinking will carry them forward. Students will look to themselves and each other, not just to me, as the sources of the lesson’s best thinking.

Write

“I hate to write. I love to have written.”

Dorothy Parker expressed a wonderful and painful contradiction. Writing is the hardest thing we will do in my class, and we will do it daily.

It’s so hard because it forces students to wrestle wild thoughts into organized positions. To write down what you think, you must first know what you think.  Yet, writing is often how you find out what you think.

So writing is not the chicken or the egg. It’s the chicken and the egg. And students will struggle.

It’s hard to write a compelling claim, to use evidence convincingly, to clearly explain reasoning.

I will help by providing guidance. There will be scaffolds and models – T-charts and sentence frames and more – to help tame the wild thoughts.

I will help by providing practice. Most of my lessons end in 10-minute writing responses. Units end every two weeks with an essay-based test.

I will help by providing meaningful feedback. Every response will get next-day feedback: sometimes from me, sometimes from a peer, often through a whole-class review of what’s working.

I will help by giving them an audience that cares about their writing. We will celebrate success – even and especially kernels of it – by highlighting it on the page, sharing it with the class, and asking for more.

Repeat

Reading, talking, writing, thinking. They all happen daily.  And this only works when students feel safe: speaking up, sharing a draft, not knowing, being wrong. It begins with me listening to my students. It ends with them listening to each other. It’s a culture we also grow through repetition.