Reading Like a Historian with Digital Literacy
We're pleased to announce that we have developed 10 new Reading Like a Historian lessons with formative assessments that incorporate digital literacy in the history classroom.
1 - Senior Prank lesson and Lee's Testimony assessment
Like our popular Lunchroom Fight activity, the Senior Prank lesson introduces students to historical thinking and primary source analysis by asking them to build a case for who was responsible for a senior prank that took place decades ago. The accompanying assessment gauges whether students can transfer the historical thinking skills to reason about a historical document.
2 - Frances Rollin Whipper lesson and Frederick Douglass Wikipedia assessment
This lesson is designed to introduce students to the work of historians through an exploration of historical documents related to a civil rights case that made national news in 1867 brought by Frances Rollin Whipper. Though not among the best-known Americans, Rollin Whipper lived a remarkable life and was active in the causes of civil rights for African Americans and women. Through document analysis, students work as historians to investigate what occurred when Rollin Whipper attempted to board a steamboat to travel from Charleston to Beaufort, South Carolina. The associated task gauges whether students can reason about the features that make a Wikipedia article more or less reliable.
3 - Camilla Massacre lesson and Colfax Massacre assessment
A violent event in Camilla, Georgia, on September 19, 1868, garnered national attention and affected the presidential election of 1868. What happened in Camilla? In this lesson, students source, contextualize, and corroborate competing accounts of what happened at the infamous event in Georgia during Reconstruction. This accompanying assessment gauges students’ ability to source a historical document. To answer the question correctly, students must identify why a report written by white Southern Democrats in 1873 may not be strong evidence of what happened at a violent event that left scores of African Americans dead at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan and former Confederate soldiers.
4 - Intro to Lateral Reading with Reconstruction Sources lesson and Reconstruction Source Evaluation assessment
The internet is increasingly where people of all ages turn for information, including information about the past. Websites and social media accounts often present information about themselves and their authors, but this information may not provide the full story or be completely truthful. A better way to learn about who is behind a source is to read laterally—to go outside the source to see what other sites say about it. Use this lesson to introduce students to lateral reading and the formative assessment to gauge students' lateral reading skills.
5 - Verifying Historical Claims on Social Media lesson and Verifying Historical Claims on TikTok assessment
Social media is designed to allow anyone to freely post any claims, whether substantiated or not. Though this can make social media a powerful source of information, it also means that we must verify claims before we accept them as fact. This lesson will help students develop and practice verifying claims about the past presented on social media. After a short lecture on the importance of verifying information on social media and an overview of approaches to verification, students practice verifying social media sources on Reconstruction, first as a whole class and then in small groups. Use the accompanying assessment to measure students’ ability to verify historical claims on social media.
6 - Great Railroad Strike of 1877 lesson and Albert Parsons Autobiography assessment
In 1877, over 100,000 railroad workers staged the first labor strike to spread across state lines in United States history. The strike greatly disrupted the transportation of goods, and violent clashes killed scores of strikers. The strike gripped the nation at the time, but was it a success? In this lesson, students source, contextualize, and corroborate competing explanations of the strike’s outcomes. To answer the accompanying assessment correctly, students must identify a valid reason for questioning the usefulness of a radical labor leader’s autobiography as evidence of who was responsible for the Haymarket bombing.
7 - Jim Crow Era Opening Up the Textbook lesson and Grandfather Clause assessment
It can be tempting to think that textbooks present impartial accounts of the past. However, textbook writers and publishers have a variety of motivations in choosing what to include in textbooks, including creating products that the companies believe are likely to be purchased. In this lesson, students analyze two history textbook passages about the Jim Crow era, one published in 1942 and the other in 1974. With the help of a timeline, students contextualize these highly contrasting accounts to answer the question: Why might history textbooks have changed what they say about the Jim Crow era? Use the accompanying assessment to evaluate students’ ability to verify claims made on social media.
8 - Historical Chinatown Photos lesson and Chinatown Image assessment
Arnold Genthe took hundreds of photographs in San Francisco’s Chinatown from 1896 to 1906. Genthe’s extensive portfolio provides historians with a trove of evidence of what life was like in Chinatown in the decade leading up to the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. This lesson asks students to think critically about Genthe’s photographs and evaluate their strengths and limitations as evidence of the past. The accompanying assessment gauges students’ abilities to reason critically about a social media post that uses an AI-generated image to support a dubious claim about the past.
9 - Dennis and Yates lesson and Dennis v. United States assessment
At the height of the Second Red Scare, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a Communist Party USA leader under the Smith Act, deciding that membership in the party amounted to advocating the violent overthrow of the government. Just six years later, the Supreme Court reversed course. In this lesson, students contextualize two Supreme Court decisions and reason about why the Supreme Court changed its mind. The accompanying assessment gauges students’ ability to evaluate the credibility of a social media video for providing information about a Supreme Court decision. To answer the question successfully, students must read laterally about the organization that posted the video and evaluate whether it’s a trustworthy source of information.
10 - The 1974 Puerto Rican Riots lesson and Historical Video on TikTok assessment
All historical events have multiple causes. Part of the work of historians is to identify both immediate and systemic causes of events and to analyze the relationships between causes. In this lesson, students analyze historical documents to investigate the question: What caused the 1974 Puerto Rican Riots? In the accompanying assessment, students are asked to evaluate purported historical video footage on TikTok.