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A Hands-On Approach
In partnership with M-DCPS’ Department of Social Sciences and the American
Institute for History Education

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O The Common Core State Standards for Literacy and
Mathematics (CCSS) are the culmination of an effort by the states to create the next generation of K–12 standards in order to help ensure that all students are college and career ready in literacy no later than the end of high school.
O The Standards are (1) research and evidence based,
(2) aligned with college and work expectations, (3) rigorous, and (4) internationally benchmarked.
O The focus is on learning expectations for students, not how students get there

O The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them.
O The standards are designed to be rigorous and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers.
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O With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.

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O
O
Embedded in the CCSS for Literary in grades 6-12 are standards for literacy in history/ social studies.
These standards:
O
O
O are based on teachers using their content area expertise to help students meet the particular challenges of reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language in their content area. are not meant to replace content standards but rather to supplement them. States may incorporate these standards into their standards for those subjects or adopt them as content area literacy standards.
focus on the reading, comprehension and analysis of increasingly complex informational text.

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O Common Core State Assessments are currently in development.
O They will most likely ask students to:
O
O
O read, comprehend and analyze documents compare and contrast documents and/ or identify common thematic threads synthesize information and apply it to a writing task
O The assessments will be online and require students to download documents and complete the writing task online.

O Included in the literacy standards are standards for literacy in history/ social studies for grades 6-12.
O The standards are divided into three broad categories:
O Key Ideas and Details
O Craft and Structure
O Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
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O Each category is further divided into three specific skills.

O Read the CCSS standards for the grade you teach and make a list of the skills that students will need to master to meet each of the standards for that grade.
O Form groups of the same grade and discuss the skills.
O Record your grade level list on the appropriate piece of chart paper.
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O Post your charts for a Gallery Walk.

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O After the Gallery Walk, return to your table and discuss:
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O
O
What skills are consistent across the grade levels?
How do the skills build in sophistication across the grades?
Where do the skills for literacy and history intersect?

O
O
Contextualization
O
O
O
Establishing time, scope and Sequence
Understanding the big picture
Establishing the values and beliefs of the time
Craft and Structure
O Identifying and defining key terms
O
O
Determining the main idea
Identifying the Author’s bias or point of view
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O
O
Key Ideas and Details
O Assessing the reliability of the information
O
O
Evaluation of argument and reasoning
Comparing ideas within and across texts
Integration of Knowledge and
Ideas
O
O
O
Analysis of multiple sources and perspectives
Understanding multiple perspectives
Assessing different interpretations over time

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Building student understanding of the past

The Common Core Standards require students to:
• Analyze documents
• Compare and Contrast multiple documents
• Interpret documents and readings
• Synthesize the information into a written product
Thinking Like a Historian provides students with many of the discreet skills that are absolutely necessary to successfully navigate the assessments mandated by the Common Core
State Standards
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… “History presented as a series of problems to be explored, rather than a set of stories to be committed to memory, may be a new experience for your students…Identifying and working through an historical problem, complete with guiding questions, varied and contradictory sources and no single right answer challenges students’ ideas that history is static, where the only thinking involved is figuring out how so much material can be memorized.”
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We Americans have such a thin and meager sense of history that we cannot get too much of it.
What we need more than anything is a deeper and fuller sense of the historical process, a sense of where we have come from and how we became what we are.
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• The ten skills are divided into three major steps or tiers
• Each tier serves as a foundation for those that come afterward
• The tiers build from the broadest and more general to the more specific

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Tier 3
Context and Interpretation of the Past
Tier 2
Analyzing and Evaluating
Historical Material
Tier 1
Building a Foundation to Acquire Historical
Knowledge

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Tier 1
Building a Foundation to Acquire Historical
Knowledge

O
O
O Establishing time, scope, and sequence in which the events of an era take place
Establishing the location at which events happened
Associated events with contemporary actions throughout the world
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O
O
Eliminate details and information that is non-essential
Establish the crucial elements of events, documents, or other material
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O
O
O Establishing the values and beliefs of the time as a lens to analyze the past
Using the values of the time to analyze historical meaning
Compare and contrast the values of the past with those of the present
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O
O
Determination of bias and unique point of view of historical sources
Establishing and assess the degree of reliability of historical sources
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Tier 2
Analyzing and Evaluating
Historical Material
Tier 1
Building a Foundation to Acquire Historical
Knowledge

O
O
Seek and utilize personal or local connections to history whenever possible
Seeing history as the story of people and their voice rather than dry and disconnected events
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O
O
O Studying the differences between single-causation and multicausation of the events of the past
Assessing the degree of causation
Impact of the consequences of events and decisions of the past, including those that were desired, and those that were unintended
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O
O
O
Determination of different types of change that took place in the past, including political, economic, and social
Analysis of the impact of the different types of change at the time
Examine the impact of change across periods of time
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Tier 3
Context and Interpretation of the Past
Tier 2
Analyzing and Evaluating
Historical Material
Tier 1
Building a Foundation to Acquire Historical
Knowledge

O
O
Examining the differing interpretations of historical events that have been developed in the past
Compare and contrast the differing interpretations of historical events
O Evaluating the accuracy of current and previous schools of historical interpretation to develop a personal philosophy of the past
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O
O
Utilizing counterfactual arguments to deepen student understanding of specific episodes of history
Developing carefully constructed series of “what if?” questions to guide students through alternate historical outcomes
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O Establishment of the essential themes of history and determination of their presence
1) Foundations of Freedom
2) Creation of an American Culture
3) Conflict and Compromise
4) Political and Social Movements
5) America on the World Stage
O Analysis of the essential themes in different periods of history and across history
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Developing the ability to understand written information

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O “True historians comprehend a subtext on the literal, inferred and critical levels. These subtexts include what the writer is saying literally but also any possible biases and unconscious assumptions the writer had about the world.
Historians try to reconstruct authors’ purposes, intentions, and goals, as well as understand authors’ assumptions, world view and beliefs”.
Sam Wineburg

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O Effective readers of history have a variety of comprehension strategies that they bring to reading a text. These strategies can be grouped in three categories:
O
O
O
Before reading or activation of background or prior knowledge
During reading or active engagement with the content
Continuous or metacognition
O Effective readers of history are in charge of the process, monitoring how they read and adjusting to ensure success.

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O The expert reader:
O
O
O
O
Seeks to discover context and know content
Sees any text as a construction of a vision of the world
Sees texts as made by persons with a view of events
Considers textbooks less trustworthy than other kinds of documents
O The novice reader:
O Seeks only to know content
O
O
O
Sees text as a description of the world
Sees texts as accounts of what really happened
Considers textbooks very trustworthy sources

O
O
O
O
O
Compares texts to judge different accounts of the same event or topic
Assumes bias in texts
Gets interested in contradictions and ambiguities
Checks sources of documents
Acknowledges uncertainty and complexity
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O
O
O
O
O
Learns the “right answer”
Assumes neutrality, objectivity in texts
Resolves or ignores contradictions and ambiguities
Reads the documents only
Communicates “the truth” , sounding as certain as possible

O
O
O
O
Asks what the text does
(purpose)
Understands the subtexts of the writer’s language
Considers word choice
(connotation and denotation) and tone
Reads slowly, simulating a social exchange between two readers, “actual” and
‘mock”
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O
O
O
O
Asks what the text says
(facts)
Understands the literal meaning of the writer’s language
Ignores word choice and tone
Reads to gather lots of information

O
O
O
O
Resurrects texts like a magician
Reads like a witness to living, evolving events
Reads like lawyers making a case
Acknowledges uncertainty and complexity
O
O
O
O
Processes texts like a computer
Reads like seekers of solid facts
Read like jurors listening to a case someone else made
Communicates “the truth” , sounding as certain as possible
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O
O
O
O
O
O
Lack of prior knowledge
Unfamiliar text structure or schema
Difficulty identifying important material from less important material
Academic vocabulary and abstract concepts (“isms”)
Level of analysis and synthesis
Role of visuals, such as maps, graphs and charts, as sources of information

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Level of Examination: Interpretation
CCLF: Contextualization
Prior Knowledge
O Prior knowledge:
O supports students in making connections to the text or the content.
O creates a foundation for new facts, ideas and concepts.
O activates student interest and curiosity, and creates a purpose for learning .

Level of Examination: Analysis
CCLF: Craft and Structure
Text Structure or Schema
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O Narrative and expository text differ in their organizational pattern, language and purpose.
O Narrative text
O
O typically follows one structure or story grammar.
includes such elements as theme, plot, conflict, resolution, characters and setting .

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O Expository text explains something and reflects a variety of structures or organizational patterns: definition, cause-effect, sequence, categorization, comparison/contrast, enumeration, process, problem-solution, and description.
O Students read expository text to gain factual information, identify main ideas and trends, and analyze divergent viewpoints on a topic, individual or event.

Level of Examination: Analysis
CCLF: Determining the Main Idea
Differentiating Information
O Effective readers discern which concepts to focus on and which information to retain. They interact with the text and internalize information.
O Note-taking provides a structure for recording and reorganizing information and ideas.
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O The structure supports retention and recall by making information accessible and providing cues to trigger memory.

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O Note-taking supports students in:
O determining which information is important.
O making connections between main ideas and details even when the author has not made the connections explicit.
O extending and transferring knowledge after reading which results in deeper construction of meaning
.

Level of Examination: Analysis
CCLF: Identifying and Determining the Key Terms
Academic Vocabulary
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O
O
Academic vocabulary:
O is the vocabulary critical to understanding concepts in history.
O is an essential component of building prior or background knowledge.
The more terms a student knows about a given topic, the easier it is to understand and learn new information.

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O There are 4 categories of vocabulary in history:
O Terms associated with instructional or directional tools (“north”, “below”).
O
O
O
Concrete terms (“Stamp Act”)
Functional terms (“sequencing”)
Conceptual terms (“democracy”, “taxation”)

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Level of Examination: Compare and Contrast
CCLF: Analysis of Multiple Sources and
Perspectives
Level of Analysis and Synthesis
O Historians don’t settle for one perspective on an historical issue; they piece together many, sometimes competing, versions of events to construct an accurate interpretation.
O Multiple perspectives are usual and have to be tested against evidence, and accounted for in judgments and conclusions.

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O The writing of history is based on a critical analysis, evaluation, and selection of authentic source materials and composition of these materials into a narrative subject to scholarly methods of criticism.
O The result is a body of historical literature on any event or individual in history that reflects the process of historical thinking.

Level of Examination: Compare and Contrast
CCLF: Comparing Ideas Within and Across Texts
Analyzing Visuals
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O Visual literacy is the ability to interpret information presented in the form of an image.
O Visual literacy is based on the idea that pictures can be “read”.
O Students view an image and construct an interpretation.

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O Level 1 is basic identification of the subject or elements in a graphic, photograph, or work of art.
O Level 2 is understanding what we see and comprehending visual relationships.
O Level 3 is placing the image in the broader context of the historical period.
O Level 4 is the synthesis: “What narrative does it tell?”

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O
O
O
Expert readers of history ask questions when they read.
Questioning improves comprehension in four ways:
O by fostering interaction with the text
O by creating motivation to read
O by clarifying information in the text
O by supporting inferring beyond the literal meaning
Questioning the text helps students assume responsibility for their learning.

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O The skills for thinking and reading like an historian form the pillars of the Common Core Learning
Framework.
O These skills support student in becoming expert readers and interpreters of history.
O What strategies can history teachers use to help their students make meaning of history texts?