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Course: World History Project AP® > Unit 1
Lesson 1: 1.0—History Stories- ACTIVITY: Draw Your History
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: What Makes History Usable?
- WATCH: What Makes History Usable?
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: The Danger of a Single Story
- WATCH: Chimamanda Adichie — The Danger of a Single Story
- ACTIVITY: Vocab - Tracking 1.0
- ACTIVITY: Vocab - Word Wall 1.0
- ACTIVITY: AP Themes Intro
- READ: AP Themes and the Course Narrative
- BEFORE YOU WATCH: Meet the Themes
- WATCH: Historical Themes in World History
- ACTIVITY: Themes Notebook
- ACTIVITY: Three Close Reads for Graphic Bios – Introduction
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WATCH: What Makes History Usable?
Students regularly ask, “How am I ever going to use this stuff?” In this video, Bob Bain examines exactly what makes history usable and useful. He presents an example from his own history class where students explored the history of the city of Detroit. By looking at historical documents, talking to grandparents—and yes, even reading a little history—they developed a deeper sense of their own city today.
Website: https://www.bighistoryproject.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bighistoryproject
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BigHistoryPro. Created by World History Project.
Website: https://www.bighistoryproject.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bighistoryproject
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BigHistoryPro. Created by World History Project.
Want to join the conversation?
- Why did these two groups of historians part from each other? I believe that we can learn a bit from both of these groups.(23 votes)
- How can you engage students who aren't very fond of History/Social Studies to open up history books or do research on significant, historical events?(8 votes)
- Either their parents tell them to sign up for history club or in some schools it is mandatory to take it.(4 votes)
- Where are the transcripts? I was trying to use the three close reads method to learn the course. But I just dont know where to find the transcripts.(6 votes)
- why did people start wars?(6 votes)
- People started wars because they needed and/or wanted more territory for there people to thrive.(4 votes)
- Do they apply if you are a student or a citizen? If you are a citizen how would it help them in the society ?(3 votes)
- You should in general be interested in the history of your own culture and your place of residence. But it honestly does not affect you unless you are politically active (which you should be if you are a citizen).(4 votes)
- What elements contribute to the truth of historic facts?(4 votes)
- It's very hard to know how true stories about history are, but using diary entries from eyewitnesses, newspapers, sometimes pictures, and many more whatnots help historians figure out the most accurate story.(2 votes)
- How do you engage students in an historical story without them reading along with you?(2 votes)
- Get students personally involved in history for example, have them make a short Family Tree listing their grandparents and great grandparents if they know that and then have their parents, tell them what country they came from if they know what city they lived in what region, and what they did for a living
And you can talk about some of those regions and some of those occupations or better yet have the students talk about the region or country that their great grandparents came from or further back and what they might have eaten or occupations they had done and then show a video about it before also to captivate the other students’ interest.(5 votes)
- Grand Master of Yapology(2 votes)
- I don't think this is a question, but according this, there's no reason for the two groups to part. History's importance makes sense by learning the content and skills. Like remembering the events, dates, places etc and then using skills (narrative thinking) to understand the past, present and inform the future. But anyway, why did they part?(3 votes)
Video transcript
(music playing) What makes history useful,
usable? More specifically, what makes
the history we teach in schools useful and usable
for our students? Or maybe I should ask it from
the point of view of students-- like, "Why do we have
to learn any of this stuff?" Most students have just one year
of world history in high school, one year to learn something
meaningful, something usable. We think that meaningful
something they can learn is to use
their historical thinking skills to put facts and evidence
together to tell stories, and to evaluate other stories
about the global past. This will help them
to make sense of history and how it applies to themselves and their communities
in the present. Let's take that apart a bit by looking at the long debate
we have had about what to do
in the history classroom. For well over
the almost 50 years I've been teaching history in either a public high school
or a public university, politicians and educators have
waged war over this question with intense
and emotional ferocity between two competing camps, each believing in the
correctness of their positions and the disaster that looms
should the other side win. One group argues, "It's a set
of essential or core facts, "names, dates, and events that make history so important," as they march under the banner,
"Content and Facts Matter Most." Or so some people--
including me-- have long argued and fought for. "No, no, no, no, no!"
their opponents respond. "Memorizing facts is trivial "compared to learning
how to 'do' history "the way historians do history-- how to read and think
like historians," as they wave the banner, "Critical Thinking
Matters Most." Or so some people--
including me-- have argued and fought for. But what if there's a little bit
of truth on both sides? What if students can learn how
to use their historical skills to build stories
from those facts and evidence-- stories that help them
in their daily lives? Well, let me tell you a story. I spent time designing a history
course for students in Detroit. And we used a big
driving question-- "Why did people throughout
history move in and out of the Detroit area?"-- to structure the entire course. We began by asking students
what they thought motivated and caused people
to move into and out of Detroit. What had the students heard? What did they know
about migration to their city? Were these personal stories,
family stories, stories they've learned in
school, in their neighborhood? In their church,
synagogue, or mosque? Were any of these stories
connected to any larger history of the United States
or the world? Without too much
of a setup or discussion, the class collected
the stories they told, looking for similarities
and differences between and among their ideas, their stories
about why people would move in and out of their city. And then, over the course
of the school year, students investigated changes
in migration patterns to southeast Michigan and their impact
over thousands of years, looking for, analyzing,
and interpreting evidence to consider various reasons
why different people-- indigenous peoples,
European settlers, African-Americans, immigrants from Asia, Mexico,
or the Middle East-- migrated to and from
this community, and how it compared
to other communities both in the United States
and elsewhere. In their studies, students
worked-- as historians do-- with primary sources and other historians'
interpretations of these events to construct narratives about
migration to and from Detroit. Moving from the present
to the earliest beginnings of humans' presence on Earth
and back again, over and over, students looked
at individual stories, community stories, national and global stories. They considered how these
accounts supported, extended, or challenged the stories
they brought with them, as they learned to frame
the events of the past in different ways. And they considered
the implications of using different stories to make sense of the past,
the present, and to anticipate the future. By using the power
of narrative-- multiple narratives-- students were able
to situate themselves within a larger history that
connects to their world today. But it also helped them to see
the history of their city in a far more nuanced
and complex way, through the eyes
of multiple people, at multiple levels,
over an extended period of time. Now, this is not easy work. Indeed, it is far more difficult than just helping students
learn a core set of facts or a core set of practices. Yet, there is strong evidence that this approach
will help students not only learn the names
and dates of history, not only apply the skills
of historians adeptly, but to put these ideas to work. And they do have work to do. Students, and indeed all of us, are constantly bombarded
with stories about the past that other people create
to get them and us to see or do things
in a particular way. And students,
and indeed all of us, must make decisions
about the present that involve understanding
what happened in the past. In both cases, we all need to understand
important content and facts; we all need
critical-thinking skills to make informed judgments; and we all need to know how to take apart, work with, and create multiple stories
about the past that influence how we think
and act in the present. Stories are vital and essential
in making history usable, and a feature that schools
have too long ignored in their focus on history's
facts and thinking practices. Adding narratives
to history courses promises to make makes them
far more usable and useful. It will sharpen
students' awareness of the stories and narratives
they met before and during their courses, and will meet long after they've
taken their last history course. So, what are your stories? And how will you use them? (music playing)