7th Grade Social Studies SS0701

Unit 1: An Introduction to World History

Seventh Grade Social Studies: Ancient World History

Unit 1: An Introduction to World History

Big Picture Graphic

Overarching Question:

How can we know about the past?

Previous Unit: This Unit: Next Unit:

6th Grade World An Introduction to World History Prehistory

Geography

Questions To Focus Assessment and Instruction: Types of Thinking

1. Why is it important to treat maps and “history” as accounts? Description

2. How do historians know and create accounts about the Evidentiary Argument
Generalizing
past? Identifying perspectives
3. Why might historians have different and sometimes Issue Analysis
conflicting versions of the same event? Problem Solving

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7th Grade Social Studies SS0701
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History

Graphic Organizer1

1The graphic organizer on this page summarizes the work of Dr. Robert Bain in "Into the Breach: Using Research and
Theory to Shape History Instruction." In Knowing. Teaching & Learning History: National and International Perspectives,
edited by P. Stearns, P. Seixas, and S.Wineburg, p.339, Fig. 17.1 Concept Map. New York: New York University Press,
2000. 18 Aug. 2011 <http://www.worldhistory.pitt.edu/documents/Bain2000intothebreach.pdf>.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS0701
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History

High School Foundations (see World History and Geography)

 F1: World Historical and Geographical “Habits of Mind” and Central Concepts: Explain and use key conceptual
devices world historians/geographers use to organize the past including periodization schemes (e.g., major
turning points, different cultural and religious calendars), and different spatial frames (e.g., global, interregional,
and regional).

Unit Abstract
Rationale: Why study history? Why study the distant past? Why does historical thinking matter?

To fully realize history's humanizing qualities, to draw on its ability to, . . . ‘expand our conception
and understanding of what it means to be human,’ we need to encounter the distant past -- a past
even more distant from us in modes of thought and social organization. It is this past, one that
initially leaves us befuddled or, worse, just plain bored, that we need most if we are to achieve the
understanding that each of us is more than the handful of labels ascribed to us at birth. The
sustained encounter with this less-familiar past teaches us the limitations of our brief sojourn on
the planet and allows us to take membership in the entire human race. 2

History provides us with the “invaluable mental power we call judgment.”3 Recent research supports
the “basic assumption that history teaches us a way to make choices, to balance opinions, to tell
stories, and to become uneasy – when necessary – about the stories we tell.”4 Ultimately, democracy
and effective citizenship rests significantly on each generation’s ability to think historically.

The Oakland Schools’ curriculum moves students beyond mere events, people, and dates. It
encourages students to think like historians, geographers, economists, political scientists,
anthropologists, and other social scientists. Such sophisticated thinking is, as some have argued,
“unnatural” and often challenging for young students.5 Students whose schools have adopted the
MC3/Oakland Schools’ curriculum will have encountered this type of thinking beginning in second
grade. Building on discipline-focused thinking, this unit extends students’ understanding of historical
thinking as they approach the study of world history. By unpacking historical and geographic thinking,
students learn how these disciplines are distinct in how they ask questions and frame problems to
organize and drive inquiry. They investigate how these social scientists select, analyze, and organize
evidence, and then use that evidence to create accounts that answer questions or problems. These
skills would be “useful every time they faced a take-home exam or research paper: how to get started
when they lack necessary information, how to prepare their minds to deal with new topics, how to
develop a hunch. The benefits would extend far beyond the intellectual.”6 Through the development
of the historical habits of mind, students build both social and content literacy. As such, the Common
Core State Standards for Literacy are a deliberate focal point of the unit.

2 Wineburg, Sam. Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts. Philadelphia: Temple Unversity Press, 2001. Pp. 6-7.
3 Ibid. p. ix, quoting Woodrow Wilson.
4 Ibid. p. ix.
5 See Wineburg, Sam. Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts. Philadelphia: Temple Unversity Press, 2001.

For students, historical habits of mind constitute major intellectual hurdles. Students see their professors' thoughts as
finished products, tidied up and packaged for public presentation in books, articles, and lectures. Historians shield from
view their raw thinking, the way they try to make sense of their subject. Wineburg, Sam. “Teaching the mind good habits.”
The Chronicle of Higher Education. Vol. 49, No.31, p. B2. 11 April 2003.
6 Wineburg, Sam. “Teaching the mind good habits.” The Chronicle of Higher Education 49 no.31 B20 April. 11 2003 supp.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS0701
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History

World Geography
The unit begins by building on students’ prior knowledge of world geography studied in sixth grade.
Students review how geographers examine, frame, and reframe the world by using topographical
features and big “invented” geographic categories. They explore how maps are representations of
places and how representations of the same place can differ based on the purposes, knowledge, and
points of view of the cartographer.7 They consider how these differences shape how people create
accounts of places and that the names geographers, historians or other people use -- “Europe,” the
“Rhine River,” “Indonesia”, “Eastern Hemisphere” or “continents” – are interpretative ideas created by
people for specific reasons. Throughout the course students will be using others’ historical accounts
or maps. Understanding what went into creating an account or map is a key feature in learning to
“read” them. Being able to understand and use these ideas in reading are critical, advanced literacy
skills and therefore, these ideas are introduced early in the curriculum and are built upon throughout
the course. By examining the perspectives and language of historians and geographers, students
enrich their understanding of the past.

History as “Events” Versus History as “Accounts”

Students also engage in a deeper understanding of history. Scholars of student thinking in history
have demonstrated how vital the distinction between “history as an event” and “history as an account”
is for students to understand. If students think that “history” really is “all the events in the past,” then
learning history must mean memorizing the events in the past. However, if students can see the
distinction between these two uses of the word, and can understand that all studies of history are
“accounts” of the past, then that opens students to understand the importance of thinking skills other
than memorization – such as selecting events or evidence, or perspective taking, all of which are
essential in historical thinking. Accordingly, the distinction of history as events versus accounts is
foundational for student understanding.

Historical Thinking
Students consider how it is possible for historians to create representations or accounts of events in
which they were not present or that happened thousands of years before they were even born. They
learn that historians must have some evidence to support the claims they make in their accounts.
Therefore, this unit introduces students to some of the content area literacy skills central entailed in
teaching people “to do” history and geography. Students review the difference between primary and
secondary sources (evidence) and begin to employ methods of analysis using strategies called
sourcing and corroborating. They are introduced the ideas of internal and external validity, two forms
of corroboration involved in reading primary and secondary sources. Students assess the internal
validity by examining whether a source contradicts itself. Determining external validity requires
students to explore other sources or other pieces of information that supports or challenges the
source under investigation.

7 Teacher Note: Avoid the use of the word “bias” in this work with students. That is, don’t say or allow students to use
ideas such as “the author of that account has a bias.” Adults might be able to differentiate the two uses of the word “bias”
as either “point-of-view” or “prejudicial, unfair preference” but students tend not to make this distinction. Students who are
told an author was biased will often reject the author or go through a facile analysis in determining point of view. Even
when reading prejudicial texts, it is always preferable to ask “What purpose did the author have in writing that? What
knowledge did they have? And what point-of-view?” instead of “What biases did the author have?”

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7th Grade Social Studies SS0701
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History

After learning about the importance of framing a historical problem, students explore four thinking
tools that historians use to organize and analyze information: significance, social institutions,
temporal frames (time), and spatial scales (space). In determining significance, students consider the
characteristics that make an event significant and then apply these characteristics to their own lives.
To assist students in analyzing and describing past societies, they identify how societies address their
needs through the creation of social institutions (e.g., organizing power = government; producing and
distributing resources including food, shelter, and clothing = economy; raising and educating children
= family; disseminating culture = education; developing common beliefs and values = religion; and
communicating = language). In considering time, students explore a variety of calendar systems.
They also learn how historians use eras, periodization schemes, and turning points to organize and
analyze information. Students then explore how historians use space to organize and analyze past
events. In thinking of places as geographic “containers” in which we place historical events, students
are introduced to how some containers can be too big for events and make the events difficult to see.
They also explore how geographic containers that are too small for an event cut out features of the
event. This is important for people who use others’ historical accounts or maps. Understanding what
went into creating an account or map is a key feature in learning to “read” historical accounts and/or
maps. In considering how geographers frame and reframe the earth, students refine their use and
understanding of these big spatial categories throughout the unit.

These are critical and challenging lessons for students and teachers because all historical study
builds upon these elements. They are the “invisible” tools that historians use to create historical
accounts. Sometimes, teachers and students pay no attention to such things as institutions, or the
temporal and spatial organization of the historical accounts they are teaching and learning. Too
often, teachers and students simply assume that since something is in the curriculum or the textbook
it is significant for some reason, and never consider significance at all.

Content Literacy
The development of content literacy skills is a critical component in this course and is integrated
throughout the unit. Students are introduced to the features and structure of their history textbook.
Comparing the disciplines of history and science reinforces the fact that history has its own ways of
thinking, knowing, and using evidence. Students begin to examine some potential limitations of
history textbooks by exploring to what extent their textbook reflects the evidentiary, problem-based,
and interpretative nature of history. The unit culminates with students challenging the official and
‘unbiased’ version of historical events found in their textbooks. By comparing a textbook account of a
historical event with two primary sources, students uncover that the textbook offers one narrow
version of history that is often void of the ongoing investigative nature of historical inquiry and
practice. Students write reflectively on the benefits of using historical habits of mind in and out of the
history classroom. The concluding activity of the unit not only reinforces the big ideas explored
throughout the unit, but helps establish classroom rules for small group discussions which will be
employed throughout the course.

Focus Questions
1. Why is it important to treat maps and “history” as accounts?
2. How do historians know and create accounts about the past?
3. Why might historians have different and sometimes conflicting versions of the same event?

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7th Grade Social Studies SS0701
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History

Content Expectations
6-G1.1.1: Describe how geographers use mapping to represent places and natural and human
phenomenon in the world.

6 and 7 Draw an accurate sketch map from memory of the world showing
G1.1.2: the major regions (Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia/Oceania, Antarctica, Canada, United
States, Mexico, Central America, South America, and Caribbean).8

6 and 7 Apply the skills of geographic inquiry (asking geographic questions, acquiring
G.1.2.6: geographic information, organizing geographic information, analyzing geographic
information, and answering geographic questions) to analyze a problem or issue of
importance to a region of the Eastern Hemisphere.

6 and 7 Explain the different ways in which places are connected and how those
G.1.3.3: connections demonstrate interdependence and accessibility.

6 and 7 Analyze how culture and experience influence people’s perception of places and
G2.2.3: regions (examples omitted).

6 and 7 Explain why and how historians use eras and periods as constructs to organize
H1.1.1: and explain human activities over time.

6 and 7 Compare and contrast several different calendar systems used in the past and
H1.1.2: present and their cultural significance (e.g., Olmec and Mayan calendar systems,
Aztec Calendar Stone, Sun Dial, Gregorian calendar – B.C. /A.D.; contemporary
secular – B.C.E. /C.E.; Chinese, Hebrew, and Islamic/Hijri calendars).

6 and 7 Describe and use cultural institutions to study an era and a region (political,
H1.4.1: economic, religion/belief, science/technology, written language, education, family).

6 and 7 Describe and use themes of history to study patterns of change and continuity.
H1.4.2:

7 – G1.1.1: Explain and use a variety of maps, globes, and web based geography technology to
study the world, including global, interregional, regional, and local scales.

7 - G1.1.2: Draw an accurate sketch map from memory of the Eastern Hemisphere showing the
major regions (Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia/Oceania, Antarctica).

7 – G2.1.2: Use information from GIS, remote sensing and the World Wide Web to compare and
contrast the surface features and vegetation of the continents of the Eastern
Hemisphere.

8
Although the 6th grade expectation refers only to the Western Hemisphere and the 7th grade expectation to the Eastern Hemisphere,
they have been combined here to provide for a more global perspective.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS0701
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History

7 - G1.2.2: Explain why maps of the same place may vary as a result of the cultural or historical
background of the cartographer.

7 – G.4.1.1: Identify and explain examples of cultural diffusion within the Eastern Hemisphere (e.g.,
the spread of sports, music, architecture, television, Internet, Bantu languages in
Africa, Islam in Western Europe).

7-H1: Evaluate evidence, compare and contrast information, interpret the historical record,
and develop sound historical arguments and perspectives on which informed decisions
in contemporary life can be based.9

7-H1.2.1: Explain how historians use a variety of sources to explore the past (e.g., artifacts,
primary and secondary sources including narratives, technology, historical maps,
visual/mathematical quantitative data, radiocarbon dating, DNA analysis).

7-H1.2.2: Read and comprehend a historical passage to identify basic factual knowledge and the
literal meaning by indicating who was involved, what happened, where it happened,
what events led to the development, and what consequences or outcomes followed.

7- H1.2.3: Identify a point of view (perspective of the author) and context when reading and
discussing primary and secondary sources.

7 – H1.2.4: Compare and evaluate competing historical perspectives about the past based on
proof.

7 – H1.2.5: Describe how historians use methods of inquiry to identify cause/effect relationships in
history noting that many have multiple causes.

7-H1.4.3: Use historical perspectives to analyze global issues faced by humans long ago and
today.

Common Core State Standards

RH.6-8.1: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources.

RH.6-8.2: Determine the main ideas or information of a primary or a secondary source; provide
an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.

RH.6-8.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including
vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.

RH.6-8.5: Describe how a text presents information (e.g., sequentially, comparatively, causally).

9
Although the curriculum usually only designates specific content expectations, the essence of several expectations are
best understood by the sub-heading provided in the state document. Accordingly, we are referencing it here.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS0701
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History

RH.6-8.6: Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author’s point of view or purpose (e.g., loaded
language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).

RH.6-8.7: Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos, or maps) with
other information in print and digital texts.

RH.6-8.8: Distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.

RH.6-8.9: Analyze the relationship between a primary and secondary source on the same topic.

RH.6-8.10: By the end of grade 8, read and comprehend history/social studies texts in the grades
6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently.

WHST.6-8.1: Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content.

b. Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant, accurate data and
evidence that demonstrate an understanding of the topic or text, using credible
sources.

WHST.6-8.4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style
are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

WHST.6-8.7: Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated

question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused
questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.

WHST.6-8.8: Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search terms
effectively, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source; and quote or
paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and following
a standard format for citation.

WHST.6-8.9: Draw evidence from informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

WHST.6-8.10: Write routinely over extended time frames (time for reflection and revision) and shorter
time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks,
purposes, and audiences.

Key Concepts
close-reading
contextualizing
corroborating
event
evidence
framing
geographic features
historical argument
historical problem
history

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7th Grade Social Studies SS0701
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History

perspective
primary sources
representations/accounts
secondary sources
significance
social institutions
sourcing
spatial scales
temporal frames (time)

Duration
7 weeks

Lesson Sequence
Lesson 1: What Are Maps?
Lesson 2: What Can a Map Tell Us?
Lesson 3: What Does History Mean?
Lesson 4: How Do Historians Create Accounts of Past Events?
Lesson 5: What Process Do Historians Use to Investigate the Past?
Lesson 6: Tools to Organize and Analyze the Past -- Establishing Significance
Lesson 7: Tools to Organize and Analyze the Past – Using Social Institutions
Lesson 8: Tools to Organize and Analyze the Past – Using Temporal Frames
Lesson 9: Tools to Organize and Analyze the Past – Using Spatial Scales
Lesson 10: History as a Discipline
Lesson 11: Challenging the Power and Authority of the History Textbook

Resources
Equipment/Manipulative
11 x 17 inch paper
A classroom amount of oranges or grapefruits
Chart paper
Lined paper
Markers
Overhead projector or Document Camera/Projector
Permanent markers, one per student (or they can share)
Student journal or notebook

Student Resources
A present-day map of the world.

A student world history textbook such as Spielvogal, Jackson J., World History: Journey Across
Time. Columbus, OH: Glencoe, 2008.

Community Map. Online Maps. The Education Place. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 8 Aug. 2012
<http://www.eduplace.com/ss/maps/pdf/community.pdf >.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS0701
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History

Excerpt from: Cheyney, Edward P. An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History. Chautauqua,
New York: The Chautauqua Press, 1910. 8 Aug. 2012
<http://books.google.com/books?id=MylwbO2NnCkC&pg=PA233&lpg=PA233&dq=%22Childre
n+from+seven+years+of+age+upward+were+engaged+by+the+hundreds+from+London+and+
the+other+large+cities,+and+set+to+work+in+the+cotton+spinning+factories+of+the+north.+Si
nce+there+were+no+other+facilities+for+boarding+them,%22&source=bl&ots=k0VpP6_uDv&s
ig=iyidJvdiRCQmRSmBfhBzbhWU9FQ&hl=en&ei=_zU3Tf2DMcGB8gaUgq3YAw&sa=X&oi=bo
ok_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false>.

Islamic Calendar. Social Studies for Kids. 8 Aug. 2012

<http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/religions/islamiccalendar.htm>.

The Jewish Calendar. Social Studies for Kids. 8 Aug. 2012

<http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/religions/jewishcalendar.htm>.

Meyer, Peter. The Structure of the Chinese Calendar. 8 Aug. 2012

<http://www.hermetic.ch/cal_stud/chinese_cal.htm>.

The Sadler Committee Report (1832). Hanover College History Department. 8 Aug. 2012
<http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111sad.html>.

World Continents Maps. Online Maps. The Education Place. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 8 Aug. 2012
<http://www.eduplace.com/ss/maps/pdf/world_cont.pdf>.

Teacher Resources
AP World Review Project. West Hills HS and Hercules HS. 8 Aug. 2012
<https://sites.google.com/a/wolfpackweb.net/ap-review-09/topics/a6>.

Bloom, Amy, Kimberly Hase and Stacie Woodward. Supplemental Materials (Unit 1). Teacher-made
materials. Oakland Schools, 2012.

Christian, David. Maps of Time. 8 Aug. 2012

<http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520244764>.

- - -. This Fleeting World: An Overview of Human History. Berkshire Publishing Group, 2005.

Getting Started. History, Geography, and Time. World History for Us All. San Diego State University.
18 Aug. 2011 <http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/getting_started.php>.

The Government of the Iroquois Nations. Nihewan Foundation. 2002. 8 Aug. 2012
<http://www.cradleboard.org/curriculum/powwow/lessons/elemsocial/el_gv_ir.html>.

Hall, Loretta. Iroquois Confederacy. 8 Aug. 2012 <http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Ha-La/Iroquois-

Confederacy.html>.

Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Indian Fact Sheet. Native Languages of America Website. 1998-2009. 8
Aug. 2012 <http://www.bigorrin.org/iroquois_kids.htm>.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS0701
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History

Holford-Strevens, Leofranc. The History of Time: A very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press,
2005.

Introduction to Big Geography. Landscape Unit .02. History, Geography, and Time. World History for
Us All. 8 Aug. 2012 <http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/units/getstart/02_landscape.pdf>.

Lewis, Martin and Karen E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography. © 1998 by
the Regents of the University of California. Published by the University of California Press.
UP Press Website: <http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520207431>.
Available at <http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/l/lewis-myth.html?_r=1>. (Requires
registration)

The Longhouse. 8 Aug. 2012 <http://www.peace4turtleisland.org/pages/longhouse.htm>.

Peters Map vs. Mercator Projection. Atlas Rider. 8 Aug. 2012 <http://www.atlasrider.com/?p=265>.

The Robinson Project. The Arthur H. Robinson Map Library. University of Wisconsin. 8 Aug. 2012
<http://www.geography.wisc.edu/maplib/robinson_projection.html>.

Richards, E.G. Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History. Oxford University Press, 1998.

Route of the Plague. 8 Aug. 2012

<http://images.classwell.com/mcd_xhtml_ebooks/2005_world_history/images/mcd_awh2005_0
618376798_p400_f1.gif>.

“Why Historical Thinking Matters.” Historical Thinking Matters. 8 Aug. 2012

<http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/why/> (Offers a module that illustrates HOW historians
go about the work of historical inquiry. Based on conflicting sources on the Battle of
Lexington.)

World History for Us All. San Diego State University. 8 Aug. 2012
<http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/dev/default.htm>.

World Index Map. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. 8 Aug. 2012 <http://earth-
info.nga.mil/GandG/coordsys/onlinedatum/indexmap.html>.

World, Peters Projection Folded Map. Mapcenter.com. 8 Aug.

2012 <http://www.mapcenter.com/index.php?c=web2.43&product=ODT+WOR+PP+PO>.

For Further Professional Knowledge

Bain, Robert B. "Rounding Up Unusual Suspects: Facing the Authority Hidden in the History
Classroom." Teachers College Record, 108, no. 10 (2006): 2080-2114.

- - -. "Into the Breach: Using Research and Theory to Shape History Instruction." In Knowing.
Teaching & Learning History: National and International Perspectives, edited by P. Stearns, P.
Seixas, and S.Wineburg, 331-53. New York: New York University Press, 2000. 8 Aug. 2012
<http://www.worldhistory.pitt.edu/documents/Bain2000intothebreach.pdf>.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS0701
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History

Bentley, Jerry H. “Cross-Cultural Interaction and Periodization in World History,” The American
Historical Review, Vol. 101, No. 3 (Jun., 1996), pp. 749-770. This raises and addresses some
fundamental questions about spatial scale and periodization in pre-modern world history that
help connect some of the issues of this unit to the coming content in later units.

Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. The Craft of Research. 3rd ed.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. This text provides some really clear discussions
on building arguments from evidence.

Drake, Frederick D. and Sarah Drake Brown. A Systematic Approach to Improve Students’ Historical
Thinking. The History Teacher. 8 Aug. 2012
<http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/36.4/drake.html>.

Wineburg, Sam. “Historical Thinking and Other UnNatural Acts.” Philadelphia: Temple University
Press, 2001. This book examines issues concerning the teaching and learning of history. For a
more detailed description, see <http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1518_reg.html>.

- - -. “Teaching the mind good habits.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Vol. 49, No.31, p. B2. 11
April 2003 (available at
http://www.faculty.sfasu.edu/dubenaj/SFA101049/TeachingTheMindGoodHabits.pdf).

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070101
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 1

Lesson 1: What are Maps?

Big Ideas of the Lesson

 Maps are representations of places. A map is not the place.

 People who create maps select and organize the features of territory to include in their
maps.
 People’s purposes, knowledge, and perspective (or point of view) shape their maps.
 People’s maps of the same place can look very different.

Lesson Abstract:
In this lesson students review how geographers examine and represent the earth from earlier
grade levels. They begin by comparing different projections of the earth and considering the
difficulty in representing a three-dimensional object in a two-dimensional space. They examine
how geographers frame and reframe the world by using topographical features and “invented” big
geographic categories such as continents or hemispheres. Using student created maps of the
school, students explore how representations of place can differ. They consider how maps are
made by people with different purposes, different knowledge and different points-of-view1, and that
these differences shape how people create accounts of a place.

Content Expectations: 6-G1.1.1

6 and 7 – G1.1.2
7 – G1.2.2

Common Core State Standards: WHST.6-8.4

Key Concepts
representations/accounts
spatial scales

Lesson Sequence
1. Begin the lesson by asking students to draw a sketch map of the world from memory. Allow
students 5-10 minutes to draw their maps. Then have them turn and share their maps with a
partner. Teacher Note: This is an important beginning step so that students’ understandings
and misconceptions can be visible to the teacher. Moreover, this activity is intended as a
review from the previous grade focus on world geography. Allow students 5-10 minutes to

1
Teacher Note: Avoid the use of the word “bias” in this work with students. That is, don’t say or allow students to use
ideas such as “the author of that account has a bias.” Adults might be able to differentiate the two uses of the word
“bias” as either “point-of-view” or “prejudicial, unfair preference”, but students tend not to make this distinction.
Students who are told an author was biased will often reject the author or go through a facile analysis in determining
point of view. Even when reading prejudicial texts, it is always preferable to ask “What purpose did the author have in
writing that? What knowledge did they have? And what point-of-view?” instead of “What biases did the author have?”

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 1

draw their maps. Then have them turn and share their maps with a partner.

2. Next, distribute the “World Continents Map” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1,
Lesson 1) to students. Have them work with their partner in labeling the continents and other
important geographic features. Teacher Note: The intent here is to be vague so that students
will include whatever they remember from earlier studies.

3. Display the “World Continents Map” to the class and ask the pairs to share what they put on
their maps. As you elicit students’ answers, record them on the displayed map and correct any
inaccuracies students may have. Again, this is to resurface students’ prior learning. If students
are having difficulty remembering much, it may be worthwhile to assign them to investigate
maps either online or in textbooks and add important geographic features.

4. Next, have students engage in a map making activity. Distribute 11x17 inch paper and have
students construct a map of their school. Instruct students to label important parts of the map
by using a map key. If necessary to remind students what a map key is, display the
“Community Map” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 1) and discuss the
map key with the class.

5. After students have finished drawing their maps, place the maps around the room so students
can see the different drawings. Using a gallery walk structure, tell students that they are going
to walk around the room to examine at least five of the maps of their classmates, noting the
similarities and differences. Have students take a piece of paper and pencil with them as they
stroll around the room. Allow about 7-10 minutes for students to explore the maps and take
notes on what they noticed.

6. Engage students in a whole class discussion using the following questions:

 What did you notice about the maps?
 What are some of the differences in what we included? Excluded?
 Did all of the maps use the space on the paper the same way? How did they differ?
 How do you explain the fact that not all of the maps look the same, even though they
represent the same place?
 Is one map more accurate than another? Why?
 Is one map more useful than another? Why?
 So, what are maps?
 Guide students to recognize that maps are representations of places, but not the actual
places themselves.

7. Have students engage in a “quick write” in which they answer the following question: How do
we know that maps are “representations” or “an account” of something else? What evidence
do we have that proves that maps are not the actual place?

8. Return to the student created maps from Step 4 again, and have students consider purpose,
knowledge, and point-of-view (perspective). Use the following questions to facilitate this
discussion:
 What were you trying to show on your map?

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 So your purpose was to show…..?

 What did you know about the place you were drawing?
 Could you have drawn, for example, a map that included details of the teachers’ lounge?
Why or why not?

9. Explain to students that maps are “accounts” of how the person who created the map “sees”
the place they are representing. Introduce the Word Card #7 “accounts” to the class. Explain
that we call the map “an account” or “a representation” because it is not the actual place;
rather, it is someone’s description of the place. Ask students, so if you all drew the same place,
why were they different? Guide students to realize that their individual purposes, knowledge,
and point-of-views influenced how they drew their maps – that is why we refer to them as
representations or accounts.

10. Can you think of other representations or accounts we use? After eliciting students’ ideas, use
the following examples. A photographer "creates" an account of an event when s/he makes a
picture. The picture represents the people, acts, or events of a moment in time. You might
explain that a photographer re-presents or presents again some moment in the time. Another
way to think of an account, then, is as a "representation" or a “representation of past events.” .
A televised football game is someone’s re-presentation of the game; the television viewer can
only see what the camera operator shows even if it is a live broadcast. Similarly, a YouTube
clip of a past event is someone’s representation of that event. Discuss the following question
with students, “Is a televised picture of a game the same as the game? Why? Why not?”

11. Propose the following problem and let students brainstorm their ideas: Can we learn
something about what people think by analyzing the way they made a representation or
constructed an account? Can we say something about their purpose, knowledge, or point-of-
view? List students’ ideas on the board.

12. Explain to students that there is one fundamental problem in representing the earth: The earth
is a three-dimensional object, so what happens when we try to represent a three dimensional
object on a sheet of paper? After eliciting students’ thoughts, distribute the handout, “Turning
Three Dimensions into Two”, located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 1) to
students. Review the assignment with the class. Be sure they understand that they are to use
an orange (or other three dimensional object that can be easily peeled) and draw a picture on it
that covers the entire object using a permanent marker. Explain to students that their
homework is to flatten their picture on the object into a two dimensional object. Have students
complete the “Turning Three Dimensions into Two” handout for homework.

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Reference Section

Content Expectations
6 and 7- Draw an accurate sketch map from memory of the world showing
G1.1.2: the major regions (Africa, Asia, Europe, Australia/Oceania, Antarctica, Canada,
United States, 2 Mexico, Central America, South America, and Caribbean).3

6-G1.1.1: Describe how geographers use mapping to represent places and natural and human
phenomenon in the world.

7-G1.2.2: Explain why maps of the same place may vary as a result of the cultural or historical
background of the cartographer.

Common Core State Standards

WHST.6-8.4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and
style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

Instructional Resources
Equipment/Manipulative
11 x 17 inch paper
A classroom amount of oranges or grapefruits
Overhead projector or Document Camera/Projector
Permanent markers, one per student (or they can share)

Student Resource
Community Map. Online Maps. The Education Place. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 6 August 2012
<http://www.eduplace.com/ss/maps/pdf/community.pdf>.

World Continents Maps. Online Maps. The Education Place. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 6 August
2012 <http://www.eduplace.com/ss/maps/pdf/world_cont.pdf>.

Teacher Resource
Bloom, Amy, Kimberly Hase, and Stacie Woodward. Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 1).
Teacher-made materials. Oakland Schools, 2012.

2 Although the expectations primarily use continents as the “major regions”, North America is conspicuously absent. In
its stead are the countries of North America – Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Be sure students know the
difference between continents and countries.
3 Although the 6th grade expectation refers only to the Western Hemisphere and the 7 th grade expectation to the

Eastern Hemisphere, they have been combined here to provide for a more global perspective.

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Big Idea Card

Big Ideas of the Lesson 1, Unit 1

 Maps are representations of places. A map is not the place.

 People who create maps select and organize the features of territory to
include in their maps.

 People’s purposes, knowledge, and perspective (or point of view) shape their
maps.

 People’s maps of the same place can look very different.

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Word Cards

1 2
representation three dimensional

the description or having length, width

portrayal of someone (measurement from
or something in a particular way side-to-side) and depth
Example: A map is a representation of Example: The earth is a three dimensional
an actual location or place. object.

(SS070101) (SS070101)

3 4
two dimensional map

having length and a visual representation

width but no depth of an area
Example: Maps depict the earth in a Example: Maps are representations of
two dimensional way. places, but not the actual places
themselves.
(SS070101)
(SS070101)

5 6
continent map key/legend

any of the world’s

continuous expanses the wording on a map
of land explaining the symbols

Example: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Example: When reading a map, look for
Australia, Europe, North America, and the key/legend near the margin of the page.
South America are the seven It is usually surrounded by an outline and
continents of the world. explains every symbol shown on the map.
(SS070101) (SS070101)

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7
account
a report or description of
an event or experience

Example: A map is an “account” of how

the person who created the map “sees”
the place they are representing. This is
influenced by the person’s knowledge,
purpose, and point of view.
(SS070101)

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World Continents Maps. Online Maps. The Education Place. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 6
August 2012 <http://www.eduplace.com/ss/maps/pdf/world_cont.pdf>.

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Community Map. Online Maps. The Education Place. 6 August 2012

<http://www.eduplace.com/ss/maps/pdf/community.pdf>.

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Turning Three Dimensions into Two

Directions: Using an orange, grapefruit or other object that can be peeled, draw a picture on the
object using a permanent marker. Be sure to fill as much as the surface with your picture as
possible.

Then, flatten the drawing on the object so that it becomes a two dimensional drawing. To do so
follow these steps:

 Ask an adult to help.

 Have the adult use a very sharp knife to peel the object so that your drawing remains in one
piece (if possible).

 Flatten the peel so that you can see the picture.

 Answer the questions below.

1. Describe what happened to your picture.

2. Why do you think this happened?

3. If the earth is three dimensional, what problems might geographers

have in representing the earth on paper?

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 2

Lesson 2: What Can A Map Tell Us?

Big Ideas of the Lesson

 Maps are representations of places. A map is not the place.

 One difficulty with maps is that they try to represent a three dimensional object in a two
dimensional plane.
 People who create maps select and organize the features of place to include in their maps.
 People’s purposes, knowledge, and perspective (or point of view) shape their maps.
 Maps of the ancient world reflect the cartographer’s purposes, knowledge, and perspective
(or point of view).

Lesson Abstract:
In this lesson, students revisit the different projections cartographers have devised to address the
problem of representing a three-dimensional object in a two-dimensional medium. Next, they
consider three ancient maps of the same place and compare them. Students learn that just as their
own maps of the school differed, these cartographers created different maps of the same place.
Students explore how knowledge, purpose, and perspective shape how people create accounts or
representations of a place.

Content Expectations: 6 – G1.1.1

6 and 7 – H1.2.3; G.1.2.2

Common Core State Standards: WHST.6-8.10

Key Concepts
perspective
representations/accounts
spatial scales

Teacher Note: Prior to this lesson, students should have a spiral notebook or binder with lined
paper to serve as their “Perspectives on the Past” journal. Students will need the journal for this
lesson and other lessons within the course.

Lesson Sequence
1. Begin the lesson by quickly reviewing what students noticed about the homework activity (from
lesson 1, changing a 3-d into a 2-d). After eliciting students’ responses, explain that over time
people have addressed this problem in different ways. Show them the “Different
Representations of the Earth” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 2).
Although students investigated the Mercator, Robinson, Peters’ projections in sixth grade, it is
important here that they remember that they depicted the earth a little differently in attempting
to solve the same problem – representing a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional
plane.

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2. Next distribute the “Ancient Maps” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 2) to
students. Explain to students that they are now going to work with a partner to investigate
three ancient maps. They are to study each map and then figure out what it tells us about the
person who made it. Instruct students to use their imagination as they look at these
representations of the world. Try to imagine each of the following maps is your picture of the
world. Try to think as if these maps represented your way of viewing the world. The handout
contains the following pictures:

Post the following question on the board for students to consider in examining the maps: “What
does the map tell you about the mapmaker and his/her times?”

If students cannot think of any ideas, provide the following questions to prompt them:
 What shapes do you recognize on the map? What shapes seem incomplete or
unusual? Anything missing? What does that suggest?
 What does the map suggest about the knowledge of the people who made the map?
 Does the map offer any clues about where the person lived? Does the map show a
point-of-view or perspective?
 Look at the date of the map. Does the time frame support your analysis?
 How does this view of the world compare to the other two maps?

As students work with a partner, have them record their thoughts in their journal for use in a
class discussion. Allow about 10-15 minutes for this activity, but monitor students’ small
discussions to determine if students need more time or more prompting.

3. Engage the class in a whole group discussion. Begin by asking students what they saw in the
maps. What things did they recognize? What was unusual? Then ask, “What made these
maps different?” Focus on how much of the world people could have seen at the time, how
much they could have known about the world. Also ask students to hypothesize where they
think the cartographer lived. Where did the cartographer place the “center” of the map? Use
this question to help students understand “point-of-view” or perspective. Finally, discuss how
these ancient maps are different than a modern map of the same place today. How might new
knowledge based on science and modern technology influence how historical maps look?

4. To help students pull ideas together, remind them of their own experiences with creating the
maps of the school from Lesson 1. Just like the cartographers who created the ancient maps;
students’ drawings reflected their own experiences, knowledge, perspective, and purposes.
Have students return to the two maps they created in Lesson 1 (both the world map and the
map of the school). Allow students time to examine their maps and compare the level of detail
contained in each. What do they notice? What areas of each map have more detail? Have
students consider these questions with the whole class.

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 2

5. Return students to the ancient maps distributed earlier in the lesson. What do they notice about
the detail in these maps? Where does each map contain the most detail? Tell students that all
of the cartographers of the ancient maps lived in the center of their maps, although all of them
were well-traveled throughout the regions depicted on the map. How do they think this affected
their level of detail? Guide students to understand that people who create maps must select
and organize the features of the place to include in their map. Their purposes, knowledge, and
perspective (or point of view) shape their maps. Distribute and display the “Graphic
Organizer” for this lesson located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 2). Discuss
the graphic with the class.

6. Have students write reflectively in their “Perspectives on the Past” journal answering the
following question: “How is your view of the world different from the way people in the past
viewed the world? How do you think your knowledge of the world and your point of view
influence how you view the world?”

Assessment
The reflective writing assignment in Step 6 may serve as an informal assessment of this lesson.

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Reference Section

Content Expectations:
6 and 7 Identify the point of view (perspective of the author) and context when reading and
H1.2.3: discussing primary and secondary sources.

6-G1.1.1: Describe how geographers use mapping to represent places and natural and human
phenomena in the world.

6 and 7 Explain why maps of the same place may vary, including cultural perspectives
G1.2.2: of the Earth and new knowledge based on science and modern technology.

Common Core State Standards: WHST.6-8.10

WHST.6-8.10: Write routinely over extended time frames (time for reflection and revision) and
shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-
specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Instructional Resources
Equipment/Manipulative
Overhead projector or Document Camera/Projector
Student journal or notebook

Student Resource
A present-day map of the world.

Teacher Resource
Bloom, Amy, Kimberly Hase, and Stacie Woodward. Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 1).
Teacher-made materials. Oakland Schools, 2012.

Peters Map vs. Mercator Projection. Atlas Rider. 6 August 2012

<http://www.atlasrider.com/?p=265>.

The Robinson Project. The Arthur H. Robinson Map Library. University of Wisconsin. 6 August
2012 <http://www.geography.wisc.edu/maplib/robinson_projection.html>.

World Index Map. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. 6 August 2012 <http://earth-
info.nga.mil/GandG/coordsys/onlinedatum/indexmap.html>.

World, Peters Projection Folded Map. Mapcenter.com. 6 August 2012

<http://www.mapcenter.com/index.php?c=web2.43&product=ODT+WOR+PP+PO>.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070102
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 2

Graphic Organizer

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 2

Big Idea Card

Big Ideas of the Lesson 2, Unit 1

 Maps are representations of places. A map is not the place.

 One difficulty with maps is that they try to represent a three dimensional object
in a two dimensional plane.

 People who create maps select and organize the features of place to include
in their maps.

 People’s purposes, knowledge, and perspective (or point of view) shape their
maps.

 Maps of the ancient world reflect the cartographer’s purposes, knowledge, and
perspective (or point of view).

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 2

Word Cards

Word cards from previous lessons needed for this lesson:

 representations - Word Card #1 from Lesson 1

8 place 9 perspective/point of view

a particular a particular attitude

position or or way of regarding
point in space or seeing something

Example: A student’s perspective about the

Example: The maps we made in class classroom would be different from the
were representations of a place--our custodian’s and would impact the way in
school. which each would draw a map of it.
(SS070102)
(SS070102)

10
cartographer

a geographer who makes maps

Example: Cartographers use today’s

technology to help them make maps.

(SS070102)

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 2

Different Representations of the Earth

Mercator Projection

Peters Projection

Robinson Projection

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 2

Ancient Maps
Map One: The World According to Herodotus (about 450 B.C.E.)

http://www.britannica.com/media/full/2196

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 2

Map Two: The World According to Hecataeus (circa 520 B.C.E.)

http://mappery.com/maps/Hecataeus-World-Map.jpg

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Ancient Maps

Map Three: The World According to Strabo about 76C.E.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/Playfair,_Principal._Map_of_the_World_According_to_Strabo._1814.jpg

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World Map

World Index Map. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. 6 August 2012 <http://earth-
info.nga.mil/GandG/coordsys/onlinedatum/indexmap.html>.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070103
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 3

Lesson 3: What Does History Mean?

Big Ideas of the Lesson

 The word “history” has two meanings.

 “History” can mean events that happened in the past.
 “History” can also mean an account of events in the past.
 An account of the past includes the selection of specific events and the interpretation of
those events.
 Historians select from events of the past and interpret their meaning to create historical
accounts.

Lesson Abstract:
In this lesson, students make visible their understanding of history. After discussing some basic
questions about history, students write a history of the first day of school. They use this
experience to complicate their use and understanding of the word “history.” Through comparing
their accounts of the same event – the first day of school -- students learn to distinguish between
historical events and historical accounts.

Content Expectations: 7 – H1.2.4

Common Core State Standards: WHST.6-8.4, 8, 10

Key Concepts
event
history
perspective
representations/accounts

Lesson Sequence
1. Begin the lesson by posing the following questions to the class:
 What is history?
 How do people use the word “history”?
 What does it mean to study history?
 What do historians do?
 How is history like other courses you study? How is it different?
It would be beneficial to write these questions on the board or display the document
“Questions about History” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 3) to the
class as you discuss them with students.

2. Distribute two sheets of lined paper to each student. Instruct students that they are to write a
short history of the first day of school this year. Allow students to work for about 10 to 15
minutes. Include the instructions below to students. The teacher should also write a history of

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the first day of school this year to be used in the modeling portion of Step 4.
Students may include anything you want in their history. They may use any resource you want
in their history.
 Please do not exceed 2 pages.
 Give your history a title.
Note to Teachers: In addition to its usefulness for the next portion of the lesson, this writing
piece provides an opportunity to gauge students’ literacy skills early in the year.

3. After students have had time to write, engage them in a class discussion of the first day of
school. Begin by asking students the following questions:
 Do you think our histories about the same day in history are the same?
 Do you think you included the same events in your history as your classmates?

List events of the first day of school on the board as students share from their written
responses. The differences among events listed, as well as the accounts and perspectives on
the same events are going to be key understandings for students in this lesson. After eliciting
responses (fill the board), remind students that:
 You all had exactly the same assignment.
 You all had to write about exactly the same topic.
 You all had to write a history about exactly the same day in history.
Briefly elicit students’ responses to the question – Why did our responses differ?

4. Have students get into pairs to compare their histories. Instruct students to see if they have the
same events listed as their partners. Distribute the handout, “Comparing Our Histories: The
First Day of School” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 3). Explain the
directions below and demonstrate/model the activity with a student for the whole class.
 Discuss your history of the first day of school with your partner.
 Use the middle column to record events from the first day. These should include events that
you both identified, as well as events that only one of you identified.
 Use the left and right hand columns to identify who included the event in their history. To do
so, place a small check mark in the upper left corner of the cell to indicate whether you and
your partner included the event. Be sure to leave room in the cell for writing later on in the
lesson.

5. Debrief the exercise by explaining with the class the difference between the word “historical
event” and “historical account”. An historical event is something that happened in the past.
Once it has occurred, we can no longer see it. Historical events happen once. On the other
hand, historical accounts are representations of past events. Explain to the class that the
history of the first day of school that they wrote at the beginning of this lesson was an historical
account. Ask students, “why were there different events described in their accounts of the first
day of school?” “How can this be?" "You had the same day in history to work with, yet there so
many different historical accounts in this room." Record their conjectures about what explains
why there were different histories on the board.

6. Next, have students meet with their partner from Step 4. Instruct students to select two events
from the chart that they both included in their historical accounts of the first day of school and

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 3

compare their accounts of the same events and record the differences in the columns on the
handout “Comparing Our Histories.” What do they notice? Why do you think they are
different?

7. Engage students in a whole class discussion by asking for some examples they found of events
that both partners included, but where the descriptions of the events differed. List these
examples on the board as students share them. Ask students to give enough details so their
classmates can see how the descriptions differed. After noting several different events, use the
following questions to discuss the different accounts of the same event:
 Why, when we included the same events -- like the first day in history class -- did we select
different aspects of the event to include?
 Do you think the selections and omissions were intentional?
 What might have caused the differences in our accounts of the same event?
 What role do you think a person’s perspective or point of view has on how they view an
event or series of events? How is this similar to how a person’s perspective influences the
way they create a map?
 How might one’s experiences influence their perspective of an event?
 What if you loved school? Would your account of the first day of school be different than
somebody who hated school? How might these different perspectives influence one’s
account of the first day of school?
 Considering the differences in accounts from this activity, why might it be problematic to
only consider one account of an event when learning about history?

8. Display the chart, “History Has Two Meanings” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1,
Lesson 3) to students. Explain to students that there are two meanings to the word “history”.
Use the visual to explain the distinction to students. It is recommended that a large print of
“History Has Two Meanings” be hung in the classroom as a visual tool. To help students
realize the difference, be sure to explain that a video of an event is NOT the event but rather an
account of the event. We will work on this idea, but it is an important one, particularly for
students living in a video-rich world. It is important that they understand that when they watch a
video, they are seeing someone's account of an event, but not the event itself. Share other
examples with students such as:
 The difference between a birthday party and the pictures of the party.
 The football game and someone describing the game later.
 A play during a hockey game and an instant replay of that play.
 A crime and the newspaper description of the crime.

Teacher Note: Be sure to make students distinguish between history as an event and history
as an account throughout the year. . For example, you might have a discussion when a
student says "Well in history . . . ." Stop the student and pointing to the visual tool ask, "Do you
mean 'history as past event' or 'history as the account of the event'?"

9. Conclude the lesson by telling students that they are going to investigate another event for
homework. Distribute the handout, “Investigating an Event” located in the Supplemental
Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 3) to students. After explaining the assignment, answer any

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070103
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 3

questions students may have. Students will need the results of their investigation for the next
lesson.

Assessment
The homework assignment may serve as an informal assessment of students’ understanding. The
completed “Comparing Our Histories” handout may also be used to gauge student learning.

Reference Section

Content Expectations:
7-H1.2.4: Compare and evaluate competing historical perspectives about the past based on
proof.

Common Core State Standards:

WHST.6-8.4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and
style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

WHST.6-8.8: Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search
terms effectively, assess the credibility and accuracy of each source; and quote or
paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and
following a standard format for citation.

WHST.6-8.10: Write routinely over extended time frames (time for reflection and revision) and
shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific
tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Instructional Resources
Equipment/Manipulative
Chart paper or one piece of white poster board
Lined paper, two sheets per student
Overhead projector or Document Camera/Projector

Teacher Resource
Bloom, Amy, Kimberly Hase, and Stacie Woodward. Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 3).
Teacher-made materials. Oakland Schools, 2012.

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 3

Graphic Organizer

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070103
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 3

Big Idea Card

Big Ideas of Lesson 3, Unit 1

 “The word “history” has two meanings.

 “History” can mean events that happened in the past.

 “History” can also mean an account of events in the past.

 An account of the past includes the selection of specific events and the
interpretation of those events.

 Historians select from events of the past and interpret their meaning to create
historical accounts.

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 3

Word Cards

Word Cards from previous lessons needed for this lesson:

• Perspective--Word Card #9 from Lesson 2

11 12
historical event historical account

something that happened a representation of

in the past an event from the
past
Example: The American
Revolution and the Example: The description of the American
Constitutional Convention are both historical Revolution in our history book is an historical
events. account.
(SS070103)
(SS070103)

13 14
history historian

events or accounts an expert in or student

of events from the of history
past
Example: The job of an
Example: When people study history, they historian is to interpret past events and
study about people and events of the past. interpret their causes.

(SS070103) (SS070103)

15
interpretation

an explanation of
the meaning of
something
Example: Historical
accounts offer an interpretation of historical
events.

(SS070103)

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 3

Questions about History

 What is history?

 How do people use the word “history”?

 What does it mean to study history?

 What do historians do?

 How is history like other courses you study? How is it

different?

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 3

Comparing Our Histories: The First Day of School

Direction:
 Discuss your history of the first day of school with your partner.
 Use the middle column to record all events from the first day. These should include events
that you both identified, and events that only one of you identified.
 Use the left and right hand columns to identify who included the event in their history. To do
so, place a small check mark in the upper left corner of the cell to indicate whether you and
your partner included the event. Be sure to leave room in the cell to add to it later on in the
lesson.

Mine History My Partner’s

√ Example: Eat lunch √

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 3

“History” Has Two Meanings

What are the different ways that people use the word “history?”

History as Past Event(s) History as Accounts or

Representations

The Event The Account

Only Seen When It Occurs Seen After the Event

Features Features
 Includes everything that happened  Includes only a part of what
in the past happened in the past
 Can be used over and over
 Happened once, then no longer
visible  A record of the past
 Created by someone
 Reflects someone's point of view
 Can be false or inaccurate
 Typically can be touched or seen

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 3

Investigating an Event

Directions: Your task is to select an event of interest to you. It could be in the area of
politics, economics, sports, entertainment, etc. Use the questions below to guide your
inquiry. Find two sources about the event that differ in their descriptions.

1. The Event I Am Investigating: ___________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

2. Source 1:

a. Where did I find the information?

b. What does it say about the event?

c. What evidence does it use to support its description of the event?

3. Source 2:

a. Where did I find the information?

b. What does it say about the event?

c. What evidence does it use to support its description of the event?

4. Compare the sources. How are they similar? Where do they differ?

5. What do you believe is true about this event? How did you come to this conclusion?

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 4

Lesson 4: How Do Historians Create Accounts of Past Events?

Big Ideas of the Lesson

 Historical events happen once and then “disappear.” Since we cannot study historical
events directly, historians rely on whatever evidence the event has left behind.
 Historians analyze this evidence (primary and secondary sources) for accuracy.
 Two ways to evaluate the accuracy of a source are by exploring internal consistency and
external consistency.
 Internal consistency means that the facts within the source do not contradict each other.
 External consistency means that the facts within the source can be corroborated “against”
other sources.

Lesson Abstract:
This lesson continues introducing the students to the type of thinking involved in “doing” history.
Students consider how it is possible for historians to create representations or accounts of events
in which they were not present or that happened thousands of years before they were even born.
They learn that history is an “evidentiary” discipline and that historians use evidence to support
most of the claims they make in their accounts. They revisit the distinction between primary and
secondary sources and explore why historians must carefully read, analyze, and interpret all
evidence they use. This lesson focuses on two such forms of historical analysis, internal and
external validity -- or corroborating sources.

Content Expectations: 6 and 7 – H1.2.1; H1.2.2; H1.2.3; H1.2.4

Common Core State Standards: RH.6-8.1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9, and 10; WHST.6-8.9 and 10

Key Concepts
corroborating
evidence
history
primary sources
secondary sources

Instructional Resources
Equipment/Manipulative
Chart paper or one piece of white poster board
Overhead projector or Document Camera/Projector
Student journal or notebook

Student Resource
Excerpt from: Cheyney, Edward P. An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England.
Chautauqua, New York: The Chautauqua Press, 1910. 6 August 2012
<http://books.google.com/books?id=MylwbO2NnCkC&pg=PA233&lpg=PA233&dq=%22Childr

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 4

en+from+seven+years+of+age+upward+were+engaged+by+the+hundreds+from+London+and
+the+other+large+cities,+and+set+to+work+in+the+cotton+spinning+factories+of+the+north.+
Since+there+were+no+other+facilities+for+boarding+them,%22&source=bl&ots=k0VpP6_uDv
&sig=iyidJvdiRCQmRSmBfhBzbhWU9FQ&hl=en&ei=_zU3Tf2DMcGB8gaUgq3YAw&sa=X&oi
=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false >.

Teacher Resource
Bloom, Amy, Kimberly Hase, and Stacie Woodward. Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 4).
Teacher-made materials. Oakland Schools, 2012.

Powerpoint “Unit 1, Lesson 4.” Oakland Schools. 6 August 2012.

“Why Historical Thinking Matters.” Historical Thinking Matters. 6 August 2012

<http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/why/>.

Lesson Sequence
Teacher Note: By this point, students should understand that historians construct or create
historical account and that historical accounts are not exactly the same as historical events.
Further, they should “see” that we cannot “see” historical events because they happened once and
then “disappeared” into the past. Likewise, they should understand that maps, like historical
accounts, are created by people and that no map is synonymous with the place. That is, all
historical accounts and maps are “representations” and that people’s purposes, knowledge, and
points-of-view shape the representations that people make.

1. Begin the lesson by reminding students that maps and historical accounts are “representations”
of places or past events. Remind students that the “account” is not the “event.” People who
create the historical accounts must select and organize the features of past events to include in
their account. Their purposes, knowledge, and perspective (or point of view) shape their maps
and accounts of past events. Pose the questions below to students and have them write
reflectively in their “Reflections on the Past” journal:
 How might someone “represent” an event in which they participated or witnessed?
 How might you create an account of an event that happened before you were born?
 How might you create an account of an event that happened hundreds of years before
you born?
Allow students about 5-10 minutes to answer these questions.

2. Have students engage in a pair-share activity in which they share their journal responses.
Then discuss with the whole class how people know that an event happened once it is over.
Guide students to remember that an event, once it occurs, can no longer be seen -- it
disappears into the past. What do people rely on to understand the past? What remains that
allows us to “re-present” the event, or to study it? Construct a list on the board as students
suggest answers such as documents, photographs, artifacts, etc. Challenge students’ thinking
by asking whether someone else’s memory could be evidence. Why or why not? What other
pieces of evidence could be used to build an account of a past event? To prompt students’
thinking have them consider the following situation: How would you create a history of an
eighth grader’s first day of seventh grade (last year)?

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Guide students to recognize that that they will need sources or evidence of what happened.
They should begin to understand that the past happens once and disappears. They should
also begin to see that without some “residue” that survives, the past is unknowable. Hence,
historians must always work with evidence.

3. Engage students in a thought experiment. Ask students to create a history of their parents’
experiences in 7th grade. Have students brainstorm how they would go about creating a history
of their parent’s 7th grade school year.
 Ask: What evidence could they use? Create a list of students’ responses on the board.
Some possible answers include:
o Interview parents
o Interview grandparents
o Interview classmates or teachers of parents
o Pictures
o Records, such as yearbooks and report cards.
 Ask them to think about the reliability of the evidence. That is, would you trust all the
information you got? Why? Why not? Guide students to recognize that people may not
have good memories, or that they may want to “embellish” the truth, or that people’s
memories might be different because they had different experiences or had different
knowledge or points-of-view.
 Discuss the following scenario with students. Let’s say your grandmother tells you that
your mom was a perfect daughter and always got straight A’s in everything. However,
your mom says that she remembers being a great math student but just a “so-so”
student in history. How would a historian “check” to see which story – if either—is more
accurate? Discuss students’ responses.

4. Use the Slides 1-7 of the PowerPoint “Unit 1, Lesson 4” to present the different types of
sources historians use. A guided notes page is included in the Supplemental Materials (Unit
1, Lesson 4) to assist students in note taking. The PowerPoint addresses both primary and
secondary sources, how to distinguish between them, and how historians use both types of
sources to construct accounts.

5. At Slide 7of the PowerPoint, distribute copies of the “Primary and Secondary Source
Activity” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 4) to students. Have students
work independently to complete the handout. Then have them work with a partner to share
their answers. As students share, they should assess the evaluation of each source as a
primary or secondary source. Allow time for each partner to review his/her responses. Then,
debrief the activity with the entire class using the following questions:
 What primary sources did you use?
 What secondary sources did you use?
 Was there a source that you had difficulty deciding whether it was a primary or
secondary source? Was there a classification of a source that you and your partner
disagreed about? What was it?
Be sure to discuss any conflicts the pairs identify and help resolve whether the item was a
primary or secondary source.

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6. Next, have students engage in another activity in which they compare the two types of sources.
Explain to students that they are going to look at two sources that talk about people working in
the factories of England in the 1830s: the Sadler Committee Report and a description of life in
the factories by Edward Cheyney. Distribute copies of “Comparing Sources” and
“Questions about the Sources,” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 4) to
students. Using Slide 8, display the “Questions about the Sources” in the room for students
to see as they read. Have students discuss the questions and their answers with a partner.

7. Debrief the activity in Step 6 with the whole class. As you discuss the sources, distinguish
between primary and secondary sources with students. Ask students what evidence supports
the classification of a primary or secondary source. Teacher Note (misconception alert): Many
teachers and students think that a primary source is an “old” source and a secondary source is
“new.” Or they think that secondary sources are written by historians. While these might in
some cases be true, they are not defining traits of primary or secondary sources. A primary
source was part of the event or topic under study. In many ways, it is the historian’s question
that makes a source primary or secondary. For example, in most studies, the textbook is a
secondary source. However, if I were studying how textbooks changed over time, then the
textbooks would be a primary source.
Discuss the two sources with the class using the following questions:
 How do we know if we can trust a source?
 How do we know if a primary or secondary source is accurate, authentic, or credible?
 How can they check a source to see if the source is “correct?”
Guide students to recognize that sometimes a source may contradict itself or contradict another
source.

8. Use the PowerPoint (Unit 1, Lesson 4), Slides 9-12 to explain to students that there are three
ways to check on the accuracy of a source:
 Distinguishing Fact from Opinion
 Internal Consistency or Contradictions
 External Consistency or Contradictions – Corroboration
Use a Think-Aloud strategy to demonstrate each of these checks on accuracy. In a Think-
Aloud, the teacher makes his or her thinking visible by not only reading a passage, but talking
through his or her thinking out loud. A sample Think Aloud has been included in the
Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 4) to assist teachers in understanding this strategy.
Another good source for observing a Think Aloud can be found at
http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/why/ , click on the “View Why Historical Thinking Matters”
button. This website is geared toward high school, but is useful as teacher background
information.

9. Distribute the handout “A Letter from Paris” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1,
Lesson 4) to students. Explain to students the following problem: Imagine a person found the
following letter in their attic. Do you think the letter and its information are accurate? How
would you know? Read the letter out loud with the students twice. Then, have students work
with a partner to complete the following tasks:
 Identify each sentence as a statement of fact or an opinion.
 Conduct an internal check: Are there any contradictions within the letter? If so, where?
Identify the specific line(s) that contradict.

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 Conduct an external check: Find five facts that you could check or corroborate using other
sources to determine the truthfulness of this letter.
 Do you trust this source? Why or why not? Would you use this as evidence or a source?
Explain your thinking.

10. Scaffold students into considering the accuracy of the source in a whole class discussion using
the following steps:
 Identify fact and opinion. Identify each sentence as either fact or opinion using the line
numbers on the left hand side of the page as a guide.
 Internal Check: Are there any contradictions within this letter? If so, where? Does this
document contradict itself? Do any of the facts in this document (internal) contradict other
facts in the document? When was the letter dated? Where was Albert when he wrote the
letter? Where was he on May 2, 1787? Could he have been where he claims on May 2
AND May 3, 1787?
 External Check: Identify the facts in the letter you could check against other outside or
external sources. Which five facts could you check or corroborate using other sources to
determine the truthfulness of this letter? What other sources could you use to corroborate
this document? The author of the letter claims that Americans held the Constitutional
Convention in Philadelphia during the spring of 1787. Is that true? Can you check this with
an “outside” or external source? What outside or external source could you use? Or, the
author claims that Madison was 36 years old in 1787. Is that true? Can you check this with
an “outside” or external source? What outside or external source could you use?

11. Conclude the lesson by posting the following in the room: “Explain why you trust this letter or
why you don’t. Would you use this as evidence or a source? Explain your thinking.” Have
students construct an exit slip in which they answer the questions. Allow students about 5
minutes to answer the question and collect the exit slips as students leave the room.

Assessment
The exercise in Step 10 may be used as an informal assessment of student understanding. The
exit slip students complete in Step 11 can also serve as an assessment of student learning.

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Reference Section

Content Expectations
6 and 7- Explain how historians use a variety of sources to explore the past (e.g.,
H1.2.1: artifacts, primary and secondary sources including narratives, technology, historical
maps, visual/mathematical quantitative data, radiocarbon dating, DNA analysis).

6 and 7 Read and comprehend a historical passage to identify basic factual knowledge
H1.2.2: and the literal meaning by indicating who was involved, what happened, where it
happened, what events led to the development, and what consequences or outcomes
followed.

6 and 7 Identify point of view (perspective of the author) and context when reading and
H1.2.3: discussing primary and secondary sources.

6 and 7 Compare and evaluate competing historical perspectives about the past based
H1.2.4: on proof.

Common Core State Standards:

RH.6-8.1: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary
sources.

RH.6-8.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source;

provide an accurate summary of the source district from prior knowledge or
opinions.

RH.6-8.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text,
including vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.

RH.6-8.6: Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author’s point of view or purpose (e.g.,
loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).

RH.6-8.8: Distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.

RH.6-8.9: Analyze the relationship between a primary and secondary source on the same
topic.

RH.6-8.10: By the end of grade 8, read and comprehend history/social studies texts in the
grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently.

WHST.6-8.9: Draw evidence from informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and
research.

WHST.6-8.10: Write routinely over extended time frames (time for reflection and revision) and
shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-
specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

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August 6, 2012
7th Grade Social Studies SS070104
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 4

Instructional Resources
Equipment/Manipulative
Chart paper or one piece of white poster board
Overhead projector or Document Camera/Projector
Student journal or notebook

Student Resource
Excerpt from: Cheyney, Edward P. An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England.
Chautauqua, New York: The Chautauqua Press, 1910. 6 August 2012
<http://books.google.com/books?id=MylwbO2NnCkC&pg=PA233&lpg=PA233&dq=%22Childr
en+from+seven+years+of+age+upward+were+engaged+by+the+hundreds+from+London+and
+the+other+large+cities,+and+set+to+work+in+the+cotton+spinning+factories+of+the+north.+
Since+there+were+no+other+facilities+for+boarding+them,%22&source=bl&ots=k0VpP6_uDv
&sig=iyidJvdiRCQmRSmBfhBzbhWU9FQ&hl=en&ei=_zU3Tf2DMcGB8gaUgq3YAw&sa=X&oi
=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false >.

Teacher Resource
Bloom, Amy, Kimberly Hase, and Stacie Woodward. Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 4).
Teacher-made materials. Oakland Schools, 2012.

Powerpoint “Unit 1, Lesson 4.” Oakland Schools. 6 August 2012.

“Why Historical Thinking Matters.” Historical Thinking Matters. 6 August 2012

<http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/why/>.

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Graphic Organizer

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070104
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 4

Big Idea Card

Big Ideas of the Lesson 4, Unit 1

 “Historical events happen once and then “disappear.” Since we cannot study
historical events directly, historians rely on whatever evidence the event has
left behind.

 Historians analyze this evidence (primary and secondary sources) for

accuracy.

 Two ways to evaluate the accuracy of a source are by exploring internal

consistency and external consistency.

 Internal consistency means that the facts within the source do not contradict
each other.

 External consistency means that the facts within the source can be
corroborated “against” other sources.

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Word Cards

16 17
corroborate evidence
to confirm or give facts or information that
support to a can be used to test
statement, theory, whether a belief or
or finding proposition is true or valid

Example: Historians corroborate their Example: Historians must have evidence to

sources by looking for internal and external support their accounts.
consistencies.
(SS070104)
(SS070104)

18 19
primary source secondary source
first-hand account of an account of an event
the event that was that was created later
created at about the by people who did not
time the event experience first-hand the event you are
occurred researching
Example: Diaries, letters, reports, Example: Encyclopedia articles, books written
photographs, and birth certificates are a few by historians, and textbooks are three types of
types of primary sources. secondary sources.
(SS070104) (SS070104)

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20 21
fact opinion

something that is true what someone thinks

about a subject and about a subject
can be tested
Example: The opinion article in the
Example: It is a fact newspaper argued that Michigan should raise
that Michigan requires kids to go to school the minimum drop-out age from 16 to 18.
until they are at least 16.
(SS070104)
(SS070104)

22 23
internal external consistency
consistency when factual details are
when the facts presented similarly
presented within a among multiple
single source do not clash with each documents or sources
other Example: There was external consistency
Example: There was internal consistency in among the documents because one witness
the document because it first stated that the report stated that the blue truck ran the red
car accident happened at 10 AM and then light while another witness report stated that
later stated that it happened between the light had been red for a while when the
breakfast and lunch. blue truck entered the intersection.
(SS070104) (SS070104)

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 4

Guided Notes: Distinguishing Between Primary and Secondary Sources

Primary Sources

Defined

Examples

Secondary Sources

Defined

Examples

It is about the USAGE of the Source

Examples

Ways to check on the accuracy of a source:

 Distinguishing Fact from Opinion

 Internal Consistency or Contradictions

 External Consistency or Contradictions

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 4

Primary and Secondary Source Activity

Directions: Imagine you were asked to create a detailed account of a very
important day in history, the day you were born. What sources could you use to
create the account?
1.I was born _____________________________(your birthday)
(month) (day) (year)

B. List 10 primary sources of that day and that event.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

C. List 5 secondary sources of that day or that event.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 4

Comparing Sources
Directions: Below are two sources dealing with factory conditions in England during the
1830s. Read both sources and answer the questions that follow.

Document #1: The Sadler Committee Report: In 1832 there was a committee that investigated life in the
factories for the workers. It was called the Sadler Committee. One of the first people called in to testify was
Elizabeth Bentley, a twenty-three year old woman who started working in the factory when she was SIX
YEARS OLD. Here are the questions and her answers taken directly from the transcript of the investigation.

Elizabeth Bentley, called in; and Examined.

What age are you?
--Twenty-three.

What time did you begin to work at a factory?

--When I was six years old.

At whose factory did you work?

--Mr. Busk's.

What kind of mill is it?

--Flax-mill.

What were your hours of labour in that mill?

--From 5 in the morning till 9 at night, when they were thronged.

For how long a time together have you worked that excessive length of time?
--For about half a year.

What were your usual hours when you were not so thronged?
--From 6 in the morning till 7 at night.

What time was allowed for your meals?

--Forty minutes at noon.

Had you any time to get your breakfast or drinking?

--No, we got it as we could.

And when your work was bad, you had hardly any time to eat it at all?
--No; we were obliged to leave it or take it home, and when we did not take it, the overlooker
took it, and gave it to his pigs.

Do you consider doffing a laborious employment?

--Yes.

Explain what it is you had to do?

--When the frames are full, they have to stop the frames, and take the flyers off, and take the
full bobbins off, and carry them to the roller; and then put empty ones on, and set the frame
going again.

Does that keep you constantly on your feet?

--Yes, there are so many frames, and they run so quick.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070104
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 4

Your labour is very excessive?

--Yes; you have not time for anything.

Suppose you flagged a little, or were too late, what would they do?
--Strap us.

Are they in the habit of strapping those who are last in doffing?
--Yes.

Constantly?
--Yes.

Girls as well as boys?

--Yes.

Have you ever been strapped?

--Yes.

Severely?
--Yes.

Could you eat your food well in that factory?

--No, indeed I had not much to eat, and the little I had I could not eat it, my appetite was so
poor, and being covered with dust; and it was no use to take it home, I could not eat it, and
the overlooker took it, and gave it to the pigs.

You are speaking of the breakfast?

--Yes.

How far had you to go for dinner?

--We could not go home to dinner.

Where did you dine?

--In the mill.

Did you live far from the mill?

--Yes, two miles.

Had you a clock?

--No, we had not.

Supposing you had not been in time enough in the morning at these mills, what would
have been the consequence?
--We should have been quartered.

What do you mean by that?

--If we were a quarter of an hour too late, they would take off half an hour; we only got a
penny an hour, and they would take a halfpenny more.

The fine was much more considerable than the loss of time?
-Yes.
The Sadler Committee Report (1832). Hanover College History Department. 6 August
2012<http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111sad.html>.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070104
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 4

Document 2: Edward P. Cheyney: An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History. Chautauqua,
New York: The Chautauqua Press, 1910. This source is an account of factory conditions of the time of
the Sadler Committee. It was written by Edward P. Cheyney, an historian writing in 1901.

Children from seven years of age upward were engaged by the hundreds from London and the other
large cities, and set to work in the cotton spinning factories of the north. Since there were no other
facilities for boarding them, “apprentice houses" were built for them in the vicinity of the factories,
where they were placed under the care of superintendents or matrons. The conditions of life among
these pauper children were, as might be expected, very hard. They were remotely situated, apart
from the observation of the community, left to the burdens of unrelieved labor and the harshness of
small masters or foreman. Their hours of labor were excessive. When the demands of trade were
active they were often arranged in two shifts, each shift working twelve hours, one in the day and
another in the night, so that it was a common saying in the north that “their beds never got cold," one
set climbing into bed as the other got out. When there was no night work the day work was the
longer. They were driven at their work and often abused. Their food was of the coarsest description,
and they were frequently required to eat it while at their work, snatching a bite as they could while
the machinery was still in motion. Much of the time which should have been devoted to rest was
spent in cleaning the machinery, and there seems to have been absolutely no effort made to give
them any education or opportunity for recreation.

The sad life of these little waifs, overworked, underfed, neglected, abused, in the factories and
barracks in the remote glens of Yorkshire and Lancashire, came eventually to the notice of the
outside world.

Source: Cheyney, Edward P. An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History. Chautauqua, New York:
The Chautauqua Press, 1910. 6 August 2012
<http://books.google.com/books?id=MylwbO2NnCkC&pg=PA233&lpg=PA233&dq=%22Children+from+seve
n+years+of+age+upward+were+engaged+by+the+hundreds+from+London+and+the+other+large+cities,+a
nd+set+to+work+in+the+cotton+spinning+factories+of+the+north.+Since+there+were+no+other+facilities+fo
r+boarding+them,%22&source=bl&ots=k0VpP6_uDv&sig=iyidJvdiRCQmRSmBfhBzbhWU9FQ&hl=en&ei=_
zU3Tf2DMcGB8gaUgq3YAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA#v=onepag
e&q&f=false>.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070104
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 4

Questions about the Sources

1. What are the differences between these two sources?

2. If you were studying factory life in Britain between 1800 and 1851, would these both be
“primary sources?” One? None? Briefly explain.

3. Which of these two accounts makes factory working conditions seem more real to you?
Why?

4. Which of the accounts is probably more reliable? Why?

5. Do you think that Edward Cheyney used testimony like Elizabeth Bentley’s to write his
account? Why or why not?

6. Historians do not include everything in their accounts. How do you think Mr. Cheyney
decided what to include? What do you think made something important enough to include
in Cheyney’s account?

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070104
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 4

Sample Think Aloud

Document 2: Edward P. Cheyney An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History. Chautauqua, New York:
The Chautauqua Press, 1910. This source is an account of factory conditions of the time of the Sadler Committee. It
was written by Edward P. Cheyney, an historian writing in 1910.

(Okay, so he was not there at the event since he wrote it in 1910 and it is about 70 years after the event. I wonder
where he got his information… what types of sources did he use? The document is telling me that it was an account
based on the time of the other source I read from the Sadler Committee.)

Children from seven years of age upward were engaged by the hundreds from London and the other
large cities, and set to work in the cotton spinning factories of the north. (Wow! That is young… seven
years old. I wonder how he knew that. That is a statement of fact. I wonder what was in the north. I
am not very familiar with the geography of England. I wonder how far away that was from London and
other large cities at the time.) Since there were no other facilities for boarding them, “apprentice
houses" were built for them in the vicinity of the factories, where they were placed under the care of
superintendents or matrons. (I am not sure my students will know what “boarding” means. I hope that
the term “house” in the same sentence will clue them in. So, they were put in these houses with a
supervisor… probably need that because they could be as young as seven years old. This would be
a fact that could be verified by evidence.) The conditions of life among these pauper children were,
as might be expected, very hard. (Paupers means poor. Hmm, conditions were hard… how hard…
compared to what? I am sure that my students have no idea how difficult life was back then. How
does he know they were hard? What does he base this conclusion on? This is definitely an opinion.)
They were remotely situated, apart from the observation of the community, left to the burdens of
unrelieved labor and the harshness of small masters or foreman. Their hours of labor were
excessive. When the demands of trade were active they were often arranged in two shifts, each shift
working twelve hours, one in the day and another in the night, so that it was a common saying in the
north that “their beds never got cold," one set climbing into bed as the other got out. When there was
no night work the day work was the longer. (Oh, now he is describing what he meant by hard. Here
he is listing something that can be verified… facts. How does he know this? Why are there quotes
around “their bed never got cold”? Is that a saying or an actual quote?) They were driven at their
work and often abused. Their food was of the coarsest description, and they were frequently required
to eat it while at their work, snatching a bite as they could while the machinery was still in motion.
(This information could be verified… did this happen or not? This is a fact. Is it accurate?) Much of
the time which should have been devoted to rest was spent in cleaning the machinery, and there
seems to have been absolutely no effort made to give them any education or opportunity for
recreation. (No time to play, certainly no video games, let alone learning. He says “should have been
devoted to rest” but that I think is an opinion. His description does support the claim that conditions
were harsh. I wonder what sources used to obtain these details?)

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070104
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 4

The sad life of these little waifs, overworked, underfed, neglected, abused, in the factories and
barracks in the remote glens of Yorkshire and Lancashire, came eventually to the notice of the
outside world. (I wonder how they came to the notice of the outside world? Maybe he is referring to
the Saddler Committee report by saying people outside the factory system noticed).

(I do not see how this source contradicted itself internally. But I would want to have an external
check. I would want to go back to the Saddler Report to see if these facts are consistent with that
report. I might also want to see other documents from the apprentice houses like rules for living, a
bell schedule in a factory, etc.).

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070104
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 4

A Letter from Paris

Line #
1 Paris
2 May 3, 1787

3 Dear Charles:

4 This spring (1787) is particularly lovely in Paris. The trip over here, in April,
5 was pleasant. Thomas Jefferson was on the ship. I passed time talking with
6 him. He is taking a new job as Ambassador to France. He was looking forward
7 to the next six months. He is going to spend the next six months, from April
8 until September, here in Paris. I will see him often.
9 I am most interested in the Constitutional Convention. The Convention is
10 taking place now in Philadelphia. I was encouraged by the speech that
11 Madison gave on May 2, 1787. I could not believe my ears. He was wonderful.
12 His words moved me and I stood with the other people in the crowd to cheer
13 his oratory. His interpretation on the Virginia Plan is brilliant. When the plan
14 was introduced on April 30, 1787, I was encouraged. Now after Madison’s
15 speech I am overjoyed. And to think he is only 36 years old! Of course,
16 Jefferson’s response to Madison was disappointing. The crowd in the hall in
17 Philadelphia could not contain itself after Jefferson sat down.
18 Well, I must go now as I have a dinner tonight at Jefferson’s home here in
19 Paris.

20 Yours,
21 Albert Chimes

Task: Complete the following tasks with your partner. Record your thoughts.

1. Identify each sentence as a statement of fact or an opinion.

2. Conduct an internal check: Are there any contradictions within the letter? If so, where?
Identify the specific line(s) that contradict.
3. Conduct an external check: Find five facts that you could check or corroborate using other
sources to determine the truthfulness of this letter.
4. Do you trust this source? Why or why not? Would you use this as evidence or a source?
Explain your thinking.

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WHAT TYPES OF SOURCES DO

HISTORIANS USE?

Grade 7, Unit 1, Lesson 4

 Types of Sources
 When Historians study an event, they use
sources related to the event

 Historians classify the sources they use in

two categories called:

 Primary Sources

 Secondary Sources
 Primary Sources
Characteristics
 Firsthand information about an event
 Includes words, images, or objects created by
persons directly involved in an event
 Do not include historian’s analysis or interpretation of
the sources
Examples:
 Physical/Material remains: buildings, roads, tools, weapons,
coins, tapestries, pottery, battle sites, clothing
 Geographic records: maps, charts, place names
 Visual records: drawings/paintings, photographs
 Written records: letters, diaries, memos, laws, books, reports,
trials, public meetings, inscriptions on buildings, receipts, email
Checking Your Understanding
Imagine you are a historian who wants to know
what American Middle School students learned in
school from 1950-2000. Which of the following
would be considered Primary Sources?

 Interviews with people who went to middle schools or

taught middle school in the 1980s
 State laws about education requirements in the 1970s
 A report written by a historian in 2010
 Textbooks used in schools in the 1960s
 Secondary Sources
Characteristics
 Contain second hand information
 Created by people who were not eyewitnesses to
the event
 Descriptions of events that include analysis or
interpretation of primary sources to describe a
past event

Examples:
 A written analysis of old firsthand interviews about an event
 A book that describes an event written many years after the
event
Checking Your Understanding
Imagine you are a historian who wants to know
what American Middle School students learned in
school from 1950-2000. Which of the following
would be considered Secondary Sources?
• An interview with the neighbor of a person who was a
middle school teacher in the 1950s
• An article written in 2010 about middle school in 1960s
• A final exam from a social studies class in 1980
• A textbook about the history of middle school
education
Look At the Usage of the Source

The difference between a Primary Source and

Secondary Source is how the historian uses
the source.
 For example, when studying what students learned
in middle school from 1950 to 2000 a textbook
used in that time period is a Primary Source—it’s
firsthand material.
 A textbook is also a Secondary Source about the
events written about in the textbook—it explains
events long after they happened.
Comparing Sources Activity
What are the differences between these
two sources?
 If you were studying factory life in Britain between 1800 and
1851, would these both be “primary sources?” One? None?
Briefly explain.
 Which of these two accounts makes factory working conditions
seem more real to you? Why?
 Which of the accounts is probably more reliable? Why?
 Do you think that Edward Cheyney used testimony like Elizabeth
Bentley’s to write his account? Why or why not?
 Historians do not include everything in their accounts. How do
you think Mr. Cheyney decided what to include? What do you
think made something important enough to include in Cheyney’s
account?
Which Source Are Best?
 A primary source is not necessarily better than
a secondary source because not all primary
sources are of equal value in helping a historian
study an event.
 How does a historian decided which sources are
the most accurate when studying an event?
 A Historian does three things when examining a
source:
1. Distinguishes between Facts and Opinions
2. Checks for Internal Consistency or Contradictions
3. Checks for External Consistency or Contradictions
– Corroboration
Fact or Opinion

 A fact is something that is true about a subject and

can be tested or proven
 Look for clues such as: " 56% of....”, or “The President attended...“

 An opinion is what someone thinks about that subject.

 Look for clues such as: "I believe...", "It's obvious...", or "They
should...“

 Which part of the following statement is fact?

Which part is opinion? How do you know?
 Records show that most middle schools require
students to take social studies; however, they should
also require foreign languages.
Internal Inconsistencies or
Contradictions

 Internal - Within a single document

 Contradiction - the facts presented cannot
all be true; they clash with each other
 Inconsistency - the facts are presented
differently, which may raise questions about
the source’s accuracy
 Which might be less accurate? Why?
 A diary entry states that John went to school on
Monday, and then later says that John and Mary went
to school on Monday.
 A diary says that John went to school on Monday, and
then later states that John never went to school.
External Inconsistencies or
Contradictions
 External - When comparing multiple documents
 Contradictions – facts in the two sources are at
odds with each other and both cannot be true
 Inconsistency – factual details are presented
differently, which may raise questions about each
sources’ accuracy

 Which is less accurate?

1. A diary entry states that John went to school on Monday. An
interview with another student indicates that John and Mary
went to school on Monday.
2. A diary says that John went to school on Monday, but school
attendance records show that John never went to school.
Property of Oakland Schools
7th Grade Social Studies SS070105
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 5

Lesson 5: What Process Do Historians Use to Investigate the Past?

Big Ideas of the Lesson

 Historians investigate the past by (1) framing problems to study, (2) selecting and
analyzing available evidence, (3) organizing their information, and (4) creating the
account.
 In answering the historical problem, historians analyze the available evidence by paying
attention to who created the evidence and then use other sources to check it against.
 Historical problems or questions help historians select, analyze, and organize information.
 Historical accounts represent the historians’ best answers to the historical problems given
the evidence they have.

Lesson Abstract:
In this lesson, students are introduced into the process historians use to investigate the past. The
goal of the lesson is not to train mini-historians, but rather to illuminate the discipline of history as
something more than just facts and dates. While facts and dates are relevant, they also help
frame further questions about the past. Students explore the importance of framing problems in
order to select, analyze, and organize evidence to create an historical account.

Content Expectations: 6 and 7 – H1.2.1

Common Core State Standards: RH.6-8.4 and 5; WHST.6-8.10

Key Concepts
corroborating
event
evidence
framing
historical problem
history
representation/account
sourcing

Lesson Sequence
1. Begin the lesson by having students engage in a turn and talk in which they distinguish history
as an event FROM history as an account. What is the difference? Briefly discuss the
question as a class, making sure students remember that there are more “things” in an event
than a historian could possibly include in his or her account of the past event. Also explain that
because of this, historians must decide what to include and exclude in their accounts, because
accounts cannot include everything.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070105
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 5

2. Introduce students to the process historians use to construct accounts using the lesson
“Graphic Organizer” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 5) as a guide.
Explain to students that historian use four basic steps in constructing an account:
(1) Framing problems to study,
(2) Selecting and analyzing available evidence,
(3) Organizing their information, and
(4) Creating the account.
Explain to students that in this lesson they will discuss how historians frame, select, and
organize facts and/or sources.

3. Remind students that in the previous lessons they have been investigating how an historian
examines sources. However, historians do not just jump in and examine artifacts or documents
in a vacuum. Pose the following question to students: How do historians decide what to
investigate? Have students brainstorm with a partner how they think historians decide what to
investigate. Prompt students’ thinking by asking, “If you had the opportunity to explore anything
that happened in the past, how would you decide what to explore?” Discuss students’
responses with the whole class and guide students to recognize that one’s interest in a topic
may lead them to an investigation of something related to that topic.

4. Next, display the diagram “Process for Framing a Historical Problem” found in the
Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 5) to students. Use the diagram to explain how people
develop questions to investigate. Be sure to point out that the starting point was a topic or item
of interest. From there, some general question is raised and investigated. That investigation
results in more specific questions concerning the topic. Guide students through the diagram,
pointing out how different resources – people, a book, internet research, etc. - were used to
raise more specific questions.1 Also explain to students that it is difficult to investigate very
broad topics. The more specific the question, the easier it is to target the research. For
example, if a student wanted to know about Michelangelo, the next question would be what
does the student want to know about? If they do not know who Michelangelo was, then the
following more specific questions would be difficult to come up with: How did he become a
sculptor? What are his most famous sculptures? What was his childhood like? How did he
paint the Sistine Chapel? Why did he paint it the way he did? Some initial investigation is
necessary to narrow the focus of research. Staying with too broad of a topic does not frame
the research with a problem for investigation and will likely result in disparate pieces of
information instead of an historical account.

5. Explain to students that framing a historical problem is only the first step in the process. Revisit
the “Graphic Organizer” for the lesson located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson

1 In this curriculum, we always begin our study with historical questions or problems. Beginning with a problem not only
focuses our study but sets limits as to what we study. Our questions should explain what we are studying and why we
are studying it. Booth, in the The Craft of Research, suggests that we should be able to fill in the following about our
research: I am studying _________ because I want to know __________ in order to help my readers understand
________. Though he was writing for researchers, we think this is a good thing for teachers to answer, only with a
slight modification: “We are studying ___________ because I want my students to know _______ in order to help my
students understand _______.” Accordingly, for this unit we might complete the phrase by saying: “We are studying
the structure of the discipline of history because I want my students to know how historians work and what history is in
order to help my students understand that history is not simply memorizing dates and names.”

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070105
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 5

5) with the class to remind students of this process. Describe the process historians use to
construct accounts to students as follows:
1. Framing problems to study,
2. Selecting and analyzing available evidence
3. Organizing their information, and
4. Creating the account.

6. Remind students that they have already explored some of the ways that historians analyze
evidence. Remind students that when they examined sources in Lesson 4, they distinguished
fact from opinion and tried to determine the accuracy of the sources. Ask students, “What
methods did we use to establish accuracy?” Guide students to recognize that they used
internal and external consistencies to establish the accuracy of a source. Explain that this is
called corroboration. Students also used another technique in analyzing sources in Lessons 1
and 2. Remind students that both geographers and historians re-present places and events.
These are not the actual places and events, but representations or accounts of the place or a
past event. Ask students, why does who created the source matter when examining a source?
Allow students time to think about what a geographer or historian brings to the account
(perspective or point of view, knowledge, experiences, etc.). Explain to students that when
they “source” a re-presentation, they inquire: Who created it? When? Why? From which
perspective or point of view? What did they know?, etc. These questions all relate to what
historians refer to as “sourcing.”

7. Ask students, “Why must historians select and organize sources and evidence? What would
happen if a historian tried to include everything that happened, or what people did and thought?
Could she? What would happen if historians included in their accounts everything that
happened in the order in which they found it?” After eliciting students’ responses, display the
reading, “The First Day of School” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 5).
Have students read the sample account of the first day of school. Then, have students stop
and jot notes about what they noticed about this account of the first day of school.

8. Read the account of “The First Day of School” out loud to the entire class. Engage students
in a discussion about the reading using the following questions:
 Was this account easy to understand? Why or why not?
 How is the account organized?
 Why do you think the writer included an earthquake in Europe? A baseball game?
 Was the account internally consistent? How do you know? (Teacher Note: The account
indicates two different start times for school. Because the account is not clear as to which
school(s) were being represented in the account, it may be internally consistent. The point
here is by including all this information randomly, it is difficult to tell.)
 Why must historians select and organize sources and evidence?

As you discuss these questions with students, it is important that they recognize that historians
cannot include everything and they must organize it to help people make sense of their
account.

9. Ask students how framing a historical problem may help them in selecting, analyzing, and

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070105
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 5

arranging the information they collect? Elicit students’ responses and record them on the
board. To prompt students’ thinking, use the following questions:
 How would creating a historical problem help you select information? What information
in the “The First Day of School” account would you eliminate if you were focusing only on
the first day at your local high school? Guide students to recognize that the earthquake
in Europe, baseball game, the mudslide in California, or Mr. Jones’ 4th grade class would
probably not be included in the account.
 How would a historical problem help in analyzing the information? Guide students to
recognize that this account has two different start times for school. By focusing on the
problem, this apparent inconsistency would need further investigation.
 How would a historical problem help in arranging the information? How might different
historical problems about the first day of school lead to different accounts of the first day
of school? Guide students to recognize that the accounts would stress different
information based on the historical problem. For example, consider these two historical
problems (1) How was the first day of school the same for elementary and high school
students? (2) How did events outside of school affect students on the first day of school?
 Ask students to think about what other ‘problems’ could be framed about the first day of
school to give them some practice.

10. Conclude the lesson by having students write reflectively in their “Reflections on the Past”
notebook in response to the following question: How would your account of the first day of
school be different if you created a historical problem to focus your account? Propose a
historical problem about your first day of school. What information in your account would you
eliminate?

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070105
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 5

Resource Section

Content Expectations
6 and 7 Explain how historians use a variety of sources to explore the past (e.g.,
H1.2.1: artifacts, primary and secondary sources including narratives, technology, historical
maps, visual/mathematical quantitative data, radiocarbon dating, DNA analysis).

Common Core State Standards

RH.6-8.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including
vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.

RH.6-8.5: Describe how a text presents information (e.g., sequentially, comparatively,

causally).

WHST.6-8.10: Write routinely over extended time frames (time for reflection and revision) and
shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-
specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Instructional Resources
Equipment/Manipulative
Overhead projector or Document Camera/Projector
Student journal or notebook

Teacher Resource
Bloom, Amy, Kimberly Hase, and Stacie Woodward. Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 5).
Teacher-made materials. Oakland Schools, 2012.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070105
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 5

Graphic Organizer

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070105
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 5

Big Idea Card

Big Ideas of the Lesson 5, Unit 1

 Historians investigate the past by (1) framing problems to study, (2) selecting
and analyzing available evidence, (3) organizing their information, and (4)
creating the account.

 In answering the historical problem, historians analyze the available evidence

by paying attention to who created the evidence and then use other sources to
check it against.

 Historical problems or questions help historians select, analyze, and organize

information.

 Historical accounts represent the historians’ best answers to the historical

problems given the evidence they have.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070105
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 5

Word Cards

Word Cards from previous lessons needed for this lesson:

• Historical event -- Word Card #11 from Lesson 3
• Historical account -- Word Card #12 from Lesson 3
• Corroborate -- Word Card #16 from Lesson 4
• Evidence -- Word Card #17 from Lesson 4

24 25
framing a historical problem sourcing

process used to narrow the asking questions about

focus of historical study a particular source,
from a broad topic to a including: Who created
more specific research it? When? Why? From
question or problem in order to create an what perspective or point of view? What
historical account did they know?
Example: The first step in creating an historical Example: Sourcing is one more way in which
account is to frame an historical problem, which historians try to establish the accuracy and
gives you a specific question to study, such as reliability of a source.
“Why didn’t Detroit develop a subway system
during the 20th Century?” (SS070105)
(SS070105)

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 5

Process for Framing A Historical Problem

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070105
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 5

The First Day of School

Sam woke up at 6:30. The cafeteria was serving pizza. The newspaper

headline read, “Heat Wave Expected Through December.” Sally’s mom

made her eggs that morning. Billy was excited to see his friends he

missed all summer. An earthquake in Europe woke people up early.

School was dismissed at 3:15. Mrs. Jones got up earlier than usual

because she wanted to rearrange the desks in her room before her

students came. Ms. Haggerty woke up at 3:30 a.m. to make sure the

busses ran on time for the first day. The bell rang at 7:30 am. The

teachers met in the auditorium before school. The school principal called

his wife when he got to school. The President was preparing for a

welcome back to school speech for school children. A thunderstorm and

mudslide in California made it difficult to get around that day. The Detroit

Tigers had a double header against the Boston Red Sox. The school

started at 9:15. Sally went to art class at 8:30. Mr. Jones welcomed

students to 4th grade with a song.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070106
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 6

Lesson 6: Tools to Organize and Analyze the Past -- Establishing

Significance
.

Big Ideas of the Lesson

 Historians investigate the past by (1) framing problems to study, (2) selecting and
analyzing available evidence, (3) organizing their information, and (4) creating the
account.
 Four tools that historians use to organize information include significance, social
institutions, temporal frames (time), and spatial scales (space).
 Ideas about significance can vary among historians.
 We can determine whether an event is significant by constructing and applying rules or
theories about what makes an event important.
 Organizing an account by significance is important for both the historian and reader.

Lesson Abstract:
In this lesson, students learn that historians use four distinct tools to organize and analyze
information: significance, social institutions, temporal frames (time), and spatial scales (space).
After revisiting the issues of analyzing sources, they explore what “significance” means and
construct a thinking tool to assist in organizing information based on its significance to the
historical problem.1 Students learn that historians have ideas of what makes things “significant” to
their study, and that the ideas of “significance” can vary from one historian to another. They
examine how significance is very important for both the creation of a historical account and in the
reading of others’ historical accounts. Students then create a thinking tool for determining
significance to use throughout the course.

Content Expectations: 6 and 7 – H1.2.1; H1.2.4

7 – H1.4.3

Common Core State Standards: RH.6-8.2, 4, and 10; WHST.6-8.7, 9, and 10

Key Concepts
event
evidence
history
representation/account

1
A note about the students’ theories of significance and the need for visual tools: In school, students learn that
significance is determined by authorities, such as the textbook or teacher. In their personal lives, students often use
“interest” to determine significance. In many ways, these are the habits of mind that students have developed over the
years. However, we are going to want to develop and use a more sophisticated theory of significance and these
lessons are designed to do so.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070106
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 6

significance

Instructional Resources
Equipment/Manipulative
Chart paper and markers, enough for small groups
Overhead projector or Document Camera/Projector
Student journal or notebook

Student Resource
A student world history textbook such as Spielvogal, Jackson J., World History: Journey Across
Time. Columbus, OH: Glencoe, 2008.

Teacher Resource
Bloom, Amy, Kimberly Hase, and Stacie Woodward. Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 6).
Teacher-made materials. Oakland Schools, 2012.

Teacher Note: The remainder of lessons in this unit will reintroduce students to the issues of
analyzing sources and then introduce them to organizational schemes (tools) that historians use in
their work: significance, social institutions, temporal frames (time) and spatial scales (space).
These are both critical and challenging lessons for students and teachers because all historical
study builds upon these elements. They are the “invisible” tools that historians use to create
historical accounts. All too often teachers and students do not pay attention to such organizational
schemes. We simply assume that since something is in the curriculum or the textbook it is
significant for some reason, and never consider significance at all. Organizational schemes [such
as significance, social institutions, time, and space (also referred to as temporal and spatial
categories, respectively)] of the historical accounts are the foundations of historical inquiry and
form the basis of essential understandings of world history.

Lesson Sequence
1. Begin the lesson by reviewing with students some of the problems with account entitled, “The
First Day of School,” which they read in Lesson 5 and can be found in the Supplemental
Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 6). Ask students, “What are some problems with this account?” List
students’ responses on the board.

2. Divide the class into small groups of four or five students each. Provide each group with chart
paper and markers. Once in their groups, ask students to brainstorm the different ways in
which one could organize the information in the account of “The First Day of School” to help
make more sense to the reader. Allow students several minutes and then discuss their
responses. Probe students thinking by asking, “How might a historian go about selecting and
arranging his/her facts?” Compile students’ responses on the board.

3. Explain to students that historians use a variety of tools to help them frame questions, and
organize, interpret, and process information. Four tools historians use to organize information
include:
 Importance or significance
 Social Institutions
 Temporal Frames (time)
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7th Grade Social Studies SS070106
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 6

 Spatial Scales (space)

Write these four tools on the board for students.

4. Then, have students use their “Reflections on the Past” journal to record what they think each
of these tools mean. Encourage students to think about “The First Day of School” displayed in
Step 1 to help them distinguish each of these categories. After they share their responses with
a partner, discuss each with the class. Guide students to recognize some of the following:
 Importance or Significance – This is difficult to decide and students’ responses will vary
greatly because the identified historical problem or question is broad – the first day of
school. If we narrow the question to schools across the global, what happened in the
U.S. on the first day of school, or Sally’s first day of school, the information that would be
considered significant would be different for each. Discuss with the class the problem
that importance or significance might have: People may differ in what they see as
important or significant depending on the problem or question being addressed and their
own knowledge and point of view.
 Social Institutions – Explain that social institutions are created to meet the needs of
societies in order for them to continue to exist. They revolve around human issues that
all societies must address – the need for food, clothing, shelter, order or safety, how to
educate and raise offspring, etc. Solutions to these problems include the creation of
institutions such as schools, governments, economic systems, communication systems,
etc. Students may not know about this off-hand but if you provide some of these to
them, they should recognize that the “First Day of School” scenario they are addressing
deals with education and the social institution is school.
 Temporal Frame (time) – When did it happen? Is this the first day of school in 2000 or
1900? How do we know?
 Spatial Scale (space) – Where did it happen? Are we looking at the first day of school in
a global sense, as a country, in one community, or an individual’s first day? Space is
about the location under investigation.

Explain to students that they will be learning more about each of these tools in subsequent
lessons. (This step is just an introductory overview so do not spend too much time here. The
remainder of this lesson will address significance.) Explain to the class that they will use all
four tools for selecting and organizing historical facts and sources. In this lesson, we are
going to investigate the ways we might select and organize facts according to importance or
significance.

5. Explain to students that they are first going to investigate the idea of significance or importance
by engaging in a time capsule activity.2 Distribute scrap paper to students and then pose the
following situation to students:

2
Teacher Note: Research suggests that most students think that something is important to study if: (1) an authority
says it is important and has the power to enforce it, and/or (2) it is of interest to the student. This makes the study of
history dependent upon teachers or textbooks saying something is important or appealing to the multiple variations
of students’ interests – both unsettling approaches to teaching history. This time capsule activity will surface “Tools
to Determine Significance” that teachers and students should use all year long. And, the “tools” emerge from
students’ own ideas about what makes something important.

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 6

“Imagine you want to leave some evidence – primary sources – of how we live now for
people to learn about us 1,000 years from now. Imagine we are going to build a time
capsule that will be opened in 1,000 years. What would you include in your time capsule to
let people know about life in Michigan, the United States or the world now?”

Have students work independently to list ten things they would include in the time capsule on
the scrap sheet of paper.

6. Once they have completed their lists, distribute the handout, “Top Ten” located in the
Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 6). Have students reflect on their lists and then place
them on the chart in order of importance with “1” being most important and “10” being the least
important. Once students have generated their lists, have them complete the right hand
column of the chart in which they explain why they think each item is important. Teacher Note:
It is important for students to merely list the items before they decide the importance of each.
That is why this is a separate step in the lesson.

7. Engage students in a whole class discussion by explaining that they will only be able to place
the top three items on their list into the time capsule, and as a class they will only be able to
select a total of 10-15 items. Then, collect students’ handouts and place on the board the items
each student listed as the top three.

8. Next, pare the list down to 10-15 items by having the class vote on what is in and what is out.
The easiest and quickest way to accomplish this is to have students vote on the items by
distributing two or three sticky notes to each student and have them place them next to their top
choices. Teacher Note: Students will enjoy this, and therefore it is a useful activity. However,
it is not what is the important take-away from this lesson. So, move through this with facility
and speed. The next parts are really key.

9. Redistribute students’ handouts and ask them to look at the top three items on their list, and the
bottom three. Ask them to write their reasons why they placed things at the top and bottom on
the back of the handout. That is, what made the top three more important than the bottom
three? Give students time to think and to write, but help cue them to reasons as they work
using the following questions:
 Could it have changed the way people lived?
 Does it impact lots of people?
 Does it impact lots of areas of life?
Encourage students to elevate their thinking as “Theories of Significance or Importance.” It is
key that students recognize that they have their own ideas and theories – rules if you will -- for
determining what makes something important. The goal here is to surface students’ ideas or
rules for determining significance.

10. Place students into small groups of three or four students each and distribute the handout
“What Makes Something Important or Significant” to each group. Have students share their
ideas from Step 9 and come to a group consensus on four theories (rules or ways) for
determining significance.

11. Create a class poster entitled, “Tool for Determining Significance” by having each group
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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 6

present their ideas to the entire class. As each group shares their “theories” record their ideas
on chart paper or an overhead transparency. These will need to be saved so the teacher can
reword them so they may be useful for students to use and apply all year long. Most students
have some version like this:
a. An event that affects many, many people is significant. The more people affected by
an event, the more significant the event becomes.
b. An event that affects many parts of our life is significant. The more parts of life
affected – how we eat, sleep, work, play, organize ourselves etc. – the more
important the event becomes.
c. A dramatic change is significant. The more dramatic the change created by an event,
the more likely the event is important.
Teacher Note: This “tool” or “thinking tool” is meta-cognitive and does not mention a particular
event – e.g. the creation of the I-pad or computer or atomic bomb – but rather focuses on
someone’s theory for saying something is more significant than something else. We want
these general, but still useful and specific rules, to help students evaluate the significance of
the things they will study this year. This “thinking tool” gives students something to think with
that is not tied to authority or personal interest.

Using students’ ideas, construct a list entitled, “Thinking Tool for Determining Significance”,
modifying the language when appropriate.

12. Display the students’ list of ideas that you created from their work. Make sure that the students
recognize where these came from – that is, it was your synthesizing their answers. It is crucial
that the students “own” the tool. Ask students to review the list of ideas and make modifications
or adjustments in the language, maybe adding some examples if necessary. Do not allow
more than five ideas and make sure that these are worded to apply to anything students might
study this year as these will be used over and over again.

13. Have students work individually to construct a bookmark entitled “Thinking Tool for Determining
Significance.” The bookmarks should contain the 4-5 ideas from Step 12 for determining
significance. Generic bookmarks have been included in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1,
Lesson 6) upon which teachers may add their students’ ideas of significance. Students should
hold on to their bookmarks for use throughout the course. The teacher should also make a
class poster entitled “Thinking Tool for Determining Significance” that will hang in the
classroom. Teacher Note: If you have more than one class, you can either compile one list
that satisfies students’ ideas in all classes or denote the class hour on each particular poster.

14. Have students use their “Thinking Tool for Determining Significance” by evaluating a section in
their textbook. To do so, have students read the textbook treatment of some event (e.g.,
Agricultural Revolution, the Egyptian Empire, the rise of Greece, the fall of Rome). It is
important that all students look at the same event. Have students read the section in their
textbook and then reflect on the question: Did the author make a good choice to include the
event? Students should use their “Thinking Tool for Determining Significance” to decide if the
event was important enough to include. Discuss students’ thoughts, probing their use of the
thinking tools. Be sure to have students explain whether the author made a good case for the
event’s inclusion. Why or why not? Teacher Note: An event may rise to the level of
significance according to the thinking tools, but the author may have made a poor case for it in

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 6

the textbook. It may be beneficial to find alternative information about the event to probe
students’ understanding significance.

Assessment
Have students interview an adult in the school or in their family about the five most important
events that occurred during the interviewee’s lifetime. Have students first teach the adult about the
tools for determining significance using their bookmark. Then, the student and adult should use
the tool for determining significance together to compile a list of the five most important events.
Students explain their analysis in writing.

Resource Section

Content Expectations
6 and 7 Explain how historians use a variety of sources to explore the past (e.g.,
H1.2.1: artifacts, primary and secondary sources including narratives, technology, historical
maps, visual/mathematical quantitative data, radiocarbon dating, DNA analysis).

6 and 7- Compare and evaluate competing historical perspectives about the past based
H1.2.4: on proof.

7-H1.4.3: Use historical perspectives to analyze global issues faced by humans long ago and
today.

Common Core State Standards

RH.6-8.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source;
provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or
opinions.

RH.6-8.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including
vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.

RH.6-8.10: By the end of grade 8, read and comprehend history/social studies texts in the
grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently.

WHST.6-8.7: Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated

question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused
questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.

WHST.6-8.9: Draw evidence from informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

WHST.6-8.10: Write routinely over extended time frames (time for reflection and revision) and
shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-
specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070106
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 6

Instructional Resources
Equipment/Manipulative
Chart paper and markers, enough for small groups
Overhead projector or Document Camera/Projector
Student journal or notebook

Student Resource
A student world history textbook such as Spielvogal, Jackson J., World History: Journey Across
Time. Columbus, OH: Glencoe, 2008.

Teacher Resource
Bloom, Amy, Kimberly Hase, and Stacie Woodward. Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 6).
Teacher-made materials. Oakland Schools, 2012.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070106
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 6

Graphic Organizer

Tools Historians Use Organize and Analyze Information

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070106
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 6

Big Idea Card

Big Ideas of the Lesson 6, Unit 1

 Historians investigate the past by (1) framing problems to study, (2) selecting
and analyzing available evidence, (3) organizing their information, and (4)
creating the account.

 Four tools that historians use to organize information include significance,

social institutions, time, and space.

 Ideas about significance can vary among historians.

 We can determine whether an event is significant by constructing and applying

rules or theories about what makes an event important.

 Organizing an account by significance is important for both the historian and

reader.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070106
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 6

Word Cards
26 27
significance time
the quality of being a period in which
worthy of attention events occur in
succession from the
past through the present to the future
Example: Historians argue over the
significance or importance of different Example: Eras and periods are frames of
historical events. time historians use to organize and analyze
the past.
(SS070106)
(SS070106)

28 29
space social institutions

structures created by
where an event happened people to help meet the needs of
societies, such as food, clothing,
Example: The first armed conflict of the shelter and safety, in order for the
American Revolution happened in societies to continue to exist
Massachusetts.
Example: Schools, governments, and
economic systems are all examples of social
(SS070106) institutions.
(SS070106)

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30
turning points

Important historical
events that have long
lasting effects on human life.
Example: The invention of the printing press
was a major turning point because it brought
books into common homes for the first time.

(SS070106)

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070106
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 6

The First Day of School

Sam woke up at 6:30. The cafeteria was serving pizza. The newspaper

headline read, “Heat Wave Expected Through December.” Sally’s mom

made her eggs that morning. Billy was excited to see his friends he

missed all summer. An earthquake in Europe woke people up early.

School was dismissed at 3:15. Mrs. Jones got up earlier than usual

because she wanted to rearrange the desks in her room before her

students came. Ms. Haggerty woke up at 3:30 a.m. to make sure the

busses ran on time for the first day. The bell rang at 7:30 am. The

teachers met in the auditorium before school. The school principal called

his wife when he got to school. The President was preparing for a

welcome back to school speech for school children. A thunderstorm and

mudslide in California made it difficult to get around that day. The Detroit

Tigers had a double header against the Boston Red Sox. The school

started at 9:15. Sally went to art class at 8:30. Mr. Jones welcomed

students to 4th grade with a song.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070106
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 6

Top Ten
.
Rank # Item Explanation of Why It Is Important

10

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 6

What Makes Something Important or Significant?

Directions: With your team, complete the following:

We think something is significant or important if:

________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________

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Bookmarks: Thinking Tool for Determining Significance

Thinking Tool for

 
Thinking Tool for 
Thinking Tool for
Determining Significance Determining Significance Determining Significance

  

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070107
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 7

Lesson 7: Tools to Organize and Analyze the Past – Using Social Institutions

Big Ideas of the Lesson

 Four tools that historians use to organize information include significance, social
institutions, time, and space.
 Long-lasting patterns of meeting these basic social needs result in the creation of social
institutions such as an economy, government, family, education, religion, and language.
 Using social institutions to organize and analyze an account is important for both the
historian and reader.
 Analyzing and describing social institutions enables comparisons among societies.

Lesson Abstract:
In this lesson, students consider the needs of societies and the types of social institutions created
to address those needs. Students begin by considering what would be needed for a society to
survive for three generations. After identifying these societal needs, students connect these needs
to the social institutions that address them and engage in a conversation line to deepen their
understanding of societal needs and social institutions. Students then create a thinking tool for
social institutions in the form of a bookmark and use that tool in exploring social institutions in the
United States and throughout the course. The lesson concludes with students reading about
another society from the past and identifying evidence of the six social institutions learned in the
lesson.

Content Expectations: 6 and 7 – H1.4.1

Common Core State Standards: RH.6-8.1, 4, and 10

Key Concepts
evidence
social institutions

Lesson Sequence
1. Begin the lesson by asking students to remember the ways that historians organize and
analyze events (significance, social institutions, time, and space). Have students turn and talk
with a partner and jot down the four ways discussed in the previous lesson. Have students
check their work by displaying the “Graphic Organizer” for the lesson located in the
Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 7).

2. Explain to students that today we will be investigating “social institutions.” Explain to students
that all human societies address basic needs in order to survive for more than one generation.
Long-lasting patterns of meeting these basic social needs result in the creation of social
institutions such as an economy, government, family, education, religion, and language.
Although societies may vary in how they address these needs, the point is that all societies do
address them.

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3. To better help students understand the idea of needs of societies, have students brainstorm in
their “Perspectives on the Past” journal an answer to the following question: “What would a
group of people need for them to survive as a group for at least 100 years or for at least three
generations?” Be sure to explain to students that a generation is defined as the average it
takes for people to grow up and produce their own offspring. Allow students several minutes to
think and write. Then have students turn and share their initial responses with a partner.
Encourage students to add to their list if desired.

4. Discuss students’ responses to the journal prompt with the entire class. Explain to students
that every society which has survived at least three or more generations has found a way to
meet each of the following needs:
 To make a living; produce, and distribute food and shelter
 Law and order or systems to protect each other
 Learning and transmitting culture
 Shared ideas and beliefs
 Shared system of communication and self-expression
 Ways to care for and raise children
A list of these has been included in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 7) for reference.
Display the list and have students self-check against what they wrote in their journals.

5. Using the “Needs of Societies” list located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 7),
explain to students that for societies to survive, they had to establish certain ways to meet
these needs. Long-lasting patterns of meeting basic social needs are what we call “social
institutions”. There are six social institutions that we will use in the course:
 Economy: the system or way people in a society produce and distribute goods and
services
 Government: the system or way people in a society provide and keep order
 Education: the system or way people in a society share knowledge and learning
 Religion: a shared set of beliefs and practices through which people in a society
understand and relate to their world, including its supernatural aspectsLanguage/Art: the
system or way people in a society create and use a shared system of communication and
self-expression
 Family: the system or way people in a society care for and raise children

6. Have students engage in a conversation line in which they consider whether the needs of
societies on the list are truly “needs.” In a conversation line, students form two lines facing each
other. One side of the line talks for two minutes on the questions to the person standing across
from them. Then, the other side of the line discusses the questions for two minutes. Students
then shuffle down so that they are facing another student and again take turns answering the
questions, two minutes per side. Repeat the process a third time. One side of the line should
be talking while the other side is listening throughout the process. Post the following questions
in the room for students to address as they engage in a conversation line:
 Do you think each of these social institutions address "needs?" Are these necessary
elements in human culture or society? Why or why not?
 How has our society met societal needs? Do we have some variation in these?

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It is recommended that the teacher ask for a student volunteer and then model their
conversation about one of the social institutions to the class. Remember, the teacher talks for
two minutes and then the student volunteer will talk for two minutes.

7. Debrief the conversation line by asking students to share how their thinking of needs of societies
or social institutions was challenged, modified, or extended through the conversation line. What
did they notice about their thinking? About their answers? Students will probably notice that they
became more confident and had more to say each time they “practiced” responding to the
question. Some may have noticed that they weaved in new ideas they heard from classmates
into their subsequent conversations.

8. Have students construct a bookmark entitled “Social Institutions” for use throughout the course.
One option is to have students put this bookmark on the backside of the previous one they made
on significance. The bookmark should contain a list of the six institutions delineated above
(economy, government, religion, education, language, family). The teacher should make a
poster of the six social institutions and label it as “Social Institutions Thinking Tool” and display it
in the room for the course.

9. Have students use their new thinking tool. With a partner, have students list examples for each
of the six social institutions. Students should also identify any societal symbols that are
associated with each. For instance, the American flag might represent government. Allow
students about 5 minutes to work and then discuss students’ responses with the entire class. Be
sure to clarify any questions students have.

10. Have students practice identifying social institutions from a short description of life within a
society (either past or present). For convenience, a reading, “In the Past -- Life among the
Iroquois Nations” has been included in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 7) for use in
this step. Instruct students to read through the passage once. Then, have them read through it a
second time, denoting evidence of the six social institutions. Display the “Reading Key” located
in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 7) to help guide students in the exercise as they
re-read and mark-up the reading. Discuss students’ findings with the whole class.

11. Conclude the lesson by discussing how understanding social institutions and the needs they fulfill
can make it easier to understand the past using the following questions:
 Social institutions are defined as long lasting patterns of meeting basic social needs. What
other social institutions should we consider?
 Why do you think historians use social institutions or organize and analyze societies?
 Why might it be important for the institution to be enduring or lasting more than three
generations? Why do historians distinguish between long-lasting patterns and fleeting
patterns?
 How would you describe the relationship between social institutions and society?
 How can a comparison of social institutions of several societies during the same period of
history help us understand the past? How may geography play a role in this analysis?

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Reference Section

Content Expectations
6 and 7 Describe and use cultural institutions to study an era and a region (political,
H1.4.1: economic, religion/belief, science/technology, written language, education, family).

Common Core State Standards

RH.6-8.1: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources.

RH.6-8.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including
vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.

RH.6-8.10: By the end of grade 8, read and comprehend history/social studies texts in the
grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently.

Instructional Resources
Equipment/Manipulative
Overhead projector or Document Camera/Projector
Student journal or notebook

Teacher Resource
Bloom, Amy, Kimberly Hase, and Stacie Woodward. Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 7).
Teacher made materials. Oakland Schools, 2012.

The Government of the Iroquois Nations. Nihewan Foundation. 2002. 6 August 2012
<http://www.cradleboard.org/curriculum/powwow/lessons/elemsocial/el_gv_ir.html>.

Hall, Loretta. Iroquois Confederacy. 6 August 2012 <http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Ha-

La/Iroquois-Confederacy.html>.

Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Indian Fact Sheet. Native Languages of America Website. 1998-2009.
6 August 2012 <http://www.bigorrin.org/iroquois_kids.htm>.

The Longhouse. 6 August 2012 <http://www.peace4turtleisland.org/pages/longhouse.htm>.

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Graphic Organizer

Tools Historians Use to Organize and Analyze Information

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 7

Big Idea Card

Big Ideas of the Lesson 7, Unit 1

 Four tools that historians use to organize information include significance,

social institutions, time, and space.

 Long-lasting patterns of meeting these basic social needs result in the

creation of social institutions such as an economy, government, family,
education, religion, and language.

 Using social institutions to organize and analyze an account is important for

both the historian and reader.

 Analyzing and describing social institutions enables comparisons among

societies.

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Word Cards
Word Cards from previous lessons needed for this lesson:
• Social institutions -- Word Card #29 from Lesson 6

31 32
society language
the community of people the system or way people
living in a particular country in a society create and
or region and having shared customs, use a shared system of
laws and organizations communication and self-
expression
Example: Language, the legal system, and Example: English and Spanish are the two
shared folklore are a few of the elements that main languages spoken in the United States.
bond American society together.
(SS070107)
(SS070107)

33 34
education government
the system or way people the system or way
in a society share people in a society
knowledge and learning. provide and keep order

Example: In the United States, state Example: The government system of the
governments provide public education from United States is known as a democracy.
kindergarten through high school.
(SS070107) (SS070107)

35 36
religion economy
a shared set of beliefs the system or way
and practices through which people in people in a society
a society understand and relate to produce and
their world, including its supernatural distribute goods and services
aspects
Example: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam Example: The economic system of the
are three of the main religions in the United United States is known as capitalism.
States and world. (SS070107)
(SS070107)

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37
family
the system or way
people in a society
care for and raise children

Example: According to the US Census, the

average family size in the United States is
three people.

(SS070107)

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Needs of Societies

1. To make a living, produce, and distribute food and shelter

2. Law and order or systems to protect each other

3. Learning and transmitting culture

4. Shared ideas and beliefs

5. Shared system of communication and self-expression

6. Ways to care for and raise children

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In the Past -- Life among the Iroquois Nations

Long ago, five Native American tribes -- the Mohawks, the Senecas, the Onondagas, the
Oneidas, and the Cayugas -- were enemies who fought with each other all the time. One day,
two wise men named Deganawidah and Hyantwatha decided the fighting had to stop.
Deganawidah said, “To war against each other is foolish and evil. Hunters are afraid to go into
the forest. Fishermen are afraid to follow the streams. Women are afraid to work in the
fields. Because of war, people are starving and suffering. War must end, and Peace must be
established for all peoples.”

The warriors of the Five Nations listened to Deganawidah. What he said made sense. So, they
threw down their weapons. The Great Peace forged by Deganawidah and Hyantwatha
produced an unwritten but clearly defined framework for the Iroquois Confederacy. Three
principles, each with dual meanings, formed the foundation of the League government. The
Good Word signified righteousness in action as well as in thought and speech; it also required
justice through the balancing of rights and obligations. The principle of Health referred to
maintaining a sound mind in a sound body; it also involved peace among individuals and between
groups. Thirdly, Power meant physical, military, or civil authority; it also denoted spiritual
power. The founders envisioned the resulting peace spreading beyond the original League
members, so that eventually all people would live in cooperation.
Under the structure of the Confederacy, the 50 clan chiefs from all the tribes came
together to address questions of common concern at council meetings. If no consensus could
be achieved, each tribe was free to follow an independent course on that matter.
There were six different languages spoken by the Iroquois nations: Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida,
Onondaga, Cayuga, and Tuscarora. These languages are all related to each other, just as the
European languages Spanish, French, and Italian are all related to each other. Some Iroquois
people could speak more than one of these languages. In particular, important Iroquois men
usually learned Mohawk, because Mohawk was the language they usually used at the council
meetings and at Iroquois religious festivals.
The Iroquois people lived in villages of longhouses, which were large wood-frame buildings
covered with sheets of elm bark. Iroquois longhouses were up to a hundred feet long, and
each one housed an entire clan (as many as 60 people). The Iroquois planted gardens around
their homes. They planted foods like corn, beans, and squash. They also hunted game and
birds, they fished, and they gathered wild plants, berries, seeds, and nuts.

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Traditionally, a man and woman wishing to marry would tell their parents, who would arrange a
joint meeting of relatives to discuss the suitability of the two people for marriage to each
other. If no objections arose during the discussion, a day was chosen for the marriage feast.
On the appointed day the woman's relatives would bring her to the groom's home for the
festivities. Following the meal, elders from the groom's family spoke to the bride about
wifely duties, and elders from the bride's family told the groom about husbandly
responsibilities. Then the two began their new life together.
Children were valued among the Iroquois; because of the matrilineal society, daughters were
somewhat more prized than sons. Until he was able to walk, an Iroquois baby spent his days
secured to a cradleboard, which his mother would hang from a tree branch while she worked
in the fields. Babies were named at birth; when the child reached puberty, an adult name was
given.
Mothers had primary responsibility for raising their children and teaching them good
behavior. In keeping with the easy-going nature of the Iroquois society, children learned
informally from their family and clan elders. Children were not spanked, but they might be
punished by splashing water in their faces. Difficult children might be frightened into better
behavior by a visit from someone wearing the mask of Longnose, the cannibal clown.
From ancient times the Iroquois believed that a powerful spirit called Orenda permeated the
universe. He created everything that is good and useful. The Evil Spirit made things that are
poisonous, but the Great Spirit gained control of the world.

Compiled from:
The Longhouse. 6 August 2012 <http://www.peace4turtleisland.org/pages/longhouse.htm>.
The Government of the Iroquois Nations. Nihewan Foundation. 2002. 6 August. 2012
<http://www.cradleboard.org/curriculum/powwow/lessons/elemsocial/el_gv_ir.html>.
Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Indian Fact Sheet. Native Languages of America Website. 1998-2009. 6 Aug. 2012
<http://www.bigorrin.org/iroquois_kids.htm>.
Hall, Loretta. Iroquois Confederacy. 6 Aug. 2012 <http://www.everyculture.com/multi/Ha-La/Iroquois-
Confederacy.html>.

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Reading Key – Social Institutions

E Economy: the system or way people in a society produce and

distribute goods and services

G Government: the system or way people in a society provide

and keep order

ED Education: the system or way people in a society share

knowledge and learning.

R Religion: a shared set of beliefs and practices through which

people in a society understand and relate to their world,
including its supernatural aspects

LA Language/Art: the system or way people in a society create and

use a shared system of communication and self-expression

F Family: the system or way people in a society care for and

raise children

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Bookmarks: Thinking Tools for Needs of Societies

Thinking

Tools for Needs Thinking

Tools for Needs Thinking

Tools for Needs
of Societies of Societies of Societies

  

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Seventh Grade Social Studies SS070108
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 8

Lesson 8: Tools to Organize and Analyze the Past – Using

Temporal Frames

Big Ideas of the Lesson

 Four tools that historians use to organize information include significance, social
institutions, temporal frames (time), and spatial scales (space).
 Historians use time to organize and analyze the past.
 Historians categorize time into different scales in order to study human activity over large
periods of time.
 Eras and periods are ways of grouping human activities that share particular
characteristics.
 The idea of time is man-made concept. All societies need to account for time in some
way. Different cultures created different calendar systems that suited their needs.
 Using time to organize the past helps to analyze turning points of human history and
how different eras relate to each other.

Lesson Abstract:
This lesson begins with students considering where stories and histories begin, who makes that
decision, and how the starting point affects the story/history. They investigate a variety of calendar
systems used by different societies including Gregorian, Muslim, Jewish, Chinese, and Mayan to
determine how different societies structure time. Students are then introduced to the historical
concept of era as a way that historians structure time. They then consider the idea of “turning
points” as a way to organize the creation of historical accounts and the study of historical events.

Content Expectations: 6 and 7 – H1.1.1; H1.1.2.

Common Core State Standards: RH.6-8.2, 4, and 10; WHST.6-8.4 and 10

Key Concept
temporal frames (time)

Lesson Sequence
1. Begin the lesson by having students consider the following question: “You’ve been asked to
write a history of your family. Where and when would you begin your story? Why at that
particular point/place in time?” Allow students about 2-3 minutes to jot down their thoughts.
Then, discuss students’ responses as a class, comparing starting points that may include their
own birth, the first time their parents met, or even when some more distant ancestor immigrated
to the United States. Record students’ ideas on the board.

2. Next, expand students’ thinking by asking, “If you were to construct an historical account of the
United States, where and when would you begin?” Have students turn and talk with a partner

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about their answers to this question. Then solicit students’ responses and record them on the
board. Students may include Native Americans arriving across the Bering Land Bridge, the first
explorers, Columbus, the American Revolution, the adoption of the Constitution, etc.

3. Have students reflect on their responses in Steps 1 and 2 by asking students how the account
changes based on the starting point they selected. Discuss students’ responses using the
following questions:
 How might the story of America be different if you start before 1492 (when Columbus
discovered America) or after 1500?
 How might different starting points affect what one sees as significant to the story?
 How might someone’s ideas of significance affect their starting point? Why or why not?
 How might the starting point of a story privilege (benefit or advantage) some information
but not other?

4. Remind students that in previous lessons they used significance and social institutions to help
them organize the past. Explain that historians also organize accounts by time. Ask students
what year it is right now. Then ask students, “How do you know?” After eliciting a few
responses, suggest that their answers are not correct by telling them it is actually 1431, or
4707, or even 5770, or maybe 5124. Ask students, “How might all these years be correct?”
Explain that these are the years for 2011 on the Islamic, Chinese, Jewish, and Mayan
calendars, respectively. Be sure to stress to students that the concept of time (calendars,
turning points, eras, etc.) is a man-made invention. In other words, time is not “real”. Discuss
with students what they think this means. Guide them to recognize that many different cultures
at different times in the past and present have defined time differently. Distribute the chart titled
“Calendar Systems” found in Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 8) to students. Through
a teacher-led explanation, use the “Calendar System Teacher Guide” located in the
Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 8) to guide students as they complete the first row of
their charts on the Gregorian calendar.

5. Display the “Timeline Questions” sheet located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson
8) to the class. Have students work with a partner to answer the questions on the sheet. Then
review the questions and answers with the whole class. Be sure to explain to students that this
timeline represents the Gregorian calendar. Point out that the “1” on the timeline refers to the
traditional date that Jesus was born. Explain that BCE means – “before common era” and that
CE means “common era.” Explain to students that this calendar has been adopted
internationally for the sake of consistency. However, BCE and CE have not always been used.
Some of their textbooks might have another notation -- BC and AD. Explain to students that
B.C. refers to “before Christ” and addresses the same time period as BCE “before common
era”. Also explain that A.D. is a notation for “anno domini” meaning “in the year of our Lord.”
Have students hypothesize with a partner why these terms are not used by all countries and
societies, and share their responses with the entire class. Explain that the terms B.C. and A.D.
are based on traditional beliefs about the birth of Jesus and that non-Christian terms have been
adopted. B.C. is now referred to as BCE (Before Common Era) and A.D. is now referred to as
CE (Common Era).

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6. Remind students that not all calendars are the same and that some societies have created
different versions. Explain to students that they are going to participate in a jigsaw activity to
complete the remainder of the “Calendar Systems” chart. Divide students into four separate
groups by having them number off by 4’s. Assign a reading to each group; 1’s: “The Muslim
or Islamic Calendar,” 2’s: “The Hebrew or Jewish Calendar,” 3’s: “The Chinese
Calendar,” and 4’s: “The Mayan Calendar,” all of which are located in the Supplemental
Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 8). Depending on your class size, you may need to divide students
into 8 groups and have two groups read the same article. Students are to become “experts” of
their assigned calendar reading and complete their section of the handout, “Calendar
Systems” that was distributed in Step 4 above. Students should read independently and fill
out their chart as best they can first. Then they should discuss their answers within their
“expert group.”(other students with the same number). Once the expert group has finished,
have students reconfigure into new groups (1-4 together), with each group member
representing a different “expert group”. In other words, each new group should have an expert
from the Muslim, Jewish, Chinese, and Mayan calendars in the group. Have the new groups
share the results of their investigations with their new group members so that all group
members can complete the “Calendar Systems” chart.

7. Engage the class in a discussion of the similarities and differences in the calendar systems
using the following questions:
 What similarities among the calendars did you notice?
 What differences did you notice?
 What was the most significant difference you observed? Why do you think it was the
most significant?
 What problems might historians have in creating accounts of events when there are so
many variations of years?
 How might we solve the problem of so many different calendars?

In discussing students’ responses to the questions, explain that the ease of communication has
led most of the world to use the Gregorian calendar to designate days, months, and years
when dating events and creating accounts. Also be sure to point out that Muslim, Jewish,
Chinese, and Mayan holidays are based on their respective calendars. They seem to “move”
because we place them on a different calendar – the Gregorian calendar.

8. Ask students to think about how they use time to denote a period in their life. Do they use
dates when thinking about the music they listened to in 2009? Do they use dates when they
think about TV shows they used to like when they were little? Why or why not? Give students
a few minutes to think and respond to these questions. Then guide students to think about how
they refer to time frames in the past – in preschool, elementary school, 5th grade, etc. Explain
to students that adults do the same thing – they chunk time together or identify time periods by
significant events. Use the following examples to illustrate this idea for students:
 In middle school….
 In high school….
 In my 20s …..
 When we first got married….
 During the American Revolution….

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 During the Bush presidency.…

 Before my sibling was born....

9. Explain to students that historians do the same thing. Historians not only use days, months,
and years when creating accounts, but also give names to periods of time with a common
theme. Explain to students that this course will use three big chunks of time or periods of time
called “eras”. These eras divide years into segments of time with a common theme. These
“eras” are called Era I: Beginnings to 4000BCE, Era 2: Early Civilizations and Pastoral People
4000BCE-1000BCE, and Era III: Classical Traditions and Empires 1000BCE to 500CE.

10. Divide students into pairs and distribute “Exploring Eras” and “Era Cards” from
Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 8) to the pairs. Have students work with their partner to
organize the events listed on each card into one of the four time periods on “Exploring Eras”
list. To do so, have students cut out the cards and the titles of the eras and categorize them on
their desks. When done, allow time for students to examine the work of two or three other pairs
to check their work. Have students return to their workplace to make any necessary changes.
Answer any questions students may have and then collect the cards and era titles for use in the
next lesson.

11. Display the timeline entitled “Our Place in Time” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit
1, Lesson 8) to the class. Cover the bottom portion of the timeline so that only the blue, red,
and yellow boxes and the black line are showing. This graphic demonstrates the scope of the
time period students will be studying and its relative place in the course of human history. Ask
students where “now” is on the timeline. Be sure to point out where students are today on the
timeline. Spend some time discussing the three distinct sections of the upper timeline. Explain
to students that a significant event occurred or significant changes occurred that caused
historians to see a break in a pattern. Show students the first pink box entitled “About 8,000
BCE – The Agricultural Revolution.” This was a significant change in how many people lived.
People no longer moved about to find food but began to settle in areas and farm – plant and
grow food. This change caused other changes in the way people lived. The agricultural
revolution is considered a turning point because it was an event that caused a significant
change. Ask students why the other pink boxes may be considered turning points. Why are
these events significant? What changes occurred because of them?

12. Explain to students that they will be studying ancient world history during this year. Ask them
where they think that part of history is located. Point out timeline is divided into three eras:
 Era I: The Beginnings of Human Society
 Era 2: Early Civilizations and Pastoral Peoples
 Era 3: Classical Civilizations, World Religions, and Major Empires.
Display the timeline in the class as a thinking tool for use in the course. Have students write
reflectively in their “Perspectives on the Past” in response to the following question: How do
people use time to help organize and analyze information about events to create accounts?

13. Conclude the lesson by discussing the following questions with students:
Why is it important when studying the past to understand the different ways societies define
time? Why is it important when studying the past to understand how historians define time?

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Students’ answers should reflect the idea that time is a man-made concept. Therefore, to
understand the past and create accurate accounts of the past, it is essential to understand how
a society measure time. Furthermore, students should be able to explain that historians create
constructs of time (eras, turning points) to organize their investigations of the past.

Assessment
Step 5 and 10 may serve as an informal assessment of student learning. Students’ written
reflection in Step 12 may also serve as an assessment.

Resource Section

Content Expectations
6 and 7 Explain why and how historians use eras and periods as constructs to
H1.1.1: organize and explain human activities over time.

6 and 7 Compare and contrast several different calendar systems used in the past and
H1.1.2: present and their cultural significance (e.g., Olmec and Mayan calendar systems,
Aztec Calendar Stone, Sun Dial, Gregorian calendar – B.C. /A.D.; contemporary
secular – B.C.E. /C.E.; Chinese, Hebrew, and Islamic/Hijri calendars).

Common Core State Standards

RH.6-8.2: Determine the main ideas or information of a primary or a secondary source;
provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or
opinions.

RH.6-8.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including
vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.

RH.6-8.10: By the end of grade 8, read and comprehend history/social studies texts in the
grades 6-8 text complexity band independently and proficiently.

WHST.6-8.4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and
style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

WHST.6-8.10: Write routinely over extended time frames (time for reflection and revision) and
shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-
specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Instructional Resources
Equipment/Manipulative
Overhead projector or Document Camera/Projector
Student journal or notebook

Student Resource

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Seventh Grade Social Studies SS070108
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 8

Islamic Calendar. Social Studies for Kids. 6 August 2012

<http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/religions/islamiccalendar.htm>.

The Jewish Calendar. Social Studies for Kids. 8 August 2012

<http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/religions/jewishcalendar.htm>.

Meyer, Peter. The Structure of the Chinese Calendar. 8 August 2012

<http://www.hermetic.ch/cal_stud/chinese_cal.htm>.

Teacher Resource
Bloom, Amy, Kimberly Hase, and Stacie Woodward. Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 8).
Teacher-made material. Oakland Schools, 2012.

Christian, David. This Fleeting World: An Overview of Human History. Berkshire Publishing
Group, 2005.

Holford-Strevens, Leofranc. The History of Time: A very Short Introduction. Oxford University
Press, 2005.

Richards, E.G. Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History. Oxford University Press, 1998.

World History for Us All. San Diego State University. 8 August 2012
<http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/dev/default.htm>.

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Seventh Grade Social Studies SS070108
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 8

Graphic Organizer

Tools Historians Use to Organize and Analyze Information

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August 8, 2012
Seventh Grade Social Studies SS070108
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 8

Big Ideas Card

Big Ideas of Lesson 8, Unit 1

 Four tools that historians use to organize information include significance,

social institutions, time, and space.

 Historians use time to organize the past.

 Historians categorize time into different scales in order to study human

activity over large periods of time.

 The idea of time is man-made concept. Eras and periods are ways of
grouping human activities that share particular characteristics.

 All societies need to account for time in some way. Different cultures created
different calendar systems that suited their needs.

 Using time to organize the past helps to analyze turning points of human
history and how different eras relate to each other.

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Seventh Grade Social Studies SS070108
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 8

Word Cards

Word Cards from previous lessons needed for this lesson:

 Time -- Word Card #27 from Lesson 6
 Turning points -- Word Card #30 from Lesson 6

38 39
era age

an expanse of time
characterized by an individual, human an expanse of time
activity, or culture; synonym of “age” characterized by an individual, human
activity, or culture; synonym of “era”
Example: In our era, people have more
access to information than ever before. Example: The Paleolithic Age was a time
when humans first started using stone tools.
(SS070108)
(SS070108)

40 41
calendar solar calendar

A system of organizing and

dividing time, often based on the A calendar system
orbit of the moon around the earth or based on the earth’s
the earth around the sun. rotation around the sun.

Example: In the old Roman calendar, the Example: The Egyptian year had 365 days
year began in March. and was based on a solar calendar.
(SS070108)
(SS070108)

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42 43
lunar calendar B.C./B.C.E.

a calendar system The abbreviation

based on the moon’s for the period of
rotation around the time before Christ
earth was born, now
referred to as “before common era.”
Example: The most widely used lunar Example: Evidence suggests that the first
calendar is the Islamic calendar. humans were in Australia in 40,000
B.C./B.C.E.
(SS070108)

(SS070108)

44
A.D./C.E.

The abbreviation for

the Latin phrase
anno domini (meaning in the year of
Christ) for the period of time after Christ
was born, now referred to as “common
era.”

Example: The Christian Era begins with year

1 A.D. not year 0 A.D.

(SS070108)

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Calendar Systems

Calendar Origin Story Current Lunar or How many Is it used Other

System Year Solar days/months today?
per year

Gregorian

Muslim

Hebrew

Chinese

Mayan

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Calendar Systems Teacher Guide

Calendar Origin Story Current Lunar or How many Is it used Other

System Year Solar days/months today?
per year
Gregorian  Created by Pope 2011  Solar  365 days per year  Adopted Uses BC to
denote years
Gregory in the (based on  Leap year has 366 globally
1500s, the Earth before the birth
days
of Jesus, and
 based on Roman revolving
 12 months per year
around the AD to denote
Calendar, (vary in length)
sun and a years after. For
 begins with birth of example, today
day as a
Jesus is 2011 AD.
rotation of
the earth)
Muslim  Begins with AH1432  Lunar  354 days per year  Used in some Uses AH to
distinguish it’s
Mohammed’s  12 months Muslim
flight from Medina countries as years from
to Mecca in 622 official Gregorian years
AD on Gregorian calendar
Cal.  Used for
 Created by a religious
follower of purposes,
Mohammed in although
638AD on Gregorian is
Gregorian Cal. followed as
well
Hebrew  Created by added 5772  Lunar  354 days per year  Used for
up all of the years  12 or 13 months religious
lived by the people (similar to a leap purposes
listed in the Torah year)
 19 year cycles
Chinese  Created in 500BC Metal  Solar  12 or 13 months in  Used Each year in a
Rabbit in 60 year cycle
in China  Lunar a lunar year throughout
79th cycle has both an
 24 solar terms Asia to plan
traditional element name
(months in a solar
holidays (ex, wood) and
year)
an animal name
 Goes through 60 (ex, fox)
year cycles
Mayan  Earliest record is 5124  Solar  260 day cycle with  Used by some Used calendar
from 500BC on  lunar 13 and 20 day cycle inhabitants of and astronomy
to plan
Gregorian  360 day cycle with Central
Calendar America important events
18 months of 20
days

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Timeline Questions

1. What does the “1 CE” represent on the calendar?

2. Where are we today on this timeline?
3. Which happened first, an event in 1500 BCE or an event in 1500
CE?
4. Which happened first, an event in 1000 CE or an event in 500 CE?
5. Which happened first, an event in 1500 BCE or 2000 BCE?
6. If an event happened 2000 years ago, where would you place it on
the timeline?
7. If an event happened 3000 years ago, where would you place it on
the timeline?

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The Muslim or Islamic Calendar

The Islamic calendar has 12 months but, unlike the Gregorian calendar, has only 354 days. This is
because the Islamic calendar (or Hijri Calendar) follows the movements of earth's moon.
Like much of Islam, the calendar is based on the Quran and on personal reflections on the
relationship between Muslims and Allah. Each month of the Islamic calendar officially begins when
the lunar crescent is first seen after a new moon. This is not always an exact time, especially if the
skies are cloudy or overcast. In a sense, the start of each month can be different for everyone.
Many people, however, prefer to rely on an official announcement by Muslim authorities as to
when each month begins.

The importance of the lunar crescent is also partly the explanation for why many countries with
predominantly Muslim populations have a crescent shape on their flags.
The calendar is properly called the Hijri calendar because it began with the Hijra, or hegira,
Muhammad's flight from Medina to Mecca, which took place in 622 on the Gregorian calendar. The
hegira took place, on July 16 of the Gregorian calendar.
The Gregorian (western/Christian) calendar measures time beginning with the year 1 A.D. On the
Christian calendar, A.D. stands for Anno Domini, which means "In the year of our Lord." The Hijri
Calendar has years marked by A.H., which stands for Anno Hegirae, "In the Year of the Hijra." The
hegira took place in A.H. 1.
So, the year 2011 on the Christian calendar is A.H. 1432 on the Hijri calendar. Remember that the
Hijri calendar is consistently 11 days shorter than the Christian calendar.
The Hijri calendar is the official calendar in many predominantly Muslim countries, most notably
Saudi Arabia. In other countries, Muslims refer to the Gregorian (western/Christian) calendar for
most dates and consult the Hirji calendar only for religious purposes.
The Hijri calendar was introduced by Umar ibn Al-Khattab, a follower of Muhammad, in 638
according to the Gregorian calendar.

Source: Islamic Calendar. Social Studies for Kids. 8 August 2012

<http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/religions/islamiccalendar.htm>.

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The Hebrew or Jewish Calendar

The Jewish calendar is very different from the Gregorian calendar. The Jewish calendar is based
on the movements of Earth's Moon. It also has many more years in it than the Gregorian calendar.
Because the Jewish calendar is based on lunar movements, it has fewer than 365 days in it. In
fact, the Jewish calendar is 11 days shorter than the Gregorian (western) calendar every single
year. This explains why the major holidays like Rosh Hashanah and Purim are not on the same
day every "year." It depends on which calendar you're looking at. In most western countries, the
Gregorian calendar is used, so because the dates don't match up, Jewish holidays seem to move
around. (The same thing can be said of Easter, a Christian holiday that is based on lunar
movements and is in either March or April every year.)
Confusion reigned in ancient times as the Israelites struggled to come to terms with their lunar
calendar. Eventually, they decided to go to 19-year cycles, adding a month every 3rd, 6th, 8th,
11th, 14th, 17th and 19th years of the cycle. It is also the way in which the number of days in each
month was stabilized. Now, each month has either 29 or 30 days in it.
Jews also do not use Christian terms when referring to the Gregorian calendar. The Gregorian, or
Christian, calendar has B.C. or A.D. after a year in some cases. Since the Gregorian calendar is
centered on the birth of Jesus, Christianity's central figure, B.C. means "Before Christ" and A.D.
means Anno Domini, which is Latin for "In the year of our Lord." Jewish people, on the other hand,
use the terms B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era).
The Jewish calendar has many more years in it than the Gregorian calendar does. For instance,
the year 2011 on the Gregorian calendar is 5771 or 5772 on the Jewish calendar, depending on
the time of year for both. The larger number was determined when scholars added up the years
lived by all of the people mentioned in the Torah. Setting aside the obviously longer-than-written-
about "seven days" that it took Yahweh to create the world in Jewish tradition, the world was
created in 3761 B.C.E. on the Gregorian Calendar. The Hebrew Calendar today is used primarily
for religious purposes.

Adapted from: The Jewish Calendar. Social Studies for Kids. 8 August 2012
<http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/religions/jewishcalendar.htm>.

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The Chinese Calendar

This calendar is not exclusive to China, but followed by many other Asian cultures. It is often
referred to as the Chinese calendar because it was first perfected by the Chinese around 500
BCE. In most of East Asia today, the Gregorian calendar is used for day-to-day activities, but the
Chinese calendar is still used for marking traditional East Asian holidays such as the Chinese New
Year.
The Chinese calendar is actually one “lunisolar” calendar. The months are lunar months, but
since 12 lunar months are shorter than a solar year. As a result, an extra month must be added
periodically. This extra month is called an “intercalary” month. When to insert an intercalary month
is decided according to the solar terms.
A lunar month always begins on the day of a dark moon. The beginning of the Chinese calendar
(Chinese New Year) always begins sometime between January 20th and February 20th on the
Gregorian calendar.
The Chinese calendar uses cycles of sixty years. A year within a cycle is designated by a
combination of one of five element names (e.g., "Water") and 12 animal names (e.g. "Rabbit"). A
Chinese year is called by an element name, an animal name and a cycle number, e.g., the Water-
Dragon year in the 21st cycle.
If the year ends in 0 or 1 it is Metal.
If the year ends in 2 or 3 it is Water.
If the year ends in 4 or 5 it is Wood.
If the year ends in 6 or 7 it is Fire.
If the year ends in 8 or 9 it is Earth.
The 12 animals are as follows:
Pig Rat Ox Tiger Rabbit Dragon Snake Horse Sheep Monkey Rooster Dog
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

Historians disagree on when the Chinese calendar started. The first year in the first cycle
was either 2697 BC or 2637 BC on the Gregorian calendar, making 2011 either in the 78th or 79th
cycle.
Traditionally associated with the Gregorian Calendar is a cycle of 7 days called "the week". There
is no such cycle in the Chinese Calendar; instead there are cycles of 60 days, 60 months, and 60
years.

Adapted from: Meyer, Peter. The Structure of the Chinese Calendar. 8 August 2012
<http://www.hermetic.ch/cal_stud/chinese_cal.htm>.

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The Mayan Calendar

The Maya recorded their history and their calendar in many documents made of the
flattened inner bark of a fig tree, whitened with chalk. The Spanish invaders believed the
calendars to be instruments of the devil and burnt great quantities of them. Only four Mayan books
survive in the libraries of Europe. Our knowledge of Mayan writing in general and their calendar in
particular, is based on these surviving documents, from a large number of inscriptions remaining in
the ruins of their cities, and from a partial record of their writing made by a Spanish priest in 1664.
The earliest record of a calendar survives from about 500 BC. This calendar uses a 260
day-cycle which was commonly used by several societies—Zapotec, Olmec, Toltec, Aztec, Mayan,
and more—and is still in use among present-day inhabitants of the region.
Days could be lucky or unlucky, or have other qualities; Mayans used the calendar partly to
anticipate important days to wage wars and other activities. The calendar was also used to record
on stone pillars, or stelae, important events in the lives of their kings. The Maya had knowledge of
the behavior of the sun, moon, Venus and Jupiter. The behavior of the planets was important and
used to determine the date of important events.
The Maya had two different cycles to measure time. The first was the 260 day cycle in
which days were numbered 1 – 13 and 1 – 20 (called vientiena). This meant that any day had two
numbers. The Maya also measured a longer solar year of 360 days. This year was divided in 18
months of 20 days each.
When the Maya had to locate a date in a much longer time span they used another system
called the ‘long count,’ which was essentially a total of days since the start of an era, called the
great cycle. Most scholars now agree that the current great cycle started on Wednesday, 8
September 3114 BC on the Gregorian Calendar.

Adapted from Richards, E.G. Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History. Oxford University Press, 1998.

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ERA I: BEGINNINGS TO 4,000 BCE

ERAII: EARLY CIVILIZATIONS AND PASTORAL PEOPLES, 4000BCE TO 1000BCE

ERA III: CLASSICAL TRADITIONS AND EMPIRES, 1000BCE TO 500 CE

LATER ERAS:

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Language Used for Communication Roman Empire

Perhaps 52,000 years ago Starting around 2,200 years ago

(About 50,000 BCE) (Around 264 – 241 BCE)

Development of agriculture Long distance trade

(The Silk Road)
Southwest Asia
About 2,200 years ago
About 11,000 years ago (About 200 BCE)
(About 9,000 BCE)

Large cities and societies appear Printing with movable ceramic type

Southwest Asia Eastern Asia

About 6,000 years ago About 1,000 years ago

(About 4,000 BCE)

Civilizations: The Crusades

Mesoamerica (Olmec)
Europe & Southwest Asia
About 3,500 years ago
(About 1500 BCE – 400 BCE) About 900-700 years ago
(About 1100 CE – 1300 CE)

World War II First use of petroleum for fuel

Afroeurasia & Oceania North America

Starting about 75 years ago About 150 years ago

(1937-1946 CE) (1859 CE)

First nuclear power station World population tops 6 billion

North America About 12 years ago

(2000 CE)
About 63 years ago
(1951 CE)

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August 8, 2012
7th Grade Social Studies SS070109
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 9

Lesson 9: Tools to Organize and Analyze the Past – Using Spatial

Scales

Big Ideas of the Lesson

 Four tools that historians use to organize information include significance, social
institutions, temporal frames (time), and spatial scales (space).
 Historians and geographers use different spatial scales or “containers” to organize their
investigations of human activities.
 Different sizes of spatial scales or “containers” allow us to compare events and analyze
how they connect to each other and to the environment.
 People give names to geographic features, such as rivers, mountains, and land masses
(e.g. continents, countries). It is important not to confuse the names given to label
geographic features with the geographic feature itself.
 Studying ancient history using modern maps and names is often an inaccurate way of
looking into the past.

Lesson Abstract:
This lesson is intended to challenge students’ prior knowledge of traditional geographic ideas and
help identify some of the problems modern labels pose for people who study the past. The lesson
introduces students to the idea that geographers frame and reframe the earth and the topographical
features on the earth. Students review big geographic categories such as continents, hemispheres,
and other “invented” categories like “Afroeurasia.” Students explore three distinct spatial
categories: regional, interregional, and global and define each. They identify and describe the
challenges of using modern maps to examine and understand the past. After comparing maps
representing different spatial scales, students investigate historical problems using different spatial
scales.

Key Concepts
geographic features
spatial scales

Content Expectations: 6 and 7 – H1.4.2; G1.2.2; G.1.2.6; G1.3.3; G2.2.3;

7 – G1.1.1; G2.1.2; G4.1.1

Common Core State Standards: RH.6-8. 1, 4, and 7; WHST.6-8.10

Lesson Sequence
1. Begin the lesson by asking students to think about the following problems:
 What challenges do historians face in using maps created in the present time to study the
past?
 What challenges do historians face in using old maps to study the past?

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Do not have students answer the questions yet, but tell them they will be investigating these
questions in this lesson.

2. Distribute the handout “The Earth’s Geography,” found in Supplemental Materials (Unit 1,
Lesson 9) to students. Have students answer the questions in writing. When students are
finished, display the handout and review their answers with the whole class. Be sure students
recognize that the idea of a “continent” is a man-made construct.

3. Display the question “Is Europe a continent?” to the class. After allowing students to discuss
this for a few moments, provide the following definition of continent (from the Oxford English
Dictionary) for students to consider: A continuous mass or extent of land. Continue discussing
the idea of continent with students using the following questions:
 Does Europe fit this definition?
 Given that Europe is only continuous if Asia is included, why is Europe commonly called
a continent?
 Why aren’t North and South America one continent?
Explain to students that this may have something to do with who writes history. Remind
students who is between the earth and its representation – a cartographer with all of her
knowledge, experiences, points of view, etc. Discuss the factors that contribute to modern world
maps (political, historical, and cultural). Teacher Note: For additional information, please see
the background reading entitled, “The Architecture of Continents: The Development of the
Continental Scheme” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 9) from Martin W.
Lewis and Karen E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography.(c) 1998 by
the Regents of the University of California. Published by the University of California Press.

4. Next, use an overhead projector to display the map “Topography of the Earth” found in
Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 9). Explain to students that this map shows the
topography of the Earth. In this topography, the elevations of different physical features are
highlighted in different colors. The darkest blue represents the lowest points. The orange and
red represent the highest points. Explain to students that in the past, sea levels were much
lower than today. The features in light blue were actually once above sea level. The light blue
areas are also known as continental shelves.

5. Still displaying the overhead of the map, “Topography of the Earth”, draw a line around the
map areas, making all the light blue areas part of the existing continents. Discuss the new map
using the following questions:
 According to this way of looking at the world, how many continents are there?
 How might people have moved from Asia to the Americas?
 Where else on the map does ice provide a connection to other land masses?
 Could the Mediterranean Sea be considered a lake from this view? Why or why not?
 Think about modern political maps you have seen. How does this new map compare with
those maps?
 What reasons might historians have for thinking about the Earth in this way?

6. Display the handout “Big Geographic Containers” found in Supplemental Materials (Unit 1,
Lesson 9). Focusing on the map of Afroeurasia, ask students to dissect this word and identify
familiar word roots (Africa, Euro, and Asia). This is a term that historians and geographers use

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to study large scale human activities that span the three continents: Africa, Europe and Asia.
Ask students what human activities could take place in such a large area (migration, trade,
foraging) and list their response on the board or overhead. Be sure to remind students what we
mean by a region – a region is an area that is held together by common characteristics. A
region can be big (a continent) or smaller (the Great Lakes region); or even smaller
(metropolitan Detroit). The region is defined by the common characteristic(s) used to hold an
area together.1 Explain to students that historians studying issues such as migration, trade,
and foraging might use a regional map such as the one entitled Afroeurasia. Ask students why
this map would be preferable one of just Africa? After eliciting their responses, guide students
to see how the larger geographic container allows them to see movement in and out of a place
and the location to where those people, things, and ideas are moving to and from. Have
students turn and talk about what types of things they could explore using a big geographic
container of “The Americas” rather than just the United States. Elicit students’ responses and
again, guide them to the idea that geographic containers historians and geographers use can
limit or expands their view of history or of the world.

7. Next, assign students to small groups of three and distribute the handout “Map Scales” found
in Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 9) to each student. Have each group discuss and
answer the questions on the handout. When students have completed the activity, review the
responses in a whole class discussion. Be sure to highlight the points provided on the “Map
Scales Teacher Reference Sheet” included in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 9).

8. Next, display the document “Analyzing Historical Maps” located in the Supplemental
Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 9) to the class. The maps show the trade routes in Afroeurasia in the
1300-1400s and the route of the Black Death (Bubonic Plague). Allow time for students to
investigate the maps and answer the questions that follow in a turn and talk with a partner.
Then have the students form groups of four by combining pairs to share and check their
answers. Discuss any questions students may have. Debrief the activity by having students
share their responses. A “Teacher Reference Sheet for the Analyzing Historical Maps” has
been included in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 9) for reference. Be sure to
address the following in the discussion:
 Using large regions like Afroeurasia can benefit our understanding of history.
 Large spatial and temporal scales are often used together.
 Historians look at maps of large geographic regions like Afroeurasia in order identify
patterns in human activity over large periods of time over great expanses of land.
 Understanding how humans populated the Earth during the foraging era requires to us
uses broader classifications to study human activity on a global scale.

9. Conclude the lesson by having students complete an exit slip in which they answer the
following questions proposed at the beginning of the lesson:
 What challenges do historians face in using maps created in the present time to study
the past?
 What challenges do historians face in using old maps to study the past?

1
Teacher Note: Students that have been taught with the MC3 curriculum experienced the idea of regions in
elementary school. Students learned that their classroom has regions (play area), their community has regions
(business region, residential region), that there are many different ways to divide Michigan into regions; and that
Michigan is part of many U.S. regions (Great Lakes, Midwest, etc.).

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Assessment
The activity in Step 8 and the exit slip in Step 9 may serve as assessments of student
understanding. Additionally, students can evaluate the use of regions like Afroeurasia: What are
the benefits? What are the limitations?

Resource Section

Content Expectations
6 and 7 Describe and use themes of history to study patterns of change and continuity.
H1.4.2:

6 and 7 Explain why maps of the same place may vary as a result of the cultural or
G.1.2.2: historical background of the cartographer.

6 and 7 Apply the skills of geographic inquiry (asking geographic questions, acquiring
G.1.2.6: geographic information, organizing geographic information, analyzing geographic
information, and answering geographic questions) to analyze a problem or issue of
importance to a region of the Eastern Hemisphere.

6 and 7 Explain the different ways in which places are connected and how those
G.1.3.3: connections demonstrate interdependence and accessibility.

6 and 7 Analyze how culture and experience influence people’s perception of places
G2.2.3: and regions (examples omitted).2

7 – G1.1.1: Explain and use a variety of maps, globes, and web based geography technology to
study the world, including global, interregional, regional, and local scales.

7 – G2.1.2: Use information from GIS, remote sensing and the World Wide Web to compare and
contrast the surface features and vegetation of the continents of the Eastern
Hemisphere.

7 – G.4.1.1: Identify and explain examples of cultural diffusion within the Eastern Hemisphere
(e.g., the spread of sports, music, architecture, television, Internet, Bantu languages
in Africa, Islam in Western Europe).

Common Core State Standards

RH.6-8.1: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary
sources.

2Although this expectation contains examples “(e.g., that beaches are places where tourists travel, cities have historic
buildings, northern places are cold, equatorial places are very warm)”, these examples miss the mark of the
expectation. First and most importantly, the expectation is about point of view and these examples do not convey that
meaning. Secondly, the listed examples are statements of facts or generalizations (that can be verified) and do not
necessarily implicate a person’s point of view. Culture and experience have nothing to do with the fact that “equatorial
places are very warm.”

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 9

RH.6-8.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including
vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.

RH.6-8.7: Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos, or maps)
with other information in print and digital texts.

WHST.6-8.10: Write routinely over extended time frames (time for reflection and revision) and
shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-
specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Instructional Resources
Equipment/Manipulative
Overhead projector/Document camera and projector

Teacher Resource
AP World Review Project. West Hills HS and Hercules HS. 16 August 2011
<https://sites.google.com/a/wolfpackweb.net/ap-review-09/topics/a6>.

Bloom, Amy, Kimberly Hase, and Stacie Woodward. Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 9).
Teacher-made materials. Oakland Schools, 2012.

Christian, David. This Fleeting World: An Overview of Human History. Berkshire Publishing
Group, 2005.

Christian, David. Maps of Time. 6 August 2012

<http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520244764>.

Getting Started. History, Geography, and Time. World History for Us All. San Diego State
University. 6 August 2012 <http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/getting_started.php>.

Introduction to Big Geography. Landscape Unit .02. History, Geography, and Time. World History
for Us All. 6 August 2012
<http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/units/getstart/02_landscape.pdf>.

Lewis, Martin and Karen E. Wigen. The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997. Chapter 1.
<http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/l/lewis-myth.html?_r=1>.

Route of the Plague. 6 August 2012

<http://images.classwell.com/mcd_xhtml_ebooks/2005_world_history/images/mcd_awh200
5_0618376798_p400_f1.gif>.

World History for Us All. San Diego State University. 6 August 2012
<http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/dev/default.htm>.

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Graphic Organizer

Tools Historians Use to Organize and Analyze Information

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Big Idea Card

Big Ideas of Lesson 9, Unit 1

 Four ways that historians use to organize information include significance,

social institutions, time, and space.

 Historians and geographers use different spatial scales or “containers” to

organize their investigations of human activities.

 Different sizes of spatial scales or “containers” allow us to compare events

and analyze how they connect to each other and to the environment.

 People give names to geographic features, such as rivers, mountains, and

land masses (e.g. continents, countries). It is important not to confuse the
names given to label geographic features with the geographic feature itself.

 Studying ancient history using modern maps and names are often inaccurate
ways of looking into the past.

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Word Cards

45 46
continent Afroeurasia

an expanse or mass a large

of continuous land geographical
region spanning
Africa, Europe, and Asia
Example: Sometime Europe and Asia are Example: Humans migrated across
referred to as a single continent called Afroeurasia to the Americas about 15,000
Eurasia. years ago

(SS070109)
(SS070109)

47 48
Americas Oceania

a large geographical a geographic region

region consisting of in the basin of the
North and South Pacific Ocean
America containing 25,000
islands including New Guinea and
Australia
Example: Humans living in the Americas
interacted quite commonly before the arrival of Example: Humans settled islands in Oceania
European explorers. as early as 1600 BC/BCE.
(SS070109) (SS070109)

49 50
Eurasia topography

the land mass a way of showing

of both Europe contrasting
and Asia features on a map

Example: The Ural mountains separate Example: Topographical maps of the Earth
Europe and Asia, but many scholars see commonly show various elevations.
Eurasia as a single continent.
(SS070109) (SS070109)

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The Earth’s Geography

1. Label the continents as shown.

2. Based on the map, how do you think people decided what a “continent was? How did they
decide the boundaries of the continents?

3. Which continent has the longest land border?

4. Which continent has the shortest land border?

5. What divides Africa and Asia?

6. What divides Australia from Asia?

7. Why do you think geographers are willing to unite Asia and Europe as a single continent
called Eurasia?

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Teacher Background
The Architecture of Continents
The Development of the Continental Scheme

In contemporary usage, continents are understood to be large, continuous, discrete masses of land, ideally
separated by expanses of water. Although of ancient origin, this convention is both historically unstable and
surprisingly unexamined; the required size and the requisite degree of physical separation have never been
defined. As we shall see, the sevenfold continental system of American elementary school geography did
not emerge in final form until the middle decades of the present century.

CLASSICAL PRECEDENTS

According to Arnold Toynbee, the original continental distinction was devised by ancient Greek mariners,
who gave the names Europe and Asia to the lands on either side of the complex interior waterway running
from the Aegean Sea through the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, the Bosporus, the Black Sea, and the
Kerch Strait before reaching the Sea of Azov. This water passage became the core of a continental system
when the earliest Greek philosophers, the Ionians of Miletus, designated it as the boundary between the two
great landmasses of their world. Somewhat later, Libya (or Africa) was added to form a three-continent
scheme. Not surprisingly, the Aegean Sea lay at the heart of the Greek conception of the globe; Asia
essentially denoted those lands to its east, Europe those lands to its west and north, and Libya those lands
to the south.

A seeming anomaly of this scheme was the intermediate position of the Greeks themselves, whose
civilization spanned both the western and the eastern shores of the Aegean. Toynbee argued that the
inhabitants of central Greece used the Asia-Europe boundary to disparage their Ionian kin, whose
succumbing to "Asian" (Persian) dominion contrasted flatteringly with their own "European" freedom. Yet not
all Greek thinkers identified themselves as Europeans. Some evidently employed the term Europe as a
synonym for the northern (non-Greek) realm of Thracia. In another formulation, Europe was held to include
the mainland of Greece, but not the islands or the Peloponnesus. Still others--notably Aristotle--excluded
the Hellenic "race" from the continental schema altogether, arguing that the Greek character, like the Greek
lands themselves, occupied a "middle position" between that of Europe and Asia. In any case, these
disputes were somewhat technical, since the Greeks tended to view continents as physical entities, with
minimal cultural or political content. When they did make generalizations about the inhabitants of different
continents, they usually limited their discussion to the contrast between Asians and Europeans; Libya was
evidently considered too small and arid to merit more than passing consideration.

Twofold or threefold, the continental system of the Greeks clearly had some utility for those whose
geographical horizons did not extend much beyond the Aegean, eastern Mediterranean, and Black Seas.
But its arbitrary nature was fully apparent by the fifth century B.C.E. Herodotus, in particular, consistently
questioned the conventional three-part system, even while employing it. Criticizing the overly theoretical
orientation of Greek geographers, who attempted to apprehend the world through elegant geometrical
models, he argued instead for an "empirical cartography founded on exploration and travel." One
problematic feature of the geography that Herodotus criticized was its division of Asia and Africa along the
Nile, a boundary that sundered the obvious unity of Egypt. After all, as he noted, Asia and Africa were
actually contiguous, both with each other and with Europe: "Another thing that puzzles me is why three
distinct women's names should have been given to what is really a single landmass; and why, too, the Nile
and the Phasis--or, according to some, the Maeotic Tanais and the Cimmerian Strait--should have been
fixed upon for the boundaries. Nor have I been able to learn who it was that first marked the boundaries, or
where they got their names from."

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Similar comments, suggesting a continued awareness that these were constructed categories, echoed
throughout the classical period. Strabo, writing in the first century B.C.E., noted that there was "much
argument respecting the continents," with some writers viewing them as islands, others as mere peninsulas.
Furthermore, he argued, "in giving names to the three continents, the Greeks did not take into consideration
the whole habitable earth, but merely their own country, and the land exactly opposite...."

Under the Romans, the continental scheme continued to be employed in scholarly discourse, and the labels
Europe and Asia were sometimes used in an informal sense to designate western and eastern portions of
the empire. In regard to military matters, the term europeenses was deployed rather more precisely for the
western zone. Asia was also used in a more locally specific sense to refer to a political subdivision of the
Roman Empire in western Anatolia.

MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE CONSTRUCTIONS

For almost two millennia after Herodotus, the threefold division of the earth continued to guide the European
scholarly imagination. The continental scheme was reinforced in late antiquity when early Christian writers
mapped onto it the story of Noah's successors. According to St. Jerome (who died circa A.D. 420),
translator of the Vulgate Bible, "Noah gave each of his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, one of the
three parts of the world for their inheritance, and these were Asia, Africa, and Europe, respectively." This
new theological conception had the merit of explaining the larger size of the Asian landmass by reference to
Shem's primogeniture. It also infused the Greeks' tripartite division of the world with religious significance.
This sacralized continental model would persist with little alteration until the early modern period.

Medieval Europe thus inherited the geographical ideas of the classical world, but in a calcified and
increasingly mythologized form. Whereas the best Greek geographers had recognized the conventional
nature of the continents--and insisted that the Red Sea made a more appropriate boundary between Asia
and Africa than the Nile River--such niceties were often lost on their counterparts in late antiquity and the
early Middle Ages. Martianus Capella, whose compilation of knowledge became a standard medieval text,
took it as gospel that the world was divided into Europe, Asia, and Africa, with the Nile separating the latter
two landmasses. Other influential encyclopedists of the period, including Orosius and Isidore of Seville, held
similar views.

During the Carolingian period, by contrast, the inherited framework of Greek geography began to recede
from view. The term Europe (in one form or another) was sometimes used to refer to the emerging
civilization in the largely Frankish lands of Latin Christendom, which were occasionally contrasted with an
increasingly fabulous Asia to the east. In fact, proponents of both Carolingian and Ottonian (German)
imperialism, as well as the papacy, employed the concept of Europe as "a topos of panegyric, [and] a
cultural emblem." But until the late Middle Ages, reference to the larger formal continental scheme was
largely limited to recondite geographical studies, finding little place in general scholarly discourse. Africa in
particular did not figure prominently in the travel lore and fables of medieval Europeans. The southern
continent at the time was dismissed as inferior, on the mistaken grounds that it was small in extent and
dominated by deserts.

Scholarly geographical studies, of course, were another matter. Here the tripartite worldview of the Greeks
was retained, but transposed into an abstract cosmographical model, abandoning all pretense to spatial
accuracy. The famous "T-O" maps of the medieval period, representing the earth in the form of a cross,
reflect the age's profoundly theological view of space. The cross symbol (represented as a T within the
circle of the world) designated the bodies of water that supposedly divided Europe, Asia, and Africa; these
landmasses in a sense served as the background on which the sacred symbol was inscribed. The Nile
remained, in most cases, the dividing line between Africa and Asia. Classical precedence joined here with

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theological necessity, converting an empirical distortion into an expression of profound cosmographical

order.

With the revival of Greek and Roman learning in the Renaissance, the older continental scheme was
revived as well, becoming endowed with an unprecedented scientific authority. The noted sixteenth-century
German geographer Sebastian Munster, for example, invoked "the ancient division of the Old World into
three regions separated by the Don, the Mediterranean, and the Nile." Despite the considerable
accumulation of knowledge in the centuries since Herodotus, few Renaissance scholars questioned the
boundaries that had been set in antiquity. On the contrary, it was in this period that the continental scheme
became the authoritative frame of reference for sorting out the differences among various human societies.

The elevation of the continental scheme to the level of received truth was conditioned in part by an
important historical juncture. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, just as classical writings were being
revalued, the geography of Christianity was in flux on several fronts at once. Turkish conquests at its
southeastern edge were causing the remaining Christian communities in Asia Minor to retreat, while
Christian conquests and conversions in the northeast were vanquishing the last holdouts of paganism in the
Baltic region. Meanwhile, the rise of humanism was challenging the cultural unity of the Catholic world from
within. These historical circumstances combined to give the Greek continental scheme new salience. On
the one hand, as Christianity receded in the southeast and advanced in the northeast, the boundaries of
Christendom increasingly (although never perfectly) coincided with those of the Greeks' Europe. On the
other hand, humanist scholars began to search for a secular self-designation. As a result, these centuries
saw Europe begin to displace Christendom as the primary referent for Western society.

As Western Christians began to call themselves Europeans in the fifteenth century, the continental schema
as a whole came into widespread use. But it was not long before the new (partial) geographical fit between
Europe and Christendom was once again offset. Continuing Turkish conquests, combined with the final
separation of the Eastern and Western Christian traditions, pulled southeastern Europe almost completely
out of the orbit of the increasingly self-identified European civilization.

OLD WORLDS, NEW CONTINENTS

Once Europeans crossed the Atlantic, they gradually discovered that their threefold continental system did
not form an adequate world model. Evidence of what appeared to be a single "new world" landmass
somehow had to be taken into account. The transition from a threefold to a fourfold continental scheme did
not occur immediately after Columbus, however. First, America had to be intellectually "invented" as a
distinct parcel of land--one that could be viewed geographically, if not culturally, as equivalent to the other
continents. According to Eviatar Zerubavel, this reconceptualization took nearly a century to evolve, in part
because it activated serious "cosmographic shock." For a long time, many Europeans simply chose to
ignore the evidence; as late as 1555, a popular French geography text entitled La Division du monde
pronounced that the earth consisted of Asia, Europe, and Africa, making absolutely no mention of the
Americas. The Spanish imperial imagination persisted in denying continental status to its transatlantic
colonies for even longer. According to Walter Mignolo, "The Castilian notion of 'the Indies' [remained] in
place up to the end of the colonial empire; 'America' [began] to be employed by independentist intellectuals
only toward the end of the eighteenth century." Yet by the early sixteenth century, the Portuguese
cosmographer Duarte Pacheco and his German counterpart Martin Waldseemuller had mapped the
Americas as a continent. While cartographic conventions of the period rendered the new landmass, like
Africa, as distinctly inferior to Asia and Europe, virtually all global geographies by the seventeenth century at
least acknowledged the Americas as one of the "four quarters of the world."

As this brief account suggests, accepting the existence of a transatlantic landmass required more than
simply adding a new piece to the existing continental model. As Edmundo O'Gorman has brilliantly

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demonstrated, reckoning with the existence of previously unknown lands required a fundamental
restructuring of European cosmography. For in the old conception, Europe, Africa, end Asia had usually
been envisioned as forming a single, interconnected "world island," the Orbis Terrarum. The existence of
another such "island" in the antipodes of the Southern Hemisphere--an Orbis Alterius--had often been
hypothesized, but it was assumed that it would constitute a world apart, inhabited, if at all, by sapient
creatures of an entirely different species. Americans, by contrast, appeared to be of the same order as other
humans, suggesting that their homeland must be a fourth part of the human world rather than a true alter-
world. Thus it was essentially anthropological data that undermined the established cosmographic order.

In the long run, the discovery of a distant but recognizably human population in the Americas would
irrevocably dash the world island to pieces. Over the next several centuries the fundamental relationship
between the world's major landmasses was increasingly seen as one of separation, not contiguity. In 1570
Ortelius divided the world into four constituent parts, yet his global maps did not emphasize divisional lines,
and his regional maps sometimes spanned "continental" divisions. By the late seventeenth century,
however, most global atlases unambiguously distinguished the world's main landmasses and classified all
regional maps accordingly. The Greek notion of a unitary human terrain, in other words, was disassembled
into its constituent continents, whose relative isolation was now ironically converted into their defining
feature. Although the possibility of an Orbis Alterius was never again taken seriously, the boundaries
dividing the known lands would henceforth be conceived in much more absolute terms than they had been
in the past. Even as the accuracy of mapping improved dramatically in this period, the conceptualization of
global divisions was so hardened as to bring about a certain conceptual deterioration.

NEW DIVISIONS

As geographical knowledge increased, and as the authority of the Greeks diminished, the architecture of
global geography underwent more subtle transformations as well. If continents were to be meaningful
geographical divisions of human geography, rather than mere reflections of an ordained cosmic plan, the
Nile and the Don obviously formed inappropriate boundaries. Scholars thus gradually came to select the
Red Sea and the Gulf and Isthmus of Suez as the African-Asian divide. Similarly, by the sixteenth century,
geographers began to realize that Europe and Asia were not separated by a narrow isthmus, that the Don
River did not originate anywhere near the Arctic Sea, and that the Sea of Azov was smaller than had
previously been imagined. While the old view was remarkably persistent, a new boundary for these two
continents was eventually required as well.

The difficulty was that no convenient barrier like the Red Sea presented itself between Europe and Asia.
The initial response was to specify precise linkages between south- and north-flowing rivers across the
Russian plains; by the late seventeenth century, one strategy was to divide Europe from Asia along
stretches of the Don, Volga, Kama, and Ob Rivers. This was considered an unsolved geographical issue,
however, and geographers vied with each other to locate the most fitting divisional line. Only in the
eighteenth century did a Swedish military officer, Philipp-Johann von Strahlenberg, argue that the Ural
Mountains formed the most significant barrier. Von Strahlenberg's proposal was enthusiastically seconded
by Russian intellectuals associated with Peter the Great's Westernization program, particularly Vasilii
Nikitich Tatishchev, in large part because of its ideological convenience. In highlighting the Ural divide,
Russian Westernizers could at once emphasize the European nature of the historical Russian core while
consigning Siberia to the position of an alien Asian realm suitable for colonial rule and exploitation. (Indeed,
many Russian texts at this time dropped the name Siberia in favor of the more Asiatic-sounding Great
Tartary.) Controversy continued in Russian and German geographical circles, however, with some scholars
attempting to push the boundary further east to the Ob or even the Yenisey River, while others argued for
holding the line at the Don.

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Tatishchev's and von Strahlenberg's position was eventually to triumph not only in Russia but throughout
Europe. After the noted French geographer M. Malte-Brun gave it his seal of approval in the nineteenth
century, the Ural boundary gained near-universal acceptance. Yet this move necessitated a series of further
adjustments, since the Ural Mountains do not extend far enough south--or west--to form a complete border.
In atlases of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the old and new divisions were often combined,
with Europe shown as separated from Asia by the Don River, a stretch of the Volga River, and the Ural
Mountains. From the mid-1800s on the most common, although by no means universal, solution to this
problem was to separate Asia from Europe by a complex line running southward through the Urals, jumping
in their southern extent to the Ural River, extending through some two-thirds the length of the Caspian Sea,
and turning in a sharp angle to run northwestward along the crest of the Caucasus Mountains. Indeed, as
recently as 1994, the United States Department of State gave its official imprimatur to this division. The old
usage of the Don River, arbitrary though it might have been, at least required a less contorted delineation.
Moreover, the new division did even more injustice to cultural geography than did the old, for it included
within Europe such obviously "non-European" peoples as the Buddhist, Mongolian-speaking Kalmyks.

While this geographical boundary between Europe and Asia is now seldom questioned and is often
assumed to be either wholly natural or too trivial to worry about, the issue still provokes occasional interest.
In 1958, for example, a group of Russian geographers argued that the true divide should follow "the eastern
slope of the Urals and their prolongation the Mugodzhar hills, the Emba River, the northern shore of the
Caspian Sea, the Kumo-manychskaya Vpadina (depression) and the Kerchenski Strait to the Black Sea"--
thus placing the Urals firmly within Europe and the Caucasus within Asia. Other writers have elected to
ignore formal guidelines altogether, placing the boundary between the two "continents" wherever they see
fit. The 1963 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, for example, defines the Swat district of northern
Pakistan as "a region bordering on Europe and Asia"--"Europe" perhaps connoting, in this context, all areas
traversed by Alexander the Great. Halford Mackinder, on the other hand, selected a "racial" criterion to
divide Europe from Africa (although not from Asia), and thus extended its boundaries well to the south: "In
fact, the southern boundary of Europe was and is the Sahara rather than the Mediterranean, for it is the
desert land that divides the black man from the white."

THE CONTINUING CAREER

OF THE CONTINENTAL SCHEME

Despite the ancient and ubiquitous division of the earth into Europe, Asia, and Africa (with the Americas as
a later addition), such "parts" of the earth were not necessarily defined explicitly as continents prior to the
late nineteenth century. While the term continent--which emphasizes the contiguous nature of the land in
question--was often used in translating Greek and Latin concepts regarding the tripartite global division, it
was also employed in a far more casual manner. In fact, in early modern English, any reasonably large
body of land or even island group might be deemed a continent. In 1599, for example, Richard Hakluyt
referred to the West Indies as a "large and fruitfull continent." Gradually, however, geographers excluded
archipelagos and smaller landmasses from this category, adhering as well to a more stringent standard of
spatial separation. By 1752 Emanuel Bowen was able to state categorically: "A continent is a large space of
dry land comprehending many countries all joined together, without any separation by water. Thus Europe,
Asia, and Africa is one great continent, as America is another."

The division of the world into two continents certainly forces one to recognize, as Herodotus did many
centuries earlier, that Europe, Asia, and Africa are not separated in any real sense. Indeed, perspicacious
geographers have always been troubled by this division. As early as 1680, the author of The English Atlas
opined: "The division seems not so rational; for Asia is much bigger than both of the others; nor is Europe
an equal balance for Africa." Several prominent nineteenth-century German geographers, Alexander von
Humboldt and Oskar Peschel among them, insisted that Europe was but an extension of Asia; many
Russian Slavophiles, perennial opponents of the more influential Westernizers, concurred. Such clear-

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headed reasoning was not to prevail, however. By the late nineteenth century the old "parts of the earth"
had been definitively named "continents," with the separation between Europe and Asia remaining central to
the scheme. The Oxford English Dictionary (compiled in the decades bracketing the turn of the twentieth
century) recounts the transition as follows: "Formerly two continents were reckoned, the Old and the New;
the former comprising Europe, Asia, and Africa, which form one continuous mass of land; the latter, North
and South America, forming another. These two continents are strictly islands, distinguished only by their
extent. Now it is usual to reckon four or five continents, Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, North and South;
the great island of Australia is sometimes reckoned as another."

Regardless of the term used to denote them, the standard categories of antiquity, with the addition of the
"new world(s)," continued to comprise the fundamental framework within which global geography and
history were conceived. Yet minor disagreements persisted as to the exact number of units one should
count. In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century world atlases, which generally printed the world's major units in
different colored inks, one can find fourfold, fivefold, and sixfold divisional schemes. North and South
America might be counted as one unit or two, while Australia ("New Holland") was sometimes colored as a
portion of Asia, sometimes as a separate landmass, and sometimes as a mere island. All things considered,
however, the fourfold scheme prevailed well into the 1800s.

Whatever the exact form it took on maps, the division of the world into great continents became an
increasingly important metageographical concept in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Montesquieu,
the foremost geographical thinker of the French Enlightenment, based his social theories on the absolute
geographical separation of Europe from Asia, the core of his fourfold continental scheme. The most
influential human geographer of the mid-nineteenth century, Carl Ritter, similarly argued (in his signature
teleological style): "Each continent is like itself alone ... each one was so planned and formed as to have its
own special function in the progress of human culture." Ritter also attempted to ground the entire scheme in
physical anthropology. Conflating continents with races, he viewed Europe as the land of white people,
Africa that of black people, Asia of yellow people, and America of red people--a pernicious notion that still
lingers in the public imagination.

It was with Arnold Guyot, the Swiss scholar who introduced Ritter's version of geography to the United
States in the mid-1800s, that continent-based thinking reached its apogee. Guyot saw the hand of
Providence in the assemblage of the continents as well as in their individual outlines and physiographic
structures. The continents accordingly formed the core of Guyot's geographical exposition--one aimed at
revealing "the existence of a general law, and disclos[ing] an arrangement which cannot be without a
purpose." Not surprisingly, the purpose Guyot discerned in the arrangement of the world's landmasses
entailed the progressive revelation of a foreordained superiority for Europe and the Europeans. From his
position on the faculty of Princeton University, Guyot propagated his views on the subject for many years,
influencing several generations of American teachers and writers.

As the continental system was thus formalized in the nineteenth century, its categories were increasingly
naturalized, coming to be regarded, not as products of a fallible human imagination, but as real
geographical entities that had been "discovered" through empirical inquiry. E. H. Bunbury, the leading
Victorian student of the history of geographic thought, went so far as to label Homer a "primitive
geographer" for his failure to recognize "the division of the world into three continents." Bunbury also took
Herodotus to task for his "erroneous notion" that Europe was of greater east-west extent than Asia and
Libya [Africa] combined. Herodotus came to this conclusion, however, not because his spatial conceptions
were any less accurate than those of his peers, but because he eschewed using the north-south trending
Tanais (Don) as the continental border, preferring instead east-west running rivers such as the Phais and
Araxes (in the Caucasus region). To the Victorian Bunbury, this was not an issue on which educated people
could disagree. What nineteenth-century geographers had lost was Herodotus's sense that the only reason
for dividing Europe and Asia along a north-south rather than an east-west axis was convention. In fact, by

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scientific criteria, Herodotus probably had the better argument. Certainly in physical terms, Siberia has
much more in common with the far north of Europe--where Herodotus's boundary would have placed it--
than with Oman or Cambodia.

INTO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Since the early eighteenth century, one of the most problematic issues for global geographers was how to
categorize Southeast Asia, Australia, and the islands of the Pacific. Gradually, a new division began to
appear in this portion of the world. According to one popular Victorian work of world history, "It was usual
until the present century to speak of the great divisions of the earth as the Four Quarters of the World, VIZ;
Europe, Asia, Africa, and America," while insisting that a "scientific distribution" of the world's "terrestrial
surfaces" would have to include Australia and Polynesia as separate divisions. By the middle of the
nineteenth century, Australia was usually portrayed as a distinct part of the world, albeit often linked with the
islands of the Pacific. The notion of Oceania as a fifth (or sixth, if the Americas were divided) section of the
world grew even more common in the early twentieth century, when several cartographers marked off
insular Southeast Asia from Asia and appended it to the island world.

In the early twentieth century, world geography textbooks published in Britain and the United States almost
invariably used the continental system as their organizing framework, typically devoting one chapter to each
of these "natural" units. This pattern may be found in works on the natural world as well as in those
concerned with human geography. Scanning through these textbooks, one notices only slight deviations
from the standard model. The International Geography, edited by Hugh Robert Mill, for example, places
Central and South America in a single chapter, while devoting another to the polar regions. Leonard Brooks,
in A Regional Geography of the World, follows the conventional scheme--with successive chapters on
Europe, Asia, North America, South America, Africa, and Australia--but devotes an additional chapter to the
British Isles alone. Here Eurocentrism yields pride of place to Britanocentrism, suggesting the emergence of
a new virtual continent in the north Atlantic.

Yet not all geographical writers in the early twentieth century viewed continents as given and unproblematic
divisions of the globe. In the popular Van Loon's Geography of 1937, for example, the author describes the
continental scheme with a light and almost humorous touch, concluding that one might as well use the
standard system so long as one remembers its arbitrary foundations. Van Loon viewed the standard
arrangement as including five continents: Asia, America, Africa, Europe, and Australia. While it might seem
surprising to find North and South America still joined into a single continent in a book published in the
United States in 1937, such a notion remained fairly common until World War II. It cannot be coincidental
that this idea served American geopolitical designs at the time, which sought both Western Hemispheric
domination and disengagement from the "Old World" continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa.

By the 1950s, however, virtually all American geographers had come to insist that the visually distinct
landmasses of North and South America deserved separate designations. This was also the period when
Antarctica was added to the list, despite its lack of human inhabitants, and when Oceania as a "great
division" was replaced by Australia as a continent along with a series of isolated and continentally attached
islands. The resulting seven-continent system quickly gained acceptance throughout the United States. In
the 1960s, during the heyday of geography's "quantitative revolution," the scheme received a new form of
scientific legitimization from a scholar who set out to calculate, through rigorous mathematical equations,
the exact number of the world's continents. Interestingly enough, the answer he came up with conformed
almost precisely to the conventional list: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Oceania (Australia
plus New Zealand), Africa, and Antarctica.

Despite the implicit European bias of the continental scheme, its more recent incarnations have been
exported to the rest of the world without, so far as we are aware, provoking any major critical response or

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local modification. In the case of Japan, a European-derived fourfold continental schema came into use in
the 1700s and was ubiquitous by the middle 1800s. Subsequent changes in Japanese global
conceptualization closely followed those of Europe--with the signal difference that Asia almost always
ranked as the first continent. Geographers in the Islamic realm, for their part, had adopted the ancient
threefold global division from the Greeks at a much earlier date, although the continents generally played an
insignificant role in their conceptions of the terrestrial order before the twentieth century. South Asians and
others influenced by Indian religious beliefs employed a very different traditional system of continental
divisions, one much more concerned with cosmographical than with physical geographical divisions. With
the triumph of European imperialism, however, the contemporary European view of the divisions of the
world came to enjoy near-universal acceptance. Scholars from different countries may disagree over the
exact number of continents (in much of Europe, for instance, a fivefold rather than a sevenfold scheme is
still preferred), but the basic system has essentially gone unchallenged.

Paradoxically, almost as soon as the now-conventional seven-part continental system emerged in its
present form, it began to be abandoned by those who had most at stake in its propagation: professional
geographers. Whereas almost all American university-level global geography textbooks before World War II
reflected continental divisions, by the 1950s most were structured around "world regions" (discussed in
chapter 6). Yet the older continental divisions have persisted tenaciously in the popular press, in elementary
curricula, in reference works, and even in the terminology of world regions themselves. Anyone curious
about the contemporary status of the continental scheme need only glance through the shelves of
cartographic games and products designed for children. Nor is such pedagogy aimed strictly at the young. A
recently published work designed primarily for adults, entitled Don't Know Much about Geography, locates
the "nations of the world" according to their "continental" positions. The author further informs us that
cartographers only "figured out" that Australia "was a sixth continent" in 1801. And his repetition of the
familiar claim that Australia is at once "the world's smallest continent and its largest island" confirms as well
the continuing invisibility of the "world island," encompassing Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Martin Lewis and Karen E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography. © 1998 by the Regents of
the University of California. Published by the University of California Press.
UP Press Website: http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520207431
Available at <http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/l/lewis-myth.html?_r=1>.

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Topography of the Earth

Adapted from History, Geography, and Time. Introduction to Big Geography. Landscape Unit .02. World History for Us
All. August 6 2012 <http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/units/getstart/02_landscape.pdf>.

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Big Geography Containers

From History, Geography, and Time. World History for Us All. San Diego State University. 6 August 2012
<http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/getting_started.php>.

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Map Scales
Directions: Analyze the following maps and then answer the questions below.

Map 1: Afroeurasia

Map 2: Medieval Europe

Map 3: The Rivers of Africa

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Map Scales (continued)

1. Which map(s) might a historian use to understand ancient trade routes in Africa? Explain your
reasoning.

2. What are some problems that historians might find if they were using Map 2 to understand
ancient trade routes in Africa?

3. What are some problems that historians might find if they were using Map 1 to understand
ancient trade routes in Africa?

4. If you were interested in understanding how early humans spread across the earth, which map
might help you the most? Why?

5. Are any of the three maps more correct than the others? Explain.

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Map Scales Teacher Reference Sheet

1. Which map(s) might a historian use to understand ancient trade routes in Africa? Explain your
reasoning.

Map #3 because it shows Africa including its major rivers. Since rivers may be used for
transportation, this is the best map for understanding how people moved long
distances.

If students choose another map such as Map #1, guide them to see that Map #1 does not
provide as much detail about Africa as Map #3.

Map #2 does not include Africa on it.

2. What are some problems that historians might find if they were using Map 2 to understand
ancient trade routes in Africa?

Map #2 does not include Africa on it.

3. What are some problems that historians might find if they were using Map 1 to understand
ancient trade routes in Africa?

Map #1 does not provide as much detail about Africa as Map #3.

4. If you were interested in understanding how early humans spread across the earth, which map
might help you the most? Why?

Map #1 would be the best choice here only because it contains a large enough scale to
begin to answer the question. It is not the best map, but it is the best of the three
provided.

5. Are any of the three maps more correct than the others? Explain.

No. All of the maps represent different places at different scales and were created for
different purposes.

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Analyzing Historical Maps

Afroeurasian Trades Routes in the 14th Century.

Route of the Bubonic Plague, also called the Black Death, a disease that resulted in the
deaths of up to ½ of Europe’s population in the 14th century.

1. Compare the two maps and the patterns of movement shown on each. What do you notice?
2. Looking at the two maps together, how do you think the Black Death spread?
3. Looking at the maps, where might the Black Death have started?
4. What might be one consequence of increased trade and increased human interactions?

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Teacher Reference Sheet for the Analyzing Historical Maps

1. Compare the two maps and the patterns of movement shown on each. What do you notice?

The maps show similar patterns of movement from west to east. They show the same part
of the world at the same time in history. The scales of the two maps are pretty similar.

2. Looking at the two maps together, how do you think the Bubonic Plague spread?

Students should notice that the plague followed trade routes out of China. It looks like
the plague spread over land instead of water until it hit the Mediterranean.

3. Looking at the maps, where might the Black Death have started?

Somewhere in east Asia near or in China.

4. What might be one consequence of increased trade and increased human interactions?

Answers will vary but should include an idea that trade spreads diseases.

Sources: Adapted from AP World Review Project. West Hills HS and Hercules HS. 8 August 2012
<https://sites.google.com/a/wolfpackweb.net/ap-review-09/topics/a6>; Route of the Plague. 6 August 2012
<http://images.classwell.com/mcd_xhtml_ebooks/2005_world_history/images/mcd_awh2005_0618376798_p4
00_f1.gif>.

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 10

Lesson 10: History as a Discipline

Big Ideas of the Lesson

 History textbooks have features that enable the reader to find information (such as a table
of contents, index, and glossary) and are organized into parts (units, chapters, and
sections) which, when understood, can be used as a tool for learning.
 While both scientists and historians address problems and use evidence, they differ in the
types of problems they address and the types and ways they use evidence.
 The discipline of history is based on investigating problems and using evidence to support
accounts of the past.
 When historians select events of the past and interpret their meaning they sometimes
create conflicting accounts of the same historical event, which textbooks often conceal.
 Since textbooks are limited in how they identify historical problems and use evidence, they
can limit our understanding of the past.

Lesson Abstract:
In this lesson, students are introduced to their history textbook in terms of its features and
organization. After engaging in a scavenger hunt, students compare the discipline of history with
the discipline of science. They revisit how the discipline of history has its own ways of thinking,
knowing, and using evidence. Finally, students begin to examine some potential limitations of
history textbooks by exploring to what extent their textbook reflects the evidentiary, problem-based,
and interpretative nature of history.

Content Expectations: 7-H1; 7 – H1.2.1

Common Core State Standards: RH.6-8.1, 2, 4, 5, 6, and 8; WHST.6-8.4, 9 and 10.

Key Concepts
account
event
evidence
historical problem
history
primary sources
secondary sources

Teacher Note: Prior to this lesson students should have their assigned textbook for the course.

Lesson Sequence
1. Begin the lesson by explaining to students that they are going to spend some time today getting
to know their history textbook so that they may better use it as a tool in the future. Distribute
the handout “Previewing Your Textbook,” which can be found in Supplemental Materials
(Unit 1, Lesson 10). This handout does two things: (1) it describes and explains both the
features and general organization of a history textbook and (2) it offers some concrete reading,

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comprehension and study strategies. Walk students through the handout in conjunction with
their textbook to identify and illuminate its features and organization. This step is critical for
students to effectively use their textbook throughout the course. It may also help them
understand and use the textbooks they have for other classes. The handout describes several
reading and studying strategies. These strategies will be highlighted throughout the course,
starting with the first lesson of Unit 2 (a think aloud).

2. Distribute the handout “History Textbook Scavenger Hunt” which can be found in
Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 10). The activity is designed to reinforce what was
explored in the “Previewing Your Textbook” piece and allow students to get know their
textbooks in a hands-on fashion. Have students complete the scavenger hunt individually and
then compare their answers in small groups of three or four students each. Teacher Note: In
order to save class-time, you can assign the scavenger hunt as homework.

3. Review students’ answers to the scavenger hunt with the whole class to check for
understanding. Then, discuss the following questions in more depth with students:
 Why does it matter when a history book was published?
 Why would it be important to pay attention to who wrote a history book?

4. Have students return to their small groups from Step 2 and distribute the blank Venn diagram
“Comparing History with Science,” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 10)
to each student. Explain the meaning of the word “discipline” to students, using Word Card #
51 and distinguish the term “discipline” from “course”. A discipline is a field of study that
addresses a broad body of knowledge with particular ways of knowing. Within a particular
discipline, there are many courses and classes one could take to learn about topics within the
discipline. For instance, within the discipline of history, students may take courses on early
American history, economic history, military history, world history, methodology of historians,
etc. Once students understand this distinction, instruct the groups to discuss how the discipline
of history is different from the discipline of science. In their discussions, have students identify
concrete examples and record this information on their individual Venn diagrams. Then have
the groups consider how the discipline of history is similar to science. Encourage students to
provide concrete examples of how these disciplines might be similar and record their
conjectures on their individual Venn diagrams.

5. Allow time for students to compare their Venn diagrams with a student from another group and
record any new information to their individual Venn diagrams. One way to organize this activity
is to instruct half of each group to move to another group, while half of each group remains at
their seats. Students do not need to travel to the same destination as their group mates.

6. Display the blank Venn diagram “Comparing History with Science,” located in the
Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 10) and discuss and record students’ ideas from Steps
4 and 5. Push students to provide evidence for their similarities and differences. If students
begin to discuss similarities among their courses, for instance, students might see a similarity in
that they have a textbook for all of their classes; redirect them to focus on the disciplines of
history and science. In discussing the differences, be sure to focus the discussion on the types
of problems addressed by each discipline and the types of evidence they use. The teacher
should use the lesson graphic organizer to guide the discussion. If students’ Venn diagrams

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need substantial revisions, distribute the lesson graphic organizer at the end of the discussion
and have students add any additional ideas generated during the class discussion.

7. Explain to students that they are going to be answering three challenging questions for
homework (see Step 8). Further explain that they will be engaging in a class discussion about
the questions and how to address them. Write the following question on the board: “To what
extent do your parents trust you? Provide evidence to support your claim.” Explain that the
phrase “To what extent” is going to be in each of the questions they will have to answer for
homework. Discuss what this is really asking by eliciting students’ thoughts about the phrase.
Guide students to recognize that this type of question is not asking for a “yes” or “no” answer.
Probe students to consider what type of answer is sought. Guide students to recognize that the
question is asking students to quantify – a little, somewhat, a lot, etc. After students quantify
how much their parents trust them, the question then asks for evidence. Student must give
relevant examples of instances to support their claim. Encourage students to think about “How
do you know?” and “What is the most convincing or significant evidence that supports your
claim.”

8. Teacher Note: Prior to this step, the teacher will need to choose a common chapter in the
textbook for all students to analyze. It is recommended that the teacher choose a chapter that
discusses human history (not the “doing of history” or historical and geographic thinking), such
as early civilizations. One historical debate regarding early civilizations is about why they
ended. This provides a good place to investigate how well the textbook illuminates this debate
and how historians use evidence to come to various conclusions.

Distribute “Evaluating My History Textbook” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1,

Lesson 10) to students. Using the handout, remind students that:
 the discipline of history is based on investigating problems;
 historians use evidence to support accounts of the past;
 historians sometimes differ in how they interpret and address historical problems and use
evidence. As a result, there can be conflicting accounts of the same historical event; and
 the degree of differences among historical accounts can vary. Sometimes historians’
accounts vary to a large extent. Sometimes, there are subtle differences.

Have students look at the questions on the handout. Ask them: “How would you begin to
answer these questions? Where would you start? What are you looking for?” Guide students
to recognize that they need to explore their textbook for evidence. Then, discuss each question
with students. Use the hints provided on the handout to guide the discussion on how they will
proceed. For example, in exploring question one (listed below in Step 9), how would students
preview the assigned chapter to find evidence of how well the textbook identifies and
addresses the fact that there are historical problems (as opposed to just providing a narrative
about what happened)? What would they look for? Discuss students’ responses and guide
them to recognize that most of their textbook is a narrative that conceals the problem-based
nature of history. Some textbooks highlight problems in the sidebars. Continue using the hints
to discuss each question with students before assigning the reflective writing.

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 10

9. Conclude the lesson by having students write reflectively in their “Reflections on the Past”
notebook in response to the four main questions on the “Evaluating My History Textbook”
handout, located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 10):
1. To what extent does the assigned chapter in your history textbook reflect the fact that the
discipline of history is based on historical problems? Provide evidence to support your
claim.
2. To what extent does the assigned chapter in your history textbook reflect the fact that the
discipline of history is based on evidence? Provide evidence to support your claim.
3. To what extent does the assigned chapter in your history textbook reflect disagreements
among historians? Provide evidence to support your claim.
4. What might be some advantages and disadvantages to using ONLY a textbook to study
history? Explain your thinking.

Assessment
The reflective writing in Step 9 serves as the assessment for this lesson.

Resource Section
Content Expectations:
7-H1: Evaluate evidence, compare and contrast information, interpret the historical record,
and develop sound historical arguments and perspectives on which informed
decisions in contemporary life can be based.1

7-H1.2.1: Explain how historians use a variety of sources to explore the past (e.g., artifacts,
primary and secondary sources including narratives, technology, historical maps,
visual/mathematical quantitative data, radiocarbon dating, DNA analysis).

Common Core State Standards:

RH.6-8.1: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources.

RH.6-8.2: Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source;

provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinion.
RH.6-8.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including
vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.

RH.6-8.5: Describe how a text presents information (e.g., sequentially, comparatively,

causally).

RH.6-8.6: Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author’s point of view or purpose (e.g.,
loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).

1
Although the MC3 curriculum usually only designates specific content expectations, the essence of several
expectations are best understood by the sub-heading provided in the state document. Accordingly, we are referencing
it here.

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RH.6-8.8: Distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.

WHST.6-8.4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and
style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

WHST.6-8.9: Draw evidence from informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

WHST.6-8.10: Write routinely over extended time frames (time for reflection and revision) and
shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific
tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Instructional Resources
Equipment/Manipulative
Overhead projector or Document Camera/Projector
Student journal or notebook

Student Resource
Any student edition world history textbook.

Teacher Resource
Bloom, Amy, Kimberly Hase, and Stacie Woodward. Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 10).
Teacher-made materials. Oakland Schools, 2012.

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Graphic Organizer

History Science

1. What types of problems 1. What types of

do historians investigate?  Driven by problems do
questions scientists investigate?
 Historians investigate (problem-based)
people, places and events Scientists investigate the
from the past (What  Uses discipline- physical/natural world.
happened?, How and why specific thinking
did it happen?, Who was
 Evidence-Based: 2. What evidence do
involved?, When did it
Uses evidence to scientists use?
happen?).
analyze, evaluate,
 Historians investigate Empirical evidence – that
and corroborate
continuity and change which is based on
over time.  Uses discipline- experience or observation.
specific language  Evidence must be
2. What evidence do to communicate observable and used
historians use? to construct and test
 Disagreements theories
Evidence consists of material exist within the  Experiments and their
from the past field results must be able
 Primary sources to be repeated by
 Secondary sources others

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Big Idea Card

Big Ideas of Lesson 10, Unit 1

 History textbooks have features that enable the reader to find information
(such as a table of contents, index, and glossary) and are organized into parts
(units, chapters, and sections) which, when understood, can be used as a tool
for learning.
 While both scientists and historians address problems and use evidence, they
differ in the types of problems they address and the types and ways they use
evidence.

 The discipline of history is based on investigating problems and using

evidence to support accounts of the past.
 When historians select events of the past and interpret their meaning they
sometimes create conflicting accounts of the same historical event, which
textbooks often conceal.

 Since textbooks are limited in how they identify historical problems and use
evidence, they can limit our understanding of the past.

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 10

Word Cards
Word Cards from previous lessons needed for this lesson:
 Perspective/Point of View – Word Card #9 from Lesson 2
 Historical Account – Word Card #12 from Lesson 3
 History – Word Card #13 from Lesson 3
 Historian – Word Card #14 from Lesson 3
 Corroborate -- Word Card #16 from Lesson 4
 Evidence -- Word Card #17 from Lesson 4
 Primary Sources – Word Card #18 from Lesson 4
 Secondary Sources – Word Card #19 from Lesson 4

51 52
discipline argument

a field of study and its communication

methods intended to
persuade

Example: History is a discipline that is distinct Example: In making an argument, Sally

from mathematics. introduced a claim and supported it with
logical reasoning and relevant evidence.
(SS070110)

(SS070110)
53
narrative

a description of
events in a
story form,
usually in
sequential or
chronological order

Example: Steven wrote a narrative of how he

escaped his war-torn country and came to the
United States.
(SS070110)

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Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 10

Previewing Your Textbook

Your history textbook is a tool (albeit a very heavy one) that really can help you as a history student. In order to make the
most of it, you need to understand your textbook’s features and how it is generally organized. Here is a ‘cheat sheet’ to
help you get the most out of your textbook.

Features of your textbook:

TABLE OF CONTENTS
The table of contents is located at the front of the textbook and is like a road map of your book. It
gives you the names of units and chapters, as well as their page numbers.

INDEX
This is at the back of your book and provides a listing of names, places, and topics in alphabetical
order and the pages upon which they can be found. One way you might use the index is when you
are studying for a test because you can easily look up unknown items since the page number is
listed. The index demonstrates how often and where a particular name, place, or topic is addressed
in the book. Looking through the index of a history book can give you an idea what your history class
will be about.

GLOSSARY
This is also located at the back of the book and provides a listing of vocabulary words in alphabetical
order and their definitions.

IMPORTANT TIP: Make sure you are able to put the definitions in your own words. If you still don’t
understand a vocabulary word just from its definition, look it up in the index to find out where it’s
written about in the book and then go to those pages and read about it.

Organization of your textbook:

UNITS
History textbooks are divided first into “big” units of study and are listed in the book’s table of
contents. You can get an idea of what any given unit is about by the unit title (i.e. “Early
Civilizations”). Remember, World History units organize time periods into a general theme or pattern
that reflects what was going in the world at that time. Therefore, if you simply look at the unit names
in your book’s table of contents, you can get a basic idea of how human history has progressed
without even reading a chapter!

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IMPORTANT TIP: GET READY TO READ! HOW TO PREVIEW A UNIT

The first and last pages of any unit give an overview of what you are about to read. It might be
tempting to skip over the unit introduction (especially if your teacher did not assign it to you to read),
but that would be a big mistake! It is a very good strategy to read this information and look at the
maps and graphics provided in order to get an idea of what the unit is about----BEFORE you read any
chapters. Sometimes textbooks even offer you specific strategies for making learning the material in
the unit easier. Also, make it a practice to look at the materials provided at the END of a unit before
reading any chapters. There is often a review there that provides a nice summary, as well as helpful
graphics and questions.

As you review the unit (before you read any chapters!), ask yourself:
o What is this unit really about? Why is it important?
o What time period does it cover? (look for timelines to help you)
o In what part of the world did these events happen? (look for maps and names of places)
o What do I already know about this topic or time period?
o What predictions can I make about the events or outcomes in this unit?

It is helpful to write down your answers to these questions for two reasons. First, writing out your
thoughts forces you to organize them a bit. Second, these notes will provide a great resource for you
when it is time to study for a test or write a paper.

CHAPTERS
Each unit is further divided into chapters. Each chapter addresses a particular topic related to the
unit, which is also reflected by its title (i.e. “The First Civilizations”). The chapters for each unit are
also listed in the table of contents.

IMPORTANT TIP: GET READY TO READ! HOW TO PREVIEW A CHAPTER

Just like the first pages of any unit, the first and last pages of a chapter offer important information on
what you are about to read. Before reading any chapter, you should use a similar technique as you
did for previewing units. Make it a practice to look at the materials provided at the BEGINNING and
END of a chapter before reading the actual chapter. Again, there is often a review that provides a
nice summary, as well as helpful graphics and questions.

As you look over the first and last pages of a chapter, ask yourself:
o What is this chapter really about? How does it relate to the themes of the unit?
o What time period does this chapter cover? (again, look for a timeline to help you)
o In what part of the world did these events happen? (look for maps and names of places)
o What do I already know about this topic or time period?
o What predictions can I make about the events or outcomes in this chapter?

Again, it is helpful to write down your answers to these questions.

SECTIONS
Each chapter is then divided into sections. Each section addresses a more specific topic related to
the chapter, which is also reflected by its title (i.e. “Mesopotamian Civilization”). Sections are further
broken down into headings and subheadings.

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IMPORTANT TIP: BE AN ACTIVE READER.

Reading for information is much different than reading a book like Twilight or a Sport’s Illustrated
article. When you are reading your World History textbook, you will be presented with information
and words that are mostly new to you. In order to understand what you are reading, you will have to
be an active and engaged reader---otherwise you have no hope of learning anything you read. Active
reading is a skill and requires practice! Here are some tips to get you started:
1. As you read, pay attention to both the words you are reading and the thoughts in your head in
response to what you read.
2. At the end of each paragraph, ask yourself: “What did the author say in this paragraph?” If
you cannot answer the question, this a sign that you need to re-read the paragraph again--
until you can answer that question in your own words.
3. Once you are able to describe what is in the paragraph you just read, you will need to make a
note of it somehow. Perhaps, you have a history notebook that you use just for taking reading
notes. One way to organize your notes is to divide the page in half. On one side take notes
from the reading describing what you read. On the other side, answer the question “So what
– why does this matter?”
4. When you are done reading a section and taking notes, immediately cover up the notes and
try to tell yourself a story aloud of what you just read in the entire section. This forces you to
think and check your own understanding. It also puts the material into a more natural and
usable form for you. Then, check your ‘story’ against the notes that you just took to see how
you did with recall. Notice any points that were incorrect or missing from your story. Retell
the story to yourself with the necessary fixes. Remember this: more time should be devoted
to RECALL than on READING.

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History Textbook Scavenger Hunt

1. Look at the cover of your book. Judging from the title and images, what could one expect to learn
about from reading the book?

2. What year was your textbook published? Where did you find this information? Why does it matter
when a history book was published? What can the year of publication tell us about the book?

3. Does your textbook have an online option? If so, what is the website and where did you find this
information? How might you use the online option?

4. Who wrote the book? What do we know about them? Why do you think there is more than one
author? Why would it be important to pay attention to who wrote a history book?

5. Find your book’s appendix. What is an appendix? When might you use an appendix?

6. Where is the index located? List the page numbers. How is the index different from the table of
contents? How can you use this feature of your book?

7. Name two places you could look to find out where in the book to find information on the Gupta
Empire. Which pages contain information on the Gupta Empire?

8. Where would you look to find the definition of the word “nomad”? What is the definition? If you
still did not understand what this meant, where else could you go in your book?

9. How many units are in the book? Where did you find the answer to this question?

10. Identify the title of one unit that is most interesting to you. What are the titles of the chapters
within that unit?

11. What pages would you use to “preview” unit one (hint: remember you should look at the beginning
AND end of the unit)? What does the first unit seem to be about?

12. What pages would you use to “preview” the first chapter of the book? What does the first chapter
seem to be about? How do you think it connects to what the unit is about?

13. What color are the headings in the book?

14. What color are the subheadings in the book?

15. How can you tell which words are vocabulary words in the book?

16. Using chapter one, use the chapter title, section titles, heading titles and subheading titles to
create an overview/outline of the chapter on a separate piece of paper. How could you use this
idea to take notes in the future?

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Comparing History with Science

History Science and

Mathematics
1. What types of problems 1. What types of
do historians investigate? problems do scientists
investigate?

2. What types of evidence 2. What types of

do historians use? evidence do scientists
use?

2.

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Evaluating My History Textbook

In this unit, we learned that:

• the discipline of history is based on investigating problems;
• historians use evidence to support accounts of the past;
• historians sometimes differ in how they interpret and address historical
problems and use evidence. As a result, there can be conflicting accounts of
the same historical event; and
• the degree of differences among historical accounts can vary. Sometimes
historians accounts vary to a large extent. Sometimes, there are subtle
differences.

Questions for My Textbook

Directions: Answer the four main questions in your “Reflections on the Past” notebook.
Remember these are not yes or no questions; they are “how much” questions.

1. To what extent does the assigned chapter in your history textbook reflect the fact that the
discipline of history is based on historical problems? Provide evidence to support your claim.
Hints for exploring this question: Does the text make an argument? For instance, does it
make a claim and then support it with evidence? Does it raise any opposing arguments or
claims? What if you cannot find any arguments? Can we conclude that historians do not have
any historical problems to address in this period of history? What are some other explanations
for the lack of problems highlighted in your history textbook?

2. To what extent does the assigned chapter in your history textbook reflect the fact that the
discipline of history is based on evidence? Provide evidence to support your claim.
Hints for exploring this question: How does your textbook use primary or secondary sources?
When a statement of fact is made, do they identify a source for the information? Can you find
an example of where your textbook makes a claim and does not support it with evidence? If
the textbook does not use evidence, should we trust its claims?

3. To what extent does the assigned chapter in your history textbook reflect disagreements
among historians? Provide evidence to support your claim.
Hints for exploring the question: How does the textbook let the reader know where historians
disagree? If the textbook does highlight or explain instances where historians disagree, can
we assume that these are the ONLY disagreements? If the textbook does not highlight or
explain where historians disagree, can we assume they agree?

4. What might be some advantages and disadvantages to using ONLY a textbook to study
history? Explain your thinking.

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Lesson 11: Challenging the Power and Authority of the History

Textbook
Big Ideas of the Lesson

 Historians investigate problems about the past, make claims about what happened, and
support their claims with evidence.
 The textbooks provide a narrative of the past, allowing students to read about a broad
range of historical events, but have several limitations.
 Some of the limitations of history textbooks include that they: oversimplify complex events;
offer limited evidence, historical arguments, and perspectives; and tend to ignore motives.
 History textbooks often fail to show the investigative nature of history and tend to make
historical outcomes seem ‘inevitable’.
 When examining sources, it is important to source, contextualize, closely read, and
corroborate accounts of the same event in order to get a more accurate picture of the past.

Lesson Abstract:
With their authoritative tone, history textbooks are often seen as providing the official and
‘unbiased’ version of historical events---as if there were such a thing. This lesson is designed to
help students think critically about their history textbooks and make it easier for them to see that a
textbook simply offers one narrow version of history that is often void of the ongoing investigative
nature of historical inquiry and practice. After a discussion about the limits of history textbooks,
students employ two primary sources to problematize a textbook excerpt about the Battle of
Lexington, an event with which they are already familiar.1 Students write reflectively on the
benefits of using historical habits of mind in and out of the history classroom. After establishing
classroom rules for small group discussions, the class engages in a fishbowl discussion to clarify
students’ thinking. The lesson concludes with a student self-evaluation of discussion performance.

Content Expectations: 7 – H1.2.1; H1.2.2; H1.2.3; H1.2.4; H1.2.5

Common Core State Standards: RH: 6-8.1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9; WHST: 6-8.1b, 4, 9, 10

Key Concepts
close-reading
contextualizing
corroborating
event
evidence
historical argument
historical problem
history

1Portions of this lesson were borrowed from Stanford History Education Group’s “Reading Like An Historian” Battle of
Lexington lesson plan. The original lesson can be found at:
http://sheg.stanford.edu/upload/Lessons/Unit%203_Revolution%20and%20Early%20America/Battle%20of%20Lexingt
on%20Lesson%20Plan1.pdf

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perspective
primary sources
representations/accounts
secondary sources
significance
sourcing

Lesson Sequence
1. Begin by having a class discussion based on what students wrote for homework in their
“Reflections on the Past” notebook in response to the following question: What might be some
advantages and disadvantages to using ONLY a textbook to study history? Record students’
thoughts on a T-chart on the board (a sample T-chart is below). Be sure students recognize
that while textbooks are a decent starting point for studying the past, they are limited in their
use of evidence to support statements, in their identification of a clear perspective, and in the
presentation of historical arguments. Also explain to students that in order to understand the
past, we need to use more than one source of information to make sure that it is accurate.

Advantages of Using Disadvantages of Using Only a Textbook

Only a Textbook

• It is a quick way to learn • It is a boring way to learn.

about history. • Using ONE source is never okay when studying history.
• Textbooks provide a limited perspective and leave a lot of voices out of the
• The information is in one stories told.
place. • Textbooks oversimplify complex events.
• Textbooks offer limited evidence.
• Textbooks offer limited historical arguments.
• Textbooks often make historical outcomes seem ‘inevitable’---cheating the reader
of questioning how the outcome could have been avoided.
• Textbooks often just tell what happened and ignore why it happened or explore
the actors’ motives.

Push the conversation further by asking students how they go about making judgments about
what to believe about an event that they did not witness first-hand. What about when there are
conflicting reports of what happened or why it happened? How do they determine which
accounts are more trustworthy? How do they handle accounts that contradict each other?

2. Explain to students that today they will be working on thinking critically when it comes to their
history textbooks. Distribute the student handout “Challenging the Power and Authority of
the History Textbook” which can be found in Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 11).
Read the quote aloud and then give students a chance to puzzle over it and answer the
questions on the handout individually. After students have had some time to work with the
quote, open it up to a large class discussion to come to a consensus on both the meaning of
the quote and the author’s point of view on whether textbooks are the best way to learn about
history. Throughout the discussion, push students to provide EVIDENCE for their assertions.

Teacher Note: This is may be a challenging quote for students both in terms of vocabulary and
ideas. The questions provided are designed to help them walk through it. However, they will

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likely need your help decoding it, but allow them a chance to try it for themselves first. Having
students try it in pairs first is also an option, if you determine it’s too challenging for them to try it
on their own.

3. Remind students that historians use both primary and secondary sources to understand the
past. They organize, analyze, and use evidence to support and corroborate (validate) historical
narratives and arguments. Distribute the handout “A Textbook Account of the Battle of
Lexington” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 11) (or find a similar section
in your district’s American history book on the same topic). As a quick background to this
event, remind students that in the 1770s, tensions between colonists and British continued to
escalate. By 1774, the colonists had begun to organize and train militias. The Battle of
Lexington, on April 19, 1775, is considered the first battle of the American Revolution. Then,
have students read the textbook selection and write their answers the following questions:
 What evidence does the author provide to prove that the British commander ordered the
minutemen to leave? How could we find out if this is true?
 What evidence does the author provide that the colonists began to move out without laying
down their muskets? How could we find out if this is true?
 The author is writing about a period many years ago. How do we know the dates are
accurate? How do you think the author determined the date of the Battle of Lexington?
 The author claims that the Battle of Lexington lasted only 15 minutes. What proof does the
author provide? How do we know this is true?
 What questions does this passage raise for you about the Battle of Lexington? For
example, what do you think is the significance of the Battle of Lexington? What do you think
it means that the colonists began to move out without laying down their muskets? Who do
you think fired the first shot?

Engage the class in a discussion using the questions above as a guide. After you investigate
these questions, it should be clear that this passage is insufficient for investigating the Battle of
Lexington. Some of its shortcomings include: a lack of evidence, lack of historical argument, no
explanation as to the significance of this battle, vague descriptions of the actors’ behavior, no
investigation of the actors’ motives, etc.

4. Next, explain that you will model historical reading skills of two primary documents related to
the Battle of Lexington, which will provide more information about this historical event (but all of
the students’ questions will probably STILL not be answered). Then put “Document A: Barker
Document,” which can be found in Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 11), on the
overhead for students to read along with while you model a think-aloud. Explain to students
that you are going to model the historical thinking one should do when investigating an
historical argument.

Here is one example of the cognitive modeling you might provide in your think-aloud of
“Document A: Barker Document”:
First thing I want to do is look at the source. I see here that it was a diary by a British soldier
written on April 19. I know from the textbook that this is the day of the battle. I wonder if he
actually wrote this on the day of the battle; probably not. We’ve all back-dated our diary entries.
..

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“Wading through a long stream”: As I read I want to contextualize or imagine the setting. This
makes me realize that the soldiers were probably cold, wet, and tired. I bet they were jumpy
and nervous when they saw minutemen on the Green.
“200 to 300”: That’s a lot of minutemen. Did the textbook say how many minutemen? It could
be that he just imagined there were a lot of people there. . . (What you say here depends on
whether the textbook differed in its account).
“They fired”: He makes it clear that the colonists fired first. I wonder if he’s telling the truth. It
could be that he’s trying to cover his back. If this battle ended up starting the war, there’s
definitely going to be an investigation into who fired first.

5. Then put the second document overhead, “Document B: Mulliken” which can be found in
Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 11). Lead the class in a discussion of the document,
using the questions below from the handout “Examining a Primary Source”, which can be
found in Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 11). Teacher Note: The site “Historical
Thinking Matters” has a clip of an historian sourcing, contextualizing, close reading, and
corroborating both primary documents in a think-aloud. Go to:
http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/why/ and watch the video “Why Historical Thinking Matters.”
 Sourcing: Before reading the body of the document, consider a document’s
attribution--both its author and how the document came into being.
What kind of document is this? Why was it written? Do you trust it more or less than
a diary entry? When was this written (a long or short time after the event)? Who
wrote this? Whose side does this document represent (what is the author’s point of
view)? What do you predict they will say?
 Context/ Imagine the Setting: After reading through the document, situate the
document and events it reports into time and place.
What story do the minutemen tell? What about this particular setting would have
influenced their behavior and perspective?
 Close reading: While you are reading, pay close attention to the types of claims,
language and evidence the author uses/doesn’t use.
What claims does the author make? What evidence does the author use to support
the claims? What information does the author leave out? What words or phrases
does the author use to convince me that he/she is right? What is the significance of
the phrase “to our knowledge?”
 Corroboration: After you are done reading both documents, cross-check them.
How does the Mulliken document differ from Barker’s account? How can we account
for any differences between the accounts? Which pieces of evidence are most
believable? Which are questionable? Overall, which account do you find more
reliable? Why? Are there any facts that both accounts agree on? How do both of
these accounts compare with the textbook’s account of the Battle of Lexington?

Teacher Note: Students should arrive at the conclusion that the only thing we know for sure,
based on BOTH accounts, is that the minutemen were dispersed and running. They did NOT
“stand their ground”.

6. Have students write reflectively in their “Reflections on the Past” notebook in response to the
following questions in preparation for Step 8 (A Fishbowl Discussion):
• Using the example of the Battle of Lexington from class today, explain in detail how using

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ONLY a textbook limits our understanding of the past. Provide evidence and explain how
the evidence supports your claim.
• By interrogating sources rather than accepting their conclusions as fact, what more did we
learn about the events at Lexington? How is our understanding STILL limited?
• In what other areas of your life should you avoid accepting what is said as fact and employ
similar questioning strategies that we did today? In what ways do history textbooks actually
DISCOURAGE students from being critical and ENCOURAGE memorization?
• Do you think that there might be other instances in which textbooks are inaccurate or
incomplete? Explain.
• How should we approach the use of our textbook in this World History class?

7. Prepare students to engage in a fishbowl discussion (see Step 8 below), by surfacing

characteristics of good discussions. Begin by asking students what makes a good small group
discussion. Since this is the first formal small group discussion, it is worthwhile to take some
class time to set the ground rules. Have students propose several rules for small group
discussions and identify several that the class should follow. Some examples may include: do
not interrupt; only one person speaks at a time; listen to what others are saying; try not to
repeat comments unless you are adding to them or challenging them, etc. Conclude this step
by explaining to students what a fishbowl discussion is. In a fishbowl, a small group of students
sit in the center of the room (the fish) engaging in a substantive discussion about a specific
topic (the questions from Step 6 will be used in this case). Only the students in the center small
group (the fish) are allowed to speak. Meanwhile the remaining students (the bowl) are
configured in an outer circle facing the inner group. Their job is to listen to the conversation,
take notes on the handout (see Step 8), and decide when to join the inner circle discussion.
Students join the inner circle by “tapping out” a student from inner circle who has made at least
one contribution, and replaces them. The tapped student leaves the inner circle for the time
being, and takes the empty seat in the outer circle. Students in the inner circle cannot leave
until they are “tapped out”. Students can return to the inner circle throughout the discussion. It
is important that student demonstrate courtesy and respect for their classmates by following the
rules set by the class. Model of a classroom fishbowl

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8. To conduct the fishbowl, arrange the classroom with four seats in the center of the room and
the remainder of the seats around the perimeter of the inner circle. Post the questions in the
room for all participants to reference during the discussion. Also be sure to post the class rules
for small group discussions. Prior to the discussion, distribute the handout “Fishbowl
Discussion: Challenging Our History Textbook” located in the Supplemental Materials (Unit
1, Lesson 11) to students. Review the questions with the class and the scoring rubric at the
bottom of the page. Explain that since there are six questions, the class will address them one
at a time and in order, spending no more than 8 minutes on each question. The teacher should
monitor the progress through each question, moving students along when the conversation
seems exhausted or when the allotted time has expired. Select four volunteers to begin the
discussion of the first question by occupying the inner circle. Encourage students on the
outside of the fishbowl to join in the discussion by tapping and replacing students from the inner
group. At the end of the fishbowl, have students conduct the self-evaluation at the bottom of
the handout. Teachers can compare students’ self-evaluations with their own assessment of
student performance.

Teacher Note: For students absent during the fishbowl, an alternative assignment may be
given that requires students to:
• Write a brief paper that lays out your arguments and addresses counter-arguments.
• Present your arguments to the class orally in a short presentation. Be prepared to
answer questions.

Assessment
Have students re-write the original textbook excerpt about Lexington, telling offering a more
complex account than the textbook. Students should use the primary documents to provide
evidence for their ideas.

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Reference Section
Content Expectations:
7-H1.2.1: Explain how historians use a variety of sources to explore the past (e.g., artifacts,
primary and secondary sources including narratives, technology, historical maps,
visual/mathematical quantitative data, radiocarbon dating, DNA analysis).

7-H1.2.2: Read and comprehend a historical passage to identify basic factual knowledge and
the literal meaning by indicating who was involved, what happened, where it
happened, what events led to the development, and what consequences or
outcomes followed.

7- H1.2.3: Identify a point of view (perspective of the author) and context when reading and
discussing primary and secondary sources.

7 – H1.2.4: Compare and evaluate competing historical perspectives about the past based on
proof.

7 – H1.2.5: Describe how historians use methods of inquiry to identify cause/effect relationships
in history noting that many have multiple causes.

Common Core State Standards

RH.6-8.1: Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources.

RH.6-8.2: Determine the main ideas or information of a primary or a secondary source;

provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or
opinions.

RH.6-8.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including
vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.

RH.6-8.5: Describe how a text presents information (e.g., sequentially, comparatively,

causally).

RH.6-8.6: Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author’s point of view or purpose (e.g.,
loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).

RH.6-8.8: Distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.

RH.6-8.9: Analyze the relationship between a primary and secondary source on the same
topic.

WHST.6-8.1: Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content.

b. Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant, accurate data and evidence
that demonstrate an understanding of the topic or text, using credible sources.

WHST.6-8.4: Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and
style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.
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WHST.6-8.9: Draw evidence from informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

WHST.6-8.10: Write routinely over extended time frames (time for reflection and revision) and
shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific
tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Instructional Resources
Equipment/Manipulative
Overhead projector or Document Camera/Projector
Student journal or notebook

Teacher Resource
Bloom, Amy, Kimberly Hase, and Stacie Woodward. Supplemental Materials (Unit 1, Lesson 11).
Teacher-made materials. Oakland Schools, 2012.

“Why Historical Thinking Matters.” Historical Thinking Matters. 6 August 2012

<http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/why/> (Offers a module that illustrates HOW historians
go about the work of historical inquiry. Based on conflicting sources on the Battle of
Lexington.)

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Graphic Organizer

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Big Idea Card

Big Ideas of Lesson 11, Unit 1

• Historians investigate problems about the past, make claims about what
happened, and support their claims with evidence.

• The textbooks provide a narrative of the past, allowing students to read

about a broad range of historical events, but have several limitations.

• Some of the limitations of history textbooks include that they: oversimplify

complex events; offer limited evidence, historical arguments, and
perspectives; and tend to ignore motives.
• History textbooks often fail to show the investigative nature of history and
tend to make historical outcomes seem ‘inevitable’.
• When examining sources, it is important to source, contextualize, closely
read, and corroborate accounts of the same event in order to get a more
accurate picture of the past.

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Word Cards

Word Cards from previous lessons needed for this lesson:

 Representation – Word Card #1 from Lesson 1
 Account - Word Card #7 from Lesson 1
 Perspective/Point of View – Word Card #9 from Lesson 2
 Historical Event - Word Card #11 from Lesson 3
 Historical Account – Word Card #12 from Lesson 3
 History – Word Card #13 from Lesson 3
 Historian – Word Card #14 from Lesson 3
 Interpretation - Word Card #15 from Lesson 3
 Corroborate -- Word Card #16 from Lesson 4
 Evidence -- Word Card #17 from Lesson 4
 Primary Sources – Word Card #18 from Lesson 4
 Secondary Sources – Word Card #19 from Lesson 4
 Internal Consistency – Word Card #22 from Lesson 4
 External Consistency - Word Card #23 from Lesson 4
 Sourcing - Word Card #25 from Lesson 5
 Argument - Word Card #52 from Lesson 10
 Narrative – Word Card #53 from Lesson 10

54
motive

a person’s
reason for
doing
something,
especially
one that is hidden or not obvious

Example: Sam’s motive in helping his mom

with the yard work was so that she would be
more willing to let him stay out past his curfew
that night.
(SS070111)

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Challenging the Power and Authority of the History Textbook

Read the following quote and then thoughtfully answer the questions that follow.

History’s complexity requires us to encounter multiple voices. A single voice

can spellbind us with gripping narrative. But “history” has at its root the Greek
[word historein ]: to inquire. True inquiry admits no easy answers. The
textbook achieves its synthetic harmony only by squelching discordant
notes.1

1. What do you think is the main idea of this quote?

2. What does it mean that history is complex? What does it mean to encounter ‘multiple voices’
when studying history?

3. The author warns we can be spellbound with a gripping narrative. What does it mean to be
spellbound? Why is it undesirable to be spellbound when studying history?

4. The word history is based on the Greek word which means ‘to inquire.’ What does it mean to
inquire? What does it mean that there are no easy answers in true inquiry?

5. What do you think the author means by the last sentence?

6. Judging from this quote, is it more likely that the author agrees or disagrees with the following
statement? Support your answer with evidence.
“Textbooks are the best way for students to learn about history.”

1Wineburg, Sam. “Opening up the Textbook: And Offering Students a ‘Second Voice.’” Education Week. (2007). Vol.
26, Issue 39, Pages 28-29.

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A Textbook Account of the Battle of Lexington

By the morning of April 19, 1775, the king's troops reached Lexington. As they
neared the town, they saw 70 minutemen drawn up in lines on the village
green. The British commander ordered the minutemen to leave, and the
colonists began to move out without laying down their muskets. Then
someone fired, and the British soldiers sent a volley of shots into the
departing militia. Eight minutemen were killed and ten more wounded, but
only one British soldier was injured. The Battle of Lexington lasted only 15
minutes.
----Textbook Account of the Battle of Lexington, p. 101 (Danzer, et al., 2003, The
Americans. Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell).

1. What evidence does the author provide to prove that the British commander ordered the
minutemen to leave? How could we find out if this is true?

2. What evidence does the author provide that the colonists began to move out without laying
down their muskets? How could we find out if this is true?

3. The author is writing about a period many years ago. How do we know the dates are accurate?
How do you think the author determined the date of the Battle of Lexington?

4. The author claims that the Battle of Lexington lasted only 15 minutes. What proof does the
author provide? How do we know this is true?

5. What questions does this passage raise for you about the Battle of Lexington? For example,
what do you think is the significance of the Battle of Lexington? What do you think it means
that the colonists began to move out without laying down their muskets? Who do you think
fired the first shot?

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Document A: Barker (Modified)

19th. At 2 o’clock we began our march by wading through

a very long stream up to our middles. About 5 miles away
from a town called Lexington, we heard there were some
hundreds of people collected together intending to oppose
us. At 5 o’clock we arrived there and saw a number of
people, I believe between 200 and 300, formed in a
common in the middle of the town. We still continued
advancing, prepared for an attack though without intending
to attack them. As we came near them, they fired one or
two shots, upon which our men without any orders, fired
and put them to flight. We then formed on the Common,
but with some difficulty, the men were so wild they could
hear no orders; we waited a considerable time there, and
at length proceeded on our way to Concord.

Source: Entry for April 19th, 1775, from the diary of

Lieutenant John Barker, an officer in the British army.

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Document B: Mulliken (Modified)

We Nathaniel Mulliken, Philip Russell, (Followed by the

names of 32 other men present on Lexington Green on
April 19, 1775)...All of lawful age, and inhabitants of
Lexington...do testify and declare, that on the nineteenth of
April, about five o’clock in the morning, we proceeded
towards the Green, and saw a large body of troops
marching towards us. Some of our men were coming to
the Green, and others had reached it, at which time, they
began to disperse. While our backs were turned on the
British troops, they fired on us, and a number of our men
were instantly killed and wounded, not a gun was fired by
any person in our company on the British soldiers to our
knowledge before they fired on us, and continued firing
until we had all made our escape.
Lexington, April 25, 1775.

Source: Sworn by 34 minutemen on April 25 before three

Justices of the Peace.

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7th Grade Social Studies SS070111
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 11

Examining a Primary Source

Use the following historical habits of mind and guiding questions to examine the primary document
Mulliken.

Sourcing: Before reading the body of the document, consider a document’s attribution--
both its author and how the document came into being.
What kind of document is this? Why was it written? Do you trust it more or less than a diary
entry? When was this written (a long or short time after the event)? Who wrote this? Whose
side does this document represent (what is the author’s point of view)? What do you predict
they will say?

Context/ Imagine the Setting: After reading through the document, situate the document
and events it reports into time and place.
What story do the minutemen tell? What about this particular setting would have influenced
their behavior and perspective?

Close reading: While you are reading, pay close attention to the types of claims, language
and evidence the author uses/doesn’t use.
What claims does the author make? What evidence does the author use to support the
claims? What information does the author leave out? What words or phrases does the
author use to convince me that he/she is right? What is the significance of the phrase “to our
knowledge?”

Corroboration: After you are done reading the documents, cross-check them.
How does the Mulliken document differ from Barker’s account? How can we account for any
differences between the accounts? Which pieces of evidence are most believable? Which
are questionable? Overall, which account do you find more reliable? Why? Are there any
facts that both accounts agree on? How do both of these accounts compare with the
textbook’s account of the Battle of Lexington?

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August 6, 2012
7th Grade Social Studies SS070111
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 11

Fishbowl Discussion: Challenging Our History Textbook

During the fishbowl take notes on specific points made by your classmates:
Using the example of the Battle of Lexington from By interrogating sources rather than accepting
class today, explain in detail how using ONLY a their conclusions as fact, what more did we learn
textbook limits our understanding of the past. about the events at Lexington? How is our
Provide evidence. understanding STILL limited?

In what other areas of your life should you avoid In what ways do history textbooks actually
accepting what is said as fact and employ similar DISCOURAGE students from being critical and
questioning strategies that we did today? ENCOURAGE memorization?

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August 6, 2012
7th Grade Social Studies SS070111
Unit 1: An Introduction to World History Lesson 11

Do you think that there might be other instances How should we approach the use of our textbook
in which textbooks are inaccurate or incomplete? in this World History class?
Explain.

The Points: Participation in today’s fishbowl is worth up to 10 points. When the fishbowl is over,
please fill out the rubric below to assess your participation:

___/2 Contributes quality, detailed, well-informed information/points to the discussion and is

clearly well-prepared

___/2 Offers appropriate and effective responses to other points made during the discussion

___/2 Listens actively, reflects, and analyzes comments from other students while in the
fishbowl

___/2 Conducts self in a respectful manner and does not interrupt others (and is silent when
not in the fishbowl).

___/2 Takes quality notes (above) during the discussion

SUBTRACT one point for each time you talked while not “a fish” in the fishbowl.

Total: ______/10

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August 6, 2012