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History Lessons

Reading Like a Historian

The Reading Like a Historian curriculum engages students in historical inquiry. Each lesson revolves around a central historical question and features a set of primary documents designed for groups of students with a range of reading skills.

This curriculum teaches students how to investigate historical questions by employing reading strategies such as sourcing, contextualizing, corroborating, and close reading. Instead of memorizing historical facts, students evaluate the trustworthiness of multiple perspectives on historical issues and learn to make historical claims backed by documentary evidence. To learn more about how to use Reading Like a Historian lessons, watch these videos about how teachers use these materials in their classrooms.

Click here for a complete list of Reading Like a Historian lessons, and click here for a complete list of materials available in Spanish.

Topic

  • U.S. History (45)
  • (-) World History (14)

Time Period

  • Before 500 BCE (3)
  • 500 BCE - 1 CE (7)
  • 1 CE - 500 CE (4)
  • 500 CE - 1300 CE (4)
  • (-) 1300s (4)
  • 1400s (1)
  • 1500s (8)
  • (-) 1600s (3)
  • (-) 1700s (2)
  • (-) 1800s (4)
  • 1900s (18)
Portrait of Mansa Musa in the Catalan Atlas. From the Wikimedia Commons.

Mansa Musa

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Image: 13th-century illustration of pilgrims on a Hajj produced in Baghdad by al-Wasiti. From the Wikimedia Commons.

Ibn Battuta

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Image: Illustration from Pestbuch by Hieronymous Brunschwig, 1500. From the Library of Congress.

Understanding the Black Death

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Image: The first surviving depiction of Florence, a fresco created in 1342 by Bernardo Daddi. From the Wikimedia Commons.

The Black Death in Florence

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Image: Print of Galileo by Samuel Sartain from painting by Wyatt, date unknown. From the Library of Congress. In 1633, scientist Galileo Galilei was convicted of heresy by the Inquisition. He was forced to recant his beliefs and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. Students may be surprised to learn Galileo's crime: teaching the sun, rather than the earth, is at the center of the solar system. In this lesson, students explore three primary sources and one New York Times article to answer the quest

Galileo

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Image: 1790 Diagram of a ship from the Atlantic slave trade. From the Wikimedia Commons.

The Middle Passage

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Image: Artistic depiction of William and Mary from c. 1689.

The Glorious Revolution

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Image: A painting by Pierre-Antoine de Machy illustrating an execution by guillotine, 1807. From the Wikimedia Commons.

Reign of Terror

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Image: Illustration of Steelworks at Barrow-in-Furness made in 1877 or earlier. From the Wikimedia Commons.

Factory Life

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Pagination

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