I came across this lesson on the Stanford History Education Group website and thought it was a great way to teach historical perspective and bias. The lesson basically gets students to think about how history is constructed by considering the different accounts from witnesses of a lunchroom fight.
I modified the lesson a bit for my own purposes by actually writing out fictional transcripts for the fight from different student perspectives. I like the activity because it gives students very concrete examples of bias and perspective. Students can see how witness accounts can be unreliable and this leads to a great discussion about evaluating sources for credibility. The lesson works well at the start of the year to get students thinking about how difficult it truly is for historians to piece the past together.
Here are the resources I created for the lesson. Feel free to use them or modify them.
Student Interviews
Student Observation Form
No comments:
Post a Comment