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Special Section: History Matters
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Using History Matters with a Ninth Grade Class
David Kobrin
Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School, Rockville, Maryland
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WANDER AROUND the computer lab watching my ninth grade class, all
of whom appear absorbed by what they are discovering on the Internet.
Even the sometimes frustrating hunt for new information seems to
fascinate them. Occasionally one student calls across the room to
another when she stumbles on a new site that might be helpful to
someone else. Or students ask me for help in making sense of what
they are finding, or in determining whether a site is trustworthy,
or in searching for sources on their topic. It's like a community
of scholars, I think, except that they are ninth graders in a United
States history class in a Jewish Day School in Rockville, Md., all
of whom carry a double load of classes. (They must takes courses
in Jewish subjects, like Rabbinics and Bible, in addition to the
usual high school schedule.) If I forget to give a "two minute warning"
before the bell rings so that they can save, log off, and figure
out their homework for that night, they work through the bell. They
have lost track of time. It's not exactly my doing as their teacher,
much as it pleases me to create projects and watch them learn. It's
the Internet; and sites like www.historymatters.gmu.edu
that help make the Internet safe and accessible for ninth graders. |
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When there is a limit on the amount
of information available in a classroom, the students need to depend
on the teacher as the master of information. Conversely, when accurate
information is widely available, conveniently organized, and easily
accessed, then the nature of the learning that takes place can resemble
more what the AHA now advocates: students learn by "doing" history.
Given a structure and guidance, students can generate their own
questions based on their analysis of the historical record, and
then form conclusions that they validate by the data that they analyzed.
They can construct history—and know that's what they've done,
and why. |
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But the information must be accurate,
organized and accessible. For this reason, I have found History
Matters most helpful as a portal sight. It is, along with www.loc.gov
and www.nara.gov, the place where
the students begin. Search engines such as Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, and
Google! can turn up hundreds of sights in response to a query about,
say, the role of entrepreneurs, or immigrants, or those enslaved,
1790-1865. Those sites, however, have not necessarily been vetted
by historians. History Matters, on the other hand, is safe,
secure, informative and always accurate. I tell students in my United
States history classes that any site they find listed on History
Matters, or any site that they can reach through a link from
a site they reached through History Matters (and so on down
the line), is valid and usable. Furthermore, History Matters
includes descriptions of what can be found at the linked site. When
high schoolers slow down enough to read carefully, these can be
a great resource. |
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My favorite example of a project from
my classroom that used History Matters as the enabler for
effective Internet use is a ninth grade United States history class,
a class that insisted on following its own interests wherever that
led. We were discussing Hamilton's plan to establish the credit
of the United States after the Revolutionary War. Students were
genuinely puzzled about how borrowing more—increasing the national
debt—could improve the nation's credit. When, eventually, I
attempted to bring the class back to our scheduled work, they wanted
to know why we couldn't continue to learn about what interested
them. The eventual result was an open ended unit that depended in
significant ways on the students' interests to define our studies.
We decided to investigate the contributions to the nation of a variety
of "groups" that we identified as important to the "development"
of the United States, 1800–1860. These groups included inventors
and entrepreneurs; slaves in the South; immigrant laborers; women;
and political leaders. The class worked collaboratively. They began
by collecting information for oral presentations to each other.
That way everyone would learn what others had uncovered. This was
followed by a structured (and graded) debate on the question, "Who
Built America? 1800–1860." Finally, the class was divided into
work groups (see below) to create an interactive website that would
allow visitors to explore the historical questions that the class
had raised. |
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The kids needed accurate information
even though they were not entirely sure what they were looking for.
In this situation, History Matters was especially helpful.
It allowed them safely to surf the Internet, roaming around in secondary
and primary sources. They could locate information, read it, put
it into a growing context for their subject, or abandon it and move
on when they lost interest. For example, in the project "Who Built
America? 1800–1865," a student began by investigating the role
that slaves played in "building" the American economy during the
first half of the nineteenth century, only to discover that what
she was really researching was the role of all those who contributed
to economic development disproportionately to what they received
as compensation. Her topic expanded to include, among others, the
contributions of immigrant married women whose work at home may
have made possible the payment of subsistence wages to male factory
workers, thus allowing the accumulation of capital. Without such
a portal as History Matters, I, as the teacher would have
had to establish the basic questions and provide a limited number
of materials that, in my view, would answer the questions posed.
With the aid of History Matters, it became possible for students
in my ninth grade class to follow their own leads wherever their
research led them—even before they were entirely sure what
they were studying. They developed questions based on their perusal
of almost unlimited information. These questions then oriented their
continuing search for more information. And their conclusions were
validated by the accurate historical information that they found
on the Internet. |
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For the project "Who Built America?
1800–1865," the questions that the ninth grade students raised,
developed and responded to eventually were turned into a website.
You can visit the website at http://members.aol.com/nachamon. It
also can be accessed through our school's website, www.cesjds.org
(under "Student Projects"). The "rubrics" included below—the
criteria by which to judge—will help you understand how the
class was taught to do this activity. As many of you are aware,
in high schools rubrics are often used both as directions for an
activity and as a model of what the completed work should look like
when it meets the teacher's expectations. That way students "work
to high expectations" rather than "working to the test" (although
the rubric also sets the criteria for evaluation). For our ninth
grade project, the class was divided into three collaborative groups.
The "Web Masters" held primary responsibility for developing the
website. The "Archivists" principal assignment was to find appropriate
primary sources. The "Writers" needed to address the historically
significant issues and questions that the class's research had raised.
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Rubrics for the Three Groups Working on the
"Who Built America?" Interactive Website
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Web Masters: |
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An "A" site... |
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- Will be free of all commercial advertising.
- Will be "user friendly" so that users can easily make their
way around the site; it will include a site map and links to
a search engine.
- Will be interactive; that is, hyper-linked.
- Will be well suited to the materials produced by the rest
of the 9H class for this project.
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Archivists: |
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An "A" project... |
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- Will include appropriate and historically accurate primary
sources and artifacts, arranged and presented on the website
so that they pose questions (or raise issues).
- Will allow visitors to the website to use the primary sources
on the website to respond to the questions or issues raised
by the sources.
- Will be diverse as to sub-topics within the larger subject
(Who Built America?).
- Will be diverse as to type; for example, census tables, pictures,
diaries, newspaper accounts.
- Will have citations, as necessary, to any materials that have
been found in other locations and therefore require citations.
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Writers: |
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An "A" text... |
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- Will address interesting and historically significant issues
and questions that you raise in the Web text and then respond
to in the Web text.
- Will have all statements and conclusions supported by references
to specific, accurate historical details.
- Will have citations, as necessary, to any materials that have
been found in other locations and therefore require citations.
- Will include at least some interactive elements; for example,
giving the reader choices about where to go next; or, an interactive
quiz as part of the text.
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For All Groups: |
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- Will work cooperatively with the other groups in the class.
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Arguing that a new technology can
radically change the way students learn is a mistake that has been
made often in the past. This time, however, with the Internet, I
believe that we have the possibility of something radically different.
And www.historymatters.gmu.edu
is one reason why genuinely new possibilities are becoming reality
in high school classrooms. |
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