Reading as problem solving
Encouraging Closer Reading in World History Classrooms
Eric Beckman,
Independent Educator,
Anoka High School (on leave)
Website with links
Credit:
Anoka-Hennepin District
Secondary Reading Specialist: Dr. Julie Scullen,Literacy
Literacy Coaches: Dr. Jodie Baker, Melissa Cournia, Jeremy Parker, Kristi Romo
Aspiration:
EQ: How do we apprentice historians into this world of literacy?
Why literacy in the World History classroom?
Placemat
Strategies
Encourage close reading using shorter texts, no initial questions
Identify something for which to reading
Prereading:
Quotation mingle (Medium prep)
Image: AP, via Smithsonian Magazine
India, early 40s (Bangalore, Lahore)
Pre-reading
Possible sentences (low prep)
“A Global View of Long Late Antiquity”
100,000
Abbasid
Canal
Damaged
Easier
Initiated
Masons
Mud
Periphery
Reliable
Pre-reading
Anticipation guide (medium prep)
“The First Ayitian Revolution”
Something to think about while reading
Text rendering
While reading
Text coding (no prep)
Written discussion (low prep)
Beyond Strategies
They ask the questions
Feudal
Document
In the archive
Images: Jonathan Jarrett
What does this BEST illustrate?
Exchange Networks
Commercial Practices
Diffusion
Transportation Technology
Observe, think, wonder. Image: Met Museum
“Griots are men of the spoken word, and by the spoken word we give life to the gestures of kings. But words are nothing but words; power lies in deeds.”
- Griot Mamoudou Kouyate
Inside look: from Griot Mamoudou Kouyate
“After him (Sundiata) many kings and many Mansas* reigned over Mali and other towns sprang up and disappeared. Hajji** Mansa Moussa, of illustrious memory, beloved of God, built houses at Mecca for pilgrims coming from Mali, but the towns which he founded have all disappeared, Karanina, Bouroun-Kouna— nothing more remains of these towns. Other kings carried Mali far beyond Djata’s frontiers, for example Mansa Samanka and Fadima Moussa, but none of them came near Djata.
Maghan Sundiata was unique. In his own time no one equalled him and after him no one had the ambition to surpass him. He left his mark on Mali for all time and his taboos still guide men in their conduct.”
*Mansas = Emperors
**Muslim who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca
From Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean, Randy Browne, 2017, p. 23
Author’s claim
Sources of evidence, British people who traveled to Berbice and wrote about it
Sourcing analysis, the author (Browne) points out that the source (St. Clair) was not a worker, so he probably did not understand the lives of enslaved people
Allison Bigelow,
Mining Language
Mirror with Jaguar or Coyote Mosaic, Teotihuacan, c. 500 - 600 CE.
Source: Art Institute of Chicago
Claim or evidence?
In the Mayan region, artist authors used hematite, an oxidized iron mineral, to represent materials like blood, stones, and rain in deep-red tones.
Records from Mesoamerica confirm the presence of iron in pre-Columbian communities and its diverse uses.
Source: Allison Margaret Bigelow, scholar, Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World, 2020. 112.
Claim or evidence?
Material cultural analysis provides additional insight into the artistic use of iron metals in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.
A sixth-century mirror from Teotihuacán shows how Tolteca artisans polished the surface of a single sheet of pyrite to set in relief mythological figures like Jaguar Gods, Maize Deities, and emblems of the afterlife.
Source: Allison Margaret Bigelow, scholar, Mining Language: Racial Thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, and Colonial Metallurgy in the Early Modern Iberian World, 2020. 112.
What kind of leader was Augustus?
My…
…argument
…thinking
…writing
Evidence from…
…visuals
…written texts
…discussions
What kind of leader was Augustus?
Quote or Paraphrase
Collaborative Writing
What kind of leader was Augustus?
Sentence Starters
What kind of leader was Augustus?
Sourcing
Modeling
Which effect of the Industrialization was most significant?
My…
…argument
…thinking
…writing
Evidence from…
…visuals
…written texts
…discussions
Which effect of the Industrialization was most significant?
Sentence Starters