Analyzing Primary and Secondary Sources in a Middle School History Class

♪[theme music] >>teacher: So what we're gonna look at today is Alexander is as we're going to read in the first line, one of the most famous people in history. And we are going to determine, is Alexander worthy of the title Alexander the Great? Or by today's standards would we consider him not so great.

Now in order to do that, we're not just-in order to do that you have to have evidence to back up your claim. You can't just make an argument. If I just said, the sun is purple, do I have any evidence to support that?

>>class: No. >>teacher: No. So I need some evidence to prove it or its probably not true.

So if we are going make an argument. . .

If we're going to make an argument, then we need to make sure we have evidence to back it up. The standard we were working on-uh we were studying ancient Greece and one of our standards covers Alexander the Great and his spread of Greek culture and his achievements. And then the Common Core standard I was focusing on was citing textual evidence.

And I really wanted students to be able to look at the documents about Alexander. And take those documents and then be able to find information from it and cite their source. So come up with an argument about Alexander the Great and cite evidence to prove their point.

So we are going to be going through some different primary and secondary sources to look at whether or not Alexander truly is great. Now, let's recap what primary and secondary sources are. Jose and I get into a fight.

Kiarra and Bryson they witness the fight. They're the only two people there. Jade, Joshua, Allen-Uh Kiarra and Bryson go tell Jade, Joshua, Allen who go and tell Miss West.

Ok? So they go tell all these different people. Who in that situation is the primary source?

Who are the people who were actually-actually saw the event first hand? Who's the primary sources? Yeah?

>>student: Bryson and Kiarra. >>teacher: Bryson and Kiarra. Who else is a primary source?

So on the first day uh-we looked at background information about Alexander to kind of give them context for the documents that they were going to be reviewing. Um and then we started with one document to break it down so they could see how their supposed to look at that document. What are the parts of a primary and secondary source?

Um and just give them things to think about when they were going to look at the rest of the documents. Let's get some background on Alexander. Now, on your document we're going to make a little key.

As we read this document, we are going to highlight anything that is good that shows good leadership qualities that show Alexander is great, we are going to highlight that in green. So on your paper write green good. You can just write green and good.

Ok? Or good and green. So I had the students highlight different colors in the document because later students were going to be using that document again to make their arguments so I wanted them to be able to quickly find information about Alexander.

So as they read, I had them highlight in yellow negative actions of Alexander and highlight in green positives. so again when they review the documents later, it clearly pops out at them. Oh, ok, this is something he did, this might relate to the argument or the claim that I am going to make about him.

With a start like this, Alexander developed rather high opinion of himself including the grow-growing belief that he himself was a god. Ok, so let's look at that paragraph. Is there anything positive or negative that we learn about Al-Alexander in that section.

Something good or bad. Yeah. Tate?

>>Tate: He's full of himself. >>teacher: Why do we say-why do you say that? >>Tate: Because he thinks he's a god.

>>teacher: Ok. So what color would we highlight that section, that line? Yeah, bad.

Kinda got a big ego. . .

full of himself. So we would highlight that, the part where it says, growing belief that he himself was a god. That's kind of a negative about him.

Right? So first, I read the document with them, highlighted some key points to it. So that if there were things I knew they wouldn't understand, I kind of gave them the background on that information.

And then I had them look at the documents again. This time looking for positives and negatives about Alexander's personality or actions or related to the events that took place in the document. So that way they were now looking through it again themselves.

Uh, there were also questions at the bottom of each document, so the students pored through those documents a third time just to find the answers to that question. So before we even got to making judgments about Alexander, the students had looked through the documents multiple times to really get the background. There's different sources and different companies that have actually put together documents for middle school aged students.

Uh so I chose some that they had provided and then I found a few more that other- other sources put together. Um those particular documents were good because they showed both sides of Alexander so all of the documents had some positives about him and some negatives. So it allowed students to see that in most historical events it's-it's not one-sided.

Your claim that your group has is on a Q and R code on the top of your box. Your group is going to get one iPad between-for every two people. So these guys will share.

They'll share. And your gonna scan this to get the claim. After you scan it, the first thing you need to do is, as a group, go through the documents and discuss what facts could we use to argue that this is true.

Now there might be five or six pieces of evidence. I want you to find the best two. Ok, find the best two pieces of evidence that supports that claim.

So the second half of the lesson, I wanted students to actually find evidence to support different claims. And um-if you have students just make their own claims then they're just gonna find a few things about it and not really look at the documents that close. So I gave them six claims that I came up with.

And students had- three of them were positive, three of them were negative. So students had to um find the claim and then they had to go through as a group and look through their documents a fourth time now and find evidence to support that information. So um that way, they were talking to each other about the work.

They were again reviewing the documents and finding information to support their claim. Uh, that way it also it's really important-students really like to tell you their opinion. Um by making them cite evidence from the text, it knocks out the opinion and it makes it completely um document-based.

>>student: What other counter arguments could we use? Maybe on document. .

. let's see, it's about the maps. .

. >>student 2: Or maybe he saved all those people? >>student 1: Yeah-he saved a lot of people!

>>student 2: Or he saved all those people in the battle. >>student 1: Yeah, he saved a lot of people, so that does-uh say he has a big ego. Wait, that doesn't mean he has a big ego-self centered.

He was self-centered because he was like-like. . .

He was. . .

>>student 2: No how he ISN'T self-centered. >>student 1: It doesn't say that, it says Alexander had a big ego and was self-centered. >>student 2: For counter argument.

>>student 1: Oh for counter argument. >>student 1: That's a good one. Let's put that one down.

>>teacher: At the end of the activity, I made a wall here of all the sticky notes. And I had them put them in order of different pieces of evidence. And I wanted to show them that some pieces of evidence are a lot more obvious.

And if you're trying to convince someone you want to point out the things-the pieces of evidence that are best going to support your answer. And so while you might be able to find a lot of textual evidence to support different claims, some pieces of evidence are more important than others. Middle school students are a little squirrely, so I like to incorporate technology into activities even if it's a simple scanning a QR code getting information.

I also like to give students an opportunity to move around um physically. It just helps them focus more to be able to get that energy out and then move on to the next table. Um it's also just kind fun and exciting for them.

So I think I get a little more buy-in when the students are enjoying what they're doing. So, let's look at the evidence you guys came up that proves Alexander was a military genius. So let's scoot these up.

. . So one fact that someone gave.

. . was that Alexander won his battles and he conquered a lot of lands.

So from document A it showed all the land he conquered. So, so far we have that one right here about conquering a lot of land that's proof that he's a genius. So here's what we're going to do now, we are going to debate.

. . Alexander is great or not great-WAS.

We should use the past tense; he's no longer alive. So was Alexander great or was he not great? But when we debate, I want to make sure that you're using the appropriate sentence structure and appropriate words when we're debating.

Okay? So what we're going to do right now is we're going to take a little bit of time and and we're going to go through these sentences and how you might say them. In a debate, or in any situation where students are going to be giving extended pieces of information I think sentence frames are really helpful for students because a lot of time they will have the information, the content, but actually putting that in a nice academic package is rather difficult for them.

Alright, now let's try the other side. Alexander was not great because he slaughtered thousands. >>class: Alexander was not great because he slaughtered thousands.

>>teacher: Okay. Evidence of this can be found in document A. >>class: Evidence of this can be found.

. . >>teacher: So the last day of the activity we did a mini debate with the students.

So with this debate I have the students form two lines and I have one student step forward in the middle um as the speaker. Um I do it that way so that one, it's clearly identifiable who's speaking and two, it gets all the students to focus on that one. And to kind of learn some of the PBiS skills of listening to one another and being polite, and things like that.

>>student: Alexander was not a great-Alexander was not great because he kind of had a big ego and was self centered. And evidence can be found in Document A where it says he had a lot of cities named after him. >>teacher: Ok.

Does anyone want to respond? >>student 2: Ok, so for evidence that I disagree with that is in Document E where he dumped the water because he wanted to be equal with all the men. If he had a big ego he would like-if he had a big ego-um he just wanted to um-to like drink it for himself like he didn't.

He dumped it so he could be equal. >>teacher: Alright, and after someone agrees. .

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