Thinking like a historian!

              Over the last three weeks, we have put our "Historian Hats" to good use as we've developed our Historical Thinking skills.  We have practiced "sourcing" by examining Albert Einstein's 1939 letter to President Franklin Roosevelt.  We considered Who wrote the document? What is the author's perspective? Where was it written? Why was it written? and Is it reliable? We also learned that "contextualization" ( time and place) helped us better understand a source as we questioned when and were the document was created and brainstormed how the events before and during 1939 affected the content of the Einstein's letter. We did "close reading" of the letter by identifying Einstein's claims as well as the evidence and powerful language he used to convince President Roosevelt that further action was needed when it came to developing the atomic bomb. 

Other activities that have helped to build our historian thinking skills included  "corroborating" the first and final draft of Roosevelt's "Day Which Will Live in Infamy" Speech following the attacks on Pearl Harbor.   We also "corroborated" different sources related to Japanese Internment and General Douglas MacArthur in order to answer questions like... Why were Japanese Americans interned during World War II? and What kind of Leader was General MacArthur? 

I hope that these activities have planted some important questions in your head that you will consider as you come across sources on your own throughout your research.