Ruggles: Homeschool history ideas for tired parents

Well, the 2020 school year is in session. Many parents are finding themselves in the position of homeschooling for the first time. As a parent myself, I understand how intimidating it can be to keep your child safe, fed, clean, educated and entertained when learning from home.

Since history is an essential subject in curriculum for all ages, I thought I would switch gears from my usual audience and speak to the parents who all of a sudden find themselves in the teacher’s chair. I hope this might give parents some aid in creating historical lessons and projects for your kiddos. The good news is, pretty much all of the exercises I have written about thus far in my column can be adapted for K-12 social studies lessons. For reference, you will find them all posted on my website: sarajaneruggles.com under the Social Media tab.

Today I am going to share one of my favorite history lessons for the classroom that is based in public history investigative research. We are going to help our students recreate their own past. It is a good lesson for the beginning of the school year because it is an introduction to historical research methods, which your student will need to research topics as they go through the school year. It also introduces your student to using public history resources (resources outside of academia) and helping them understand how to decipher which sources are considered reliable.

Introduction:

On Jan. 1, 1932, the American Historical Review published an article by historian, Carl Becker, entitled: “Everyman His Own Historian”. This groundbreaking work told the story of “Mr. Everyman” and how he possessed the same basic historical research skills to retrace his footsteps as an academic historian using evidence to write about the past. He compared this concept to studying mathematical fractions by reducing them to their lowest terms in order understand them at the most basic level.

When Becker reduced history to its lowest terms, he determined that “History is the memory of things said and done.” In Becker’s article, he wrote about Mr. Everyman’s use of primary sources such as receipts, delivery notices, and daily journal entries to determine whether or not he had paid his coal bill that month.

What we are doing with our students in this lesson echoes Becker’s simplification of the historical research process and can be easily done at home. It can be adapted to most grade levels, but it is most effective for 6th – 12th grade.

Lesson Guide:

Pick a date at random that took place at least two months ago. The student’s job is to write the narrative of what they did that day and cite the sources they use to write it. Just like they would with an academic research paper.

Because the amount of activity on any certain day will vary, grade the student less on the length of their work and more on the quality of the research. Encourage your students to utilize sources such as: calendars, activities/sports schedules, social media posts, emails, books they read, letters they sent/received, receipts, news headlines, daily journals, and be sure to explore the sources you have in your own emails, calendars, and social media posts.

Ask them to write the paper in an academic format with footnotes and a bibliography. Since most historians use Chicago style formatting, you can either find online resources for formatting or go to your local library for professional consultations.

Make it fun and remember to enjoy the journey!