Colorado and U.S. History - How are people, events, and eras connected?

In all states, students typically learn about their state's history in 4th grade.  A significant component of these historical state studies students learning deeply about the people, events, eras, and ideas connected to the state over time.  As someone who loves history, it's fantastic to see teachers abandoning old ways of history instruction (read the book, complete the worksheet) to embrace the historical process (using multiple primary and secondary sources to ask questions, gather historical evidence, and draw historical conclusions). Embracing the historical process is at the heart of a thinking classroom where the teacher places the cognitive load on students and facilitates rich learning experiences.

As students learn about state history, we will always use one of the most important tools of a historian...the timeline.  In the study of state history, standards throughout the nation ask students to recognize the connection between state history and U.S. history.  This connection is crucial because it creates historical context for young students.  U.S. history is presented to students in a way where they begin to be exposed to events and eras, but not necessarily expected to remember them with great complexity.  When we expose students to the events and eras of U.S. history, the timeline becomes a crucial tool to begin seeing these relationships between state and U.S. history.  Below, I hope teachers see how they might construct a timeline with students throughout the course of a state's historical study.  Colorado is the state example that's used.  Teachers are encouraged to consider how this timeline is constructed with students (and by students) over the course of multiple weeks.

NOTE: This timeline is based on these potential connections between Colorado's history and U.S. history.

Step 1: I might create a timeline that represents the range of years for the state's history.  My Colorado example goes from the Pre-Columbian era (before Christopher Columbus) to the present.

Step 1: Create a timeline (or pair of timelines) to show events in your state's history and events in U.S. history.

Step 2: I might establish historical context based on some of the first people or events we are going to study. We are going to begin our study of Colorado with the early people, Ancestral Puebloans, Utes, and Great Plains Indians.  Because of the people and events we're going to study, to the timeline I'd add the following eras for North America and the United States: 1) the pre-Columbian era, 2) the era of European exploration, 3) the era of new European colonies and settlements in the Western hemisphere, and 4) the era when native cultures of the Western Hemisphere interact with the Europeans who have migrated. On the timeline, we'll add these early eras.  I might use shading so students begin to sense the difference between an era and an event.  It's important to note that eras might overlap, as shown on the timeline, and dates don't have to be exact.  We are providing events and eras of the United States to provide historical context.  In class, we might read a few picture books together, look at a few primary source images, and maybe watch brief videos to build this historical context for students.

Step 2: Adding early eras to the timeline.

Step 3: Be creative in adding the time for "long, long ago." In this case, I might add a notecard because it's easily folded when students store their timelines.  I added enough to the timeline to account for the earliest state history that students study.  In Colorado, students examine Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi) who lived in the Four Corners region.  

Step 3: Consider the earliest group/events/era you'll study for your state's history, and lengthen your timeline.

Step 4: Start studying some of the early people, events, or eras of the state.  Embrace the historical process (using multiple primary and secondary sources to ask questions, gather historical evidence, and draw historical conclusions). Here, I've added the people, events, and eras that we've examined. On the timeline, you see I've added an era (Ancestral Puebloans) and events (when Utes moved to the region, when Cheyenne and Arapaho moved into the Great Plains).  To the timeline ONLY, I've also added when Colorado becomes a state to provide additional historical context.  I want students to begin building their sense of time.

Step 4: Use the historical process to study the state's early people, events, and eras.
Add these to the timeline on the upper half.

Step 5: As we shift into the next portion of our study, I know we're going to examine the explorers in Colorado. Some early explorers came with the Europeans, and later explorers came after the Louisiana Purchase when people came to specifically explore the state.  Knowing this, I've added a few key events to provide context. (Jamestown and Plymouth as the first English colonies, the Declaration of Independence, and the Louisiana Purchas).  Again, we might read about these events as a class, look at a few picture books, examine a few primary sources, or watch a brief video.  The focus is not on the details of the event, but helping students to build historical context by getting the big ideas for any era or event.

Step 5: Add the next key events or eras in U.S. history.

Step 6: Study some of  the different explorers and exploration eras using the historical process (using multiple primary and secondary sources to ask questions, gather historical evidence, and draw historical conclusions). Add them to your timeline.

Step 6: The addition of explorers and exploration eras to the timeline. 

Step 7: New U.S. events and eras were added.  Look at the image to notice the events and eras that I've added.  You'll notice the addition of Westward Expansion.  While historians would argue with my approach, I've added it because I want students to understand that the Louisiana Purchase (1803), the Homestead Act (1862), and the building of the Transcontinental Railroad (1863-1869) caused two big waves of people to move west AND into Colorado.  We'll be studying the first wave to hit Colorado (trappers, traders, and mountain men) and the second wave to hit Colorado (miners, ranchers, and farmers).  Notice how I've also added the era of Native American removal.  I've added this because I want students to have a better sense of the interactions that take place between new people in Colorado and those who were inhabitants of the land for centuries. This picture shows the new events and eras for the United States and for Colorado.  

Step 7: Adding new events and eras from U.S. history. 

Step 8: Last, I've added key eras and events for U.S. and Colorado history in the 20th century.  To me, the most significant events or eras in the United States are Women's Suffrage (era), passage of the 19th Amendment (event), the Great Depression (era), and World War II (era/event). In Colorado, we are connected because we gave women the right to vote in 1893, prior to passage of the 19th Amendment. We experienced the Dust Bowl, which is connected to the Great Depression.  We also built and moved Japanese to an internment camp at Amache, which is connected to World War II.  

Step 8: Colorado and the United States in the 20th century.

Below, the finished product.  It's an incredible tool to help students keep track of people, events and eras.  The timeline can be used as a tool for inquiry into the question, "How is the history of Colorado related to the history of North America and the United States?" It can be used to have discussions with students so they see how we are connected to the past...the opportunity to see continuity and change over time.  Plus, IT'S PRETTY COOL!  The experience of making this timeline and using it with your students will change the way you look at history forever.  Good luck!

The Final Product!

If you're creating digital timelines, it's tough to get this creative. I encourage you to consider LINE.DO and the one from Red, Write, Think. 

Backwards Design and Concept-Based Assessment in "Changing Face of North America" (the colonial era)

Backwards design means that we develop the appropriate assessments for a unit of study so we can monitor the development of student learning.  Instead of creating an assessment to test what we taught, we must create assessments that assess what students are expected to know, understand, and be able to do.

As part of concept-based learning, we want to incorporate more opportunities to see if students have developed conceptual understanding.  In a 5th grade unit titled The Changing Face of North America (some districts still use the Eurocentirc title of Colonial America), students should walk away with deep understanding of social, political, and economic facets of this era. 

Colorado Academic Standards state that students should be able to explain the development of political, social and economic institutions in the British American colonies.  Notice how this standard implies deep conceptual knowledge.  A teacher can't create an assessment with fill-in-the-blank or true-false questions and come away knowing if students can EXPLAIN these ideas.

To approach this goal, consider this performance assessment that connects student understanding of political, social and economic institutions to the historical concept of continuity and change over time. 

Instead of saying, "What do I need to teach?", begin your own mental conversation by asking, "If I were the student, what learning experiences would I need to prepare me for this assessment?"  You may even go so far as to try and complete the assessment as an adult.   Once you sense the learning experiences that students need, you may have a better sense of how to construct learning in a rigorous conceptual way.  (I suggest creating concept-based timelines as a tool for students.) It may not be easy at first, but we must move beyond the days of assessment that's about regurgitating facts...we must move to assessment that causes students to use facts to explain more complex concepts.

Constructing History - Like Making Sense of a Collage

Historians agree that history is not a memorization of events, people, dates, etc.  Historians also agree that one facet of historical thinking involves students constructing history.

As I was thinking about this process, TO CONSTRUCT HISTORY, I discovered a metaphor that seemed to make sense.

Imagine an assignment where students are often asked to take a poster and answer the question, "Who are you?" by making a collage using words and images from magazines.  The student pores through magazines, cutting, pasting and organizing until the collage is a masterpiece.  Even when finished, the collage doesn't communicate everything that can possibly be share about the individual, but it's a wonderful start.  For a twist, I'm going to change how the poster is shared with others.  Instead of letting the student present his/her own poster, imagine the teacher asking everyone in the class to make sense of the collage with this assignment:

Your job is to look at the evidence that is on the poster and create a brief narrative about this person based on what you see on the collage. Your narrative should tell me who this person IS.

                                         
"Words to Live By", Anne B.'s Vision Board, Collage, 16 x 20 inches, January 2012. Anne's board is composed of 50 images; 48 of which are words or phrases!

 I see this activity as a precise metaphor for what we want students to do when they construct history.  Students should be taking all of the evidence that they have about a person, event, idea, or time period and make sense of it through considering how the different pieces and parts are connected.  Connecting these pieces and parts involves high levels of critical thinking.  Everyone will come up with different answers, which may be uncomfortable for a teacher who expects one common answer, but the different answers reveal each student's ability to construct history based on the evidence they have in front of them.  If we don't let students construct history, then we leave them with snapshots of primary and secondary sources that have never been connected by the learner.  To me, this is one of the most important steps in historical thinking.

What might this look like in a classroom?  (As a note, I'm presenting ideas that are created for the sole intent of causing teachers of history AND historical thinking to consider how this might play out in a classroom.  This is the product of my own reflection about quality instruction within history.)

First, I would want to use the timeline as a primary tool to keep track of the historical pieces of evidence.  (Side Note: Timelines are, too often, tools that teachers use ineffectively.  They end up being products instead of tools.  We don't have a hammer, whisk, or spatula to look at -  they are tools.  Timelines must be created so they can be used as tools for the historian.)  The timeline creates a holding place for a historian to keep track of historical evidence connected to people, events, and ideas over time.  As students examine different sources, whether primary or secondary, they add pieces of evidence to the historical story we want young historians to tell.

For example, let's take a set of sources connected to the Stamp Act.

• Primary Source - Stamp Act Riots
• Primary Source - Letter from Archibald Hinshelwood 1765
• Primary Source - No Stamp Act teapot
• Primary Source - Ben Franklin's Testimony to Parliament 1766
• Primary Source - The Funeral of Miss Ame Stamp
• Primary Source - The Bostonians paying the excise-man, or tarring and feathering 1774
• Secondary Source - A description of tarring and feathering
• Secondary Source - Stamp Act synopsis from Gordon S. Wood

For most of the nation, student learn about early American history in 5th grade.  As a class, the kids may have experienced different levels of support as they learned about the Stamp Act with each of these sources.  Upon finishing this, I see a timeline with images or notes about each of these sources.  To involve students in the critical historical thinking and the sense making process, their final task (in groups or on their own) might be:

Your job is to look at the evidence that is on your timeline and create a brief narrative describing the Stamp Act based on these sources. 

While this process would definitely include modeling by the teacher and strong application of the gradual release of responsibility, this opportunity for writing to learn is an essential part of learning.  Students must be involved with authentic writing in all contents.  Take a look at the following graphic that compares writing to learn vs learning to write.  The process of constructing history is 100% connected to writing to learn.

Constructing history is something that is done by students, grounded in historical critical thinking.  It involves the teacher giving up responsibility for telling the story and giving that responsibility over to the students.  No matter what the final product happens to be, it will be connected to true educational goals - students engaged in critical thinking, sense making, and communicating their ideas based on evidence.