developing student's critical thinking skills 2013
TRANSCRIPT
History
Developing students’ critical thinking skills through the documents-based study
http://pdst.ie/postprimary
2
The documents-based study
Key syllabus objectives
Key learning outcomes
Key terms
3
The documents-based study
• Developing students’ historical literacy
– Terms used in the syllabus objectives and learning outcomes
– Terms that may be used in documents-based questions
4
Thinking critically: learning to ask relevant questions of sources
• What type of source is the document?• Who produced the document?• Why was this document produced?• In what circumstances was this document
produced?• When was this document produced?• What can this document tell me? What
questions can it answer/not answer?
5
Thinking critically: learning to ask relevant questions of sources
6
A card-sorting, critical skills activity
• Rationale
• What is involved
7
Assessing students’ critical thinking skills: the documents-based question
Format and question styles
• Comprehension• Comparison• Criticism• Contextualisation
8
The documents-based question, 2014-2015
Prescribed topic: The pursuit of sovereignty and the impact of partition, 1912-1949
Exemplar questions (HL and OL)
• The Treaty negotiations, October-December, 1921• Belfast during World War II• The Eucharistic Congress, 1932
Belfast during World War II
http://www.secondworldwarni.org/associatedImage.aspx?pagerecordid=146
11
The documents-based question
Some comments from the Chief Examiner’s Report, 2011
• Lack of familiarity with vocabulary used• Failure to adequately refer to both
documents, where required• Students jumping to conclusions about bias
12
The documents-based question
Marking scheme 2011
• Comments on work of journalists as primary source material
• Marking indicators, Higher Level
• Marking indicators, Ordinary Level
13
Developing students’ historical literacy
• Helpful words and phrases
• Using writing frames to develop students’ historical writing skills
14
Developing students’ historical literacy
• A card-sorting exercise to help students structure an answer to an historical question
– ‘Big points’ and ‘little points’
