Before the CA CCSS, history educators in California worked on developing instructional practices to help teach students to think like historians: carefully reading, analyzing, interpreting, and evaluating primary and secondary sources. Programs such as Reading Like a Historian, developed by Sam Wineburg’s Stanford History Education Group, help teachers apprentice students in these skills. Reading Like a Historian corresponds with many of the Historical and Social Sciences Analysis Skills and many of the new Reading Standards for Literacy in History/Social Studies, and it can be adapted to address nearly all of these skills and reading standards.

Reading Like a Historian emphasizes specific strategies for analyzing primary and secondary sources:
 

To learn more about these six strategies, read “Historical Thinking: Memorizing Facts and Stuff,” (2010) by Sam Wineburg. As you read, consider how the strategies correspond to the Reading Standards for Literacy in History/Social Studies 6–12, and how you might implement these strategies in your classroom.

To see how classroom teachers implement these strategies, watch "Reading Like a Historian: Overview." Again, notice how the strategies align to the standards. Also consider how you might implement the strategies in your own classroom.

Reading Like a Historian: Overview (Run time 10:11)

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Consider the reading and the video in completing the activity and the journal question that follows.

Sample responses

CA History-Social Science Standards, Grade 11