Humanities: Thinking Like a Historian

Session: TBD
COST: $3,700
AGE: Rising 7th graders and Older
 

Are you curious about the past? Love engaging in critical thinking? Drawn to the idea of investigative learning? You may very well enjoy Thinking Like a Historian!

This course teaches students how to investigate historical questions by employing reading strategies such as sourcing, contextualizing, corroborating, and close reading. Instead of memorizing historical facts, students evaluate the trustworthiness of multiple perspectives on historical issues and learn to make historical claims backed by documentary evidence.

The curriculum does not focus on one area of history in particular. Rather, the class will decide which areas of history they want to study and what historical questions they want to answer. At the end of the course students will complete a short essay in which they will use primary and secondary sources to answer a historical question of their choosing. This course is ideal preparation for the discussion-based classrooms and thesis-driven writing common in independent school humanities programs.