Hooking Students with History Mysteries

 Have you ever explored TeachingHistory.org? Funded by the U.S. Department of Education and managed by The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, it is full of great projects, strategies, and resources. It's a site I highly recommend if you are looking for ideas. 

For example, I recently found a couple of old posts on engaging students through history mysteries. 

Former elementary teacher Lisa Cooper wrote this blog about students becoming "history detectives as they explore a historical question and analyze carefully chosen clues to formulate and test hypotheses. The mystery she used to illustrate the technique is extremely relevant to anyone teaching Montana history: "Why did the American beaver almost become extinct in the 1840s?" 

Visit her post for more details on how she implements the strategy, worksheets, and links to clues. Since it's an old post, some of the links are bad, but you can supplement with some judicious searching in the Library of Congress (check out this advertisement for a Philadelphia hat maker, for example) or the Digital Public Library of America (check out this trap, for example) 

I also came across this post by seventh-grade teacher Michael Yell on creating a climate of engagement. One strategy he talks about is "Discrepant Event Inquiry."  You have to scroll about halfway through his post to get to it, but it's worth it. Here's a teaser:

"Imagine that students have just come into your American history class. The bell rings, and you tell your students that they are going to solve a mystery. The first thing they must figure out is what has happened in this story:

A young boy named John lived on a farm in a beautiful, mountainous, wooded area in Eastern Tennessee in 1837. His family planted corn and raised animals for meat, milk, and eggs. John had four brothers and three sisters. The family appeared happy and prosperous. In 1839 the family moved to a treeless, dry, flat prairie. During the journey, two of John’s brothers and one of his sisters died. When they arrived at their new home, the family could not grow enough to feed themselves. John’s father became a member of the legislature and his mother helped publish the local newspaper. John missed his brothers and sister, and his beautiful home in the mountains.

"When the short tale is complete you say to your students: what you must figure out is why John’s family would leave their beautiful farm for a difficult life in this flat dry prairie.

"A timer is set and immediately students begin to question you. But these are all a particular type of questions—questions posed to you must be answerable with only a yes or a no. No open-ended questions allowed—students must figure this story out on their own."

Read more at Michael Yell's post, where he breaks down the four steps to creating a successful Discrepant Inquiry event.  And if you invent one for a Montana history topic, and are willing to share it, please let me know!

P.S. Don't forget to sign up to join Bonner middle school teacher (and 2019 Montana Teacher of the Year) Dylan Huisken via Zoom on January 9, 4:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m. for a discussion about Place Based Learning/Local Studies. Register here.