developing student's critical thinking skills 2013

History

Developing students’ critical thinking skills through the documents-based study

http://pdst.ie/postprimary

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The documents-based study

Key syllabus objectives

Key learning outcomes

Key terms

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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

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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?

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Thinking critically: learning to ask relevant questions of sources

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A card-sorting, critical skills activity

• Rationale

• What is involved

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Assessing students’ critical thinking skills: the documents-based question

Format and question styles

• Comprehension• Comparison• Criticism• Contextualisation

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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

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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

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The documents-based question

Marking scheme 2011

• Comments on work of journalists as primary source material

• Marking indicators, Higher Level

• Marking indicators, Ordinary Level

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Developing students’ historical literacy

• Helpful words and phrases

• Using writing frames to develop students’ historical writing skills

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Developing students’ historical literacy

• A card-sorting exercise to help students structure an answer to an historical question

– ‘Big points’ and ‘little points’

History

http://pdst.ie/postprimary