I am teaching my grade 6 students about the stone age and to lead into the unit, I created a lesson on sources of history and analyzing primary sources to understand the past. The lesson was engaging, fun and a nice introduction to the unit to deep dive into how early humans lived.
This unit may be useful to teachers who want to use a simulation for students to develop the fundamental skill of analyzing historical sources. Here is the lesson!
1. A hangman activity of the topic “Sources of History”.
I use this hook often to get students interested and engaged right from the get-go.
2. Establishing objectives of the lesson.
I usually explicitly state the objectives of the lesson so students know exactly what we are going to be doing to orient the students.
3. A fill in the blanks activity of a paragraph on “Sources of History”.
4. Discussion on what is a primary / secondary source along with a quick activity where students categorize sources.
5. Discussion on how primary sources help us learn about the past.
6. Discussion on what it means to analyze.
7. Discussion on “What are artifacts”?
8. Discussion on how to analyze historical artifacts.
9. Analyze a few artifacts together as a class.
10. Analyze artifacts.
This is the main activity and I like to give students a simulation in order to do it. They are historians and have found a cave with 6 artifacts. They must analyze the artifacts and write a story based on them.
11. Share ideas and conclude class.
There are many ways to conclude the class, but usually have students share their ideas and end with an exit slip on 1 thing they learnt. After this lesson, we go into the Stone Age.