Historical Hacks and In-Class Activities

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Historical Hacks

Historical Hacks are included at the end of each module within the Study Plan. The purposes of these hacks are to help students learn the critical thinking skills that contribute to success in history courses. These hacks are broken down into understandable chunks and give students an opportunity to practice important skills, such as interpreting primary source documents, creating thesis statements, comparing perspectives, developing empathy, recognizing bias, evaluating sources, determining cause and effect, describing historical significance, understanding historical context, and learning about civil disagreement.

The Historical Hacks are included at the end of each module with their own learning outcomes. They will often use examples and primary source documents related to the module content, often from the Primary Source Readers, and encourage opportunities for the students to learn historical thinking skills by actively working with the material.

In-Class Activities

When students work through the content in the study plan, they will automatically read through the historical hacks and complete any corresponding multiple-choice questions. No additional work is required to set up or use the hacks. If time permits, you can build off of the hacks or use them as the starting point for further class discussion, or as the basis for in-class activities.

A set of optional in-class activities connected to the Historical Hacks are available to support face-to-face and hybrid classes. These can be viewed below:

Historical Hacks by Module

You can see a brief description of each Historical Hack below. Note that the link will take you to the introduction page of the Hack. Click through the next several pages to view all of the content and activities.

Module

Historical Hack
Module 1: Westward Expansion (1840-1900)

Students learn how to do a HAPPY Analysis as a method for analyzing primary source documents (Historical context, Audience, Purpose, Point of view, and whY). They also learn a modified version of the HAPPY analysis called OPRY (Observation, Ponder, Research, and whY) to analyze images as primary sources.
Module 2: Industrialization and Urbanization (1870-1900)

Students learn to identify thesis statements and supporting evidence from arguments, as well as summarize arguments. They also learn to compare historical arguments from both modern and historical lenses.
Module 3: The Gilded Age (1870-1900)

Students learn to examine historical examples of systemic racism to better understand how systemic racism has changed and persisted into modern history. They look at primary source documents, including Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s “Lynch Law in America.”
Module 4: Age of Empire—American Foreign Policy (1890-1914)

Students learn how to analyze primary source documents and connect historical ideas with both historical and modern-day ideologies, policies, and actions. They specifically learn about the Insular Cases and the status of American citizens in Puerto Rico.
Module 5: The Progressive Era (1890-1920)

Students learn how to use the HAPPY analysis to identify biases within a source, and understand why those biases are present (Historical context, Audience, Purpose, Point of view, and whY). They learn more about yellow journalism of the Progressive Era and media today. Students also practice identifying sensationalist reporting and recognizing bias.
Module 6: America in World War I (1914-1919)

Students get practice at interpreting primary source documents, looking specifically for Wilson’s motivations in the “Peace Without Victory” speech and the Fourteen Points. Next, students compare these documents with opposing criticisms from the Soviet Union (Lenin and Trotsky) and other Americans (Borah).
Module 7: The Jazz Age (1919-1929)

Students learn how to pick a research topic and find sources. They also learn to evaluate sources using the SIFT (Stop, Investigate the source, Find better coverage, Trace claims) and CRAAP (Current, Relevant, Authority, Accuracy, Purpose) methods to differentiate between reliable and unreliable sources of information. They also learn how to create annotated bibliographies and cite sources and do so by evaluating a source related to the Great Migration.
Module 8: The Great Depression (1929-1932)

Students learn about the complicated connections between various short- and long-term causes and short- and long-term consequences of the Great Depression.
Module 9: The New Deal (1932-1941)

Students learn how to craft historical arguments by learning how to create strong thesis statements and claims. They also learn how to support their claims by identifying and synthesizing supporting evidence. They look at some example essays and claims about the New Deal and practice creating their own claims based on the prompt for the course capstone project related to reformers or activists from the twentieth century.
Module 10: World War II (1941-1945)

Students learn how to examine primary sources to make connections and comparisons between the concepts or historical events the sources reference. They learn about the United Nations and then compare the founding documents from the UN to the founding documents of the Nazi Party. The extension activity has students compare and contrast the UN Declaration of Rights to the Bill of Rights.
Module 11: Post-War Prosperity and the Cold War (1945-1960)

Students learn how to identify evidence from a text, and compile evidence to support a given claim. They do this within the context of learning about Joseph McCarthy and using text excerpts to respond to a prompt about whether McCarthy strengthened or weakened the anti-communist movement in postwar America.
Module 12: America in the 1960s (1960-1970)

Students learn about historical significance, and interpret the historical significance of an event using the N.A.M.E (novelty, applicability, memory, effect) and 5R (remarkable, remembered, revealing, resonant, or resulting in change) methods. Students use these methods to analyze the historical significance of key events during the civil rights movement, including the Voting Rights Act and the Selma March.
Module 13: Political Storms at Home and Abroad (1968-1980)

Students learn to analyze and interpret multiple perspectives of a single historical event, including conflicting or differing accounts of the event. They also consider factors of perspective, emphasis, and significance in their interpretation of events. Students first look at different accounts of the Stonewall Riots and then various narratives from the Kent State Shooting.
Module 14: From Cold War to Culture Wars (1980-2000)

Students learn about historical context, including the concepts of circumstantial context and milieu. They look at a portion of Jerry Falwell’s Listen America! then compare that with a passage from a different document from the same time period, the Chicago Declaration. Then they discuss the importance of understanding context and how individuals can have unique experiences and accounts despite similar backgrounds.
Module 15: The Twenty-First Century (2000-2020)

Students learn about opposing viewpoints and practice having a civil discussion. They learn about different perspectives on the U.S. as a police officer in world affairs, then practice creating Rogerian Arguments, where they learn to understand and connect with the opposing side of an argument.