CCOT Behind the Curtain
1 WHP TEACHER TAKE BEHIND THE CURTAIN: CONTINUITY AND CHANGE OVER TIMETeaching students to think about the past rather than memorize and recall is the holy grail of all history teachers. In our experience, when they’re given some structure and time to think, students usually find causation accessible. However, we’ve sometimes found it challenging for students to think more deeply about continuity and change over time. Why? Maybe because the nature of history encourages us to structure our teaching of it around turning points—events in the past that mark a change or break from how humans had previously organized their communities, networks, or production. For example, if we ask students, “What caused the French Revolution?” they can access and organize information regarding this change in the French political system. It’s almost counterintuitive to then ask them to name ways in which the French Revolution did not change anything! So, instead of looking at continuity and change in relation to an event, we decided to instead have students look for the greater continuities and changes within a time period. We stressed to students that although we weren’t looking for one specific answer, they had to support their claims using evidence. We wanted to build an activity whereby students would look at a period through the lens of continuity and change, and be able to build a visual representation of the narrative of this period that we could debate and refine as a class. The second or third unit of the course is a great place to try this activity because students have enough knowledge from the past to recognize continuities and changes. There are two different ways to approach this activity. The first way is to look at the broad sweep of events across units and have students use the era or unit overview articles to evaluate for continuities and changes. LYNSEY WOLDENDORP AND BEN TOMLISSON WHP TEACHERS, WASHINGTON, U.S.A.
2The second way to approach this activity is to apply it to a more specific topic, such as the transatlantic slave trade. This could be done as an introduction to the transatlantic slave trade or as a review once you’ve finished discussing the topic. You might have students read an article—“The Transatlantic Slave Trade,” from Era 5 of the Origins course; or “Industrial Imperialism, the ‘New’ Imperialism,” from Unit 5 of the 1750 course—and create a continuity and change graph with that content. You could focus on one geographical area, like Africa, or have students look at different areas, such as Europe, Africa, and the Americas. You could even break up the activity by specific topic and have students look at economic, political, or social continuities and changes. It’s important that you take this activity step by step so students can access, organize, and then evaluate content knowledge. The first step is for students to access prior knowledge through brainstorming. Challenge them to think of continuities and changes they would expect to see in the reading based on their general knowledge or their knowledge of previous eras. They may need some encouragement, as many default to “I don’t know anything!” Have them review their notes from previous eras/units, and then narrow their focus by looking at a particular frame or region. The second step is for students to read the assigned articles. What’s different across eras? What’s the same? As they read, they should be writing the continuities and changes they find on sticky notes (one continuity or change per sticky note). For students who want to dig deeper and gather more evidence, provide outside articles or videos.The third step is the most challenging for students, as they might struggle with now having to determine whether one is a greater or lesser change or continuity than another. Have students work in groups on one example that they can share out to the rest of the class. For example, the transatlantic slave trade could be considered a major change, given its impact on two different regions; however, some students might point out the long history of slavery and argue there is continuity here. Students should work down their lists and evaluate how major or minor each change or continuity was. After going through their lists, students should then decide if the continuity and change was positive or negative. Remind students that they want to be sure to think about the overall human impact rather than the impact on one specific group. Students will then plot these events on the continuity and change graph provided in the activity worksheet.The final step is to have students share their answers. Students place their sticky notes on a class whiteboard that you’ve set up with a y and an x axis, like the graph they’d been working on. Students post their events and justify their decisions. Encourage students to not only post their own events, but to revise other students’ if they disagree with their placement. If you’re doing this activity as an introduction to the era, take a picture of the class graph so that you can look back at it at the end of the era. This provides an awesome opportunity for students to revisit and modify their claims. A side benefit of doing so is that they’ll be modeling the practice of reviewing, questioning, and revising the historical narrative, which is one of the foundational concepts of the World History Project course.Related resources and activities• “Unit 3 Overview: Transoceanic Connections 1450 to 1750”View in: Lesson 3.0 of 1200 to the Present• “Unit 4 Overview: Revolutions 1750 to 1914” View in: Lesson 4.0 of 1200 to the Present • “The Transatlantic Slave Trade” View in: Lesson 5.4 of Origins to the Present | Lesson 3.4 of 1200 to the Present | Lesson 4.2 of WHP AP• “Industrial Imperialism, the ‘New’ Imperialism” View in: Lesson 6.3 of Origins to the Present | Lesson 6.1 of 1200 to the Present | Lesson 5.1 of 1750 to the Present | Lesson 6.1 of WHP AP• CCOT ToolAbout the authors: Lynsey Woldendorp is a high school social studies teacher at Mount Si High School in Snoqualmie, Washington. She teaches AP World History with the World History Project and this is her first year teaching using Big History Project as well. This is her 5th year teaching and she loves getting to work with her department planning out activities for old and new courses.Ben Tomlisson teaches Big History, AP European History and World History at Mount Si High School, WA, where he has taught since 2005. Mr. Tomlisson hails from Manchester, England, and has taught in Japan.