Contextualization is a historical thinking skill that involves connecting historical events and processes to specific circumstances of time and place. Without understanding the circumstances that surround and build up to historical events, it’s difficult to make sense of them. In this first in the progression of activities on understanding context, you will begin to work with the idea of contextualization so you see how important it is for understanding the past.

Reading, claim testing,causation
To adequately make sense of the historical accounts you read, you need to understand the context in which events occurred and how the assertions about the events are supported through claim testing. In addition, when you categorize broad and narrow context, you will consider how these pieces of context led to the historical event being studied.

Do you know what the word context means? Work with your class to come up with a definition. Can you think of a time when you needed to have context to understand something that happened?

Take a look at the first photo in the activity.

Why is this person yelling? Share your ideas with your class.

Now, look at the second photo in the activity with more context.

Any additional ideas about why this person is yelling? Does having a fuller view of the picture give you more information? It may have helped you a little, but clearly, you need even more information.

This is actually a popular photograph from the 1900s. What else do you think you need to know to figure out what’s going on here? In other words, what categories of information might help you figure out what’s happening? Discuss your ideas with your class and ask your teacher as many questions as you want. Once you’ve gotten more information, your teacher will tell you the title of this picture and give you any additional information you might need to figure out why this person is yelling.

Do you think you would have been able to figure out why this person is yelling without all this extra information? The process you just went through is called contextualization, and it’s something historians do all the time. It’s also something we do in our everyday lives to help us properly interpret things that have happened instead of just jumping to conclusions.

Your teacher will break the class into small groups and hand out event cards. Work with your group members to divide the cards into two piles—one for broad context and the other for narrow context. Broad context represents broader themes, trends, events, eras, or regions that are related to the historical event you’re studying. Often, broad context helps us understand long-term causes of an event. Narrow context refers to the themes, trends, events, eras, and regions that are more closely tied in time or place to the historical event. Narrow context helps us see the short-term causes of an event.

Next, your teacher will ask a few groups to place their event cards on the board. Be prepared to explain why you chose to place your cards in a particular area of the funnel.

To help with historical contextualization in this course, we have a tool for you to use. Your teacher will either hand out or have you download the Contextualization—Introduction worksheet and ask you to review the Contextualization Tool with your class. You’ll be using this tool throughout the course to help you practice contextualizing, which will enable you to correctly interpret the historical events you’ll be studying.

The past is vast. How can we organize all of history’s events and sources in a way that makes it understandable and usable? Frames are a tool that historians use to sort through, group, and think about long term historical trends. In this course, we use three frames—communities, networks, and production and distribution. These frames help us to connect events, people, and trends across eras and enable us create stories that make the past meaningful.

This video introduces the concept of the frame. You are going to be using frames throughout the course. A frame is a filter that allows us to ask questions about the past and get usable answers. We use these answers to create stories about the past. You will use three frames in this course—the communities frame, the networks frame, and the production and distribution frame. This video will give you guidance about how to think about and use those frames.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Before you watch the video, open and skim the transcript. Additionally, you should always read the questions below before you watch the video (a good habit to use in reading, too!). These pre-viewing strategies will help you know what to look and listen for as you watch the video. If there is time, your teacher may have you watch the video one time without stopping, and then give you time to watch again to pause and find the answers.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video

1. What is a frame, and how is it like a map?
2. Why are frames useful?
3. What are the three frames we use in this course?
4. Why is it useful to have more than one frame?
5. You are going to be given Frame Stories in this part of the course. Later, you will be asked to “test their claims”.  What does this mean?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. Are the three frames introduced in this video the only frames one could use to interpret the past and make it usable? What might some other frames be?
2. This video argues that studying history through frames might help you to think about and anticipate for the future, and gives some examples. Think about the frame(s) you suggested to answer the question above. How might studying the past through this frame help prepare you for the future?

One distinctive thing about humans is that we live in communities. Communities provide us with support, assistance, and growth. Examples of communities include families, neighborhoods, states, religions, and even online forums. Throughout history, human communities have generally grown, and frequently changed. By exploring the history of communities, this video clearly reveals the role community plays in the present, and the possibilities for building and strengthening communities in the future.

This video familiarizes you with the first frame, the communities frame. It introduces the concept of the community, and its many varieties. It also presents a history of communities over time, on a global scale. This narrative will help you to think about the significance of the history of human communities for our own society, and in preparing us for the future. However, it is an incomplete story, and you will evaluate it using evidence throughout the course.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Before you watch the video, open and skim the transcript. Additionally, you should always read the questions below before you watch the video (a good habit to use in reading, too!). These pre-viewing strategies will help you know what to look and listen for as you watch the video. If there is time, your teacher may have you watch the video one time without stopping, and then give you time to watch again to pause and find the answers.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video

1. How does the quote from Helen Keller relate to the idea of “communities”?
2. What were the first human communities like?
3. What are some major changes and developments in the history of human communities, according to this video?
4. According to this video, globalization has made us all members of a single community, but smaller communities are still relevant. Why?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. What communities are you a member of, and how long ago did these emerge?
2. What kinds of evidence would allow you to evaluate the claims made in this video about the history of human communities?

We already know that we humans create and live in different communities. But we also share ideas, material goods, and other things (including people) among communities. Sometimes we share across vast distances. This sharing happens through systems called networks. In general, humans have built larger and larger networks over time, leading up to the global exchange of ideas through the internet. But very small networks, often within this bigger pattern, are also still important today.

This video introduces the networks frame, the concept of the networks, and their many varieties. It also presents a history of networks over time, on a global scale. This history will help you to think about the significance of human networks to our own society, and in preparing us for the future. However, it is an incomplete story. You will evaluate it using evidence throughout the course.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Before you watch the video, open and skim the transcript. Additionally, you should always read the questions below before you watch the video (a good habit to use in reading, too!). These pre-viewing strategies will help you know what to look and listen for as you watch the video. If there is time, your teacher may have you watch the video one time without stopping, and then give you time to watch again to pause and find the answers.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video:

1. The video begins with a philosophical statement common to the Zulu people of southern Africa. How would you describe this idea in your own words?
2. What were the first human networks like, and why were they important?
3. What are some major changes and developments in the history of human networks, according to this video?
4. The video ends with several questions. What problems does it suggest people might have within the global network?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. The networks frame and the communities frame overlap somewhat, but they are also different. How would you explain the difference between a network and a community?
2. What kinds of evidence would allow you to evaluate the claims made in this video about the history of human networks?

We already know that humans live in communities and share things and ideas across networks. There is another important frame to help you understand human history. In this frame, we look at how we make things and share, sell, or trade them within our communities and across networks. The earth and our universe provided the raw materials. But across history, humans have become increasingly sophisticated in how we produce and distribute goods and tools. But this increasing sophistication has caused some problems that we deal with today. Exploring these changes and problems can orient us to the present and help prepare us for the future.

This video introduces the production and distribution frame, and explains the dual concepts of production and of distribution. It also presents a history of production and distribution over time, on a global scale. This history will help you to think about the significance of production and distribution for our own society, and in preparing us for the future. However, it is an incomplete story, and you will evaluate it using evidence throughout the course.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

Before you watch the video, open and skim the transcript. Additionally, you should always read the questions below before you watch the video (a good habit to use in reading, too!). These pre-viewing strategies will help you know what to look and listen for as you watch the video. If there is time, your teacher may have you watch the video one time without stopping, and then give you time to watch again to pause and find the answers.

Key Ideas – Understanding Content

Think about the following questions as you watch this video

1. The video starts with a saying we believe emerged from Chinese society several hundred years ago. What does this saying suggest about some values common to that society in that period?
2. Why is it important to start a frame story about production and distribution with the environment?
3. According to the video, what was the first system of production and distribution like?
4. What are the two biggest changes in production and distribution in human history, according to the video, and when did they occur?
5. Have production and distribution grown consistently over the course of human history?
6. According to this video, how has our systems of production and distribution changed recently?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. Think about the things you own and about the jobs people do in your community. Based on just that evidence, do you think that the claims made in this video, about production and distribution in the world today, are accurate?
2. What kinds of evidence would allow you to evaluate the claims made in this video about the history of production and distribution?

Working with frames allows you to understand how and why people lived the way they did throughout history. They help you recognize how communities, such as societies and nations; networks, such as those for trade and exchange; and the production and distribution of goods impacted, and still impact, people in different parts of the world. Viewing history through frames gives us a usable knowledge of history that allows us to make sense of the world today and think critically about the future. The process of depicting frames by drawing them makes the information more memorable as you mix language with imagery.  

First, take out a piece of paper and use about one-third of the paper to draw a picture of a community. You can choose any community you want—it could be your own, or it could be a community you learned about in other social studies courses, such as an Indigenous American village; the city-state of ancient Athens; Mohenjo-Daro in the Indus River Valley; Memphis in Ancient Egypt; the pre-Columbian city of Teotihuacan; colonial Boston; or a Maori village in New Zealand. Your picture should include the following elements:

• people 
• at least one place where people live
• at least one place where people work
• at least one place where people spend leisure time

You’ll only have about 5 minutes to draw this picture. Don’t worry—it doesn’t have to be great, and you can use stick figures as needed. 

Once you’re done drawing the community, think about something that your community produces. Add this to your picture by drawing a representation of the thing being produced. 

Next, think about where the thing your community produces is distributed. Add these places to the picture. 

Now, look for networks in the picture and add lines and arrows to show the networks.

Be prepared to share your drawings and explanations of each of the frames. Then, you’ll get into groups of 2 to 3 and your teacher will assign one-third of the class to communities, one-third to P&D, and the final third to networks. In groups, complete the following statements to define and explain your assigned frame in your own words:

• A community [or P&D, or network] is….
• This is an important frame because…

Once all groups have completed the statements, you’ll get together with the other groups that worked on the same frame and come to an agreement on one definition and explanation regarding why the frame is important. Then, nominate one person to report out to the class. Once everyone is done, your teacher will display these class definitions and explanations so that you can refer to them throughout the class.

This activity introduces you to the WHP Three Close Reads for Graphic Bios Tool. This tool will show you a method for reading graphic biographies. Graphic biographies might look simple at first—after all, they have pictures!—but there’s a lot going on in these one-page comics. WHP graphic biographies provide you with new evidence at the scale of an individual life. You can use this evidence to support, extend, and challenge the course narratives. In this activity, you will learn how to read graphic biographies at three different levels: observe, understand, and connect. You will also learn how to use the Three Close Reads tool as a graphic organizer as you respond to the comics and become co-creators of them!

Graphic biographies use the visual tools of comics—images, fonts, boundaries, sequentially ordered panels, and gutters (the space between panels)—to tell a historical narrative. The graphic biographies in this course are collaborations between a trained historian and artist, and they should be read as secondary sources. But you also need to learn to interpret the layers of meaning in the art.

Begin by getting out your Three Close Reads for Graphic Biographies tool and opening the Three Close Reads for Graphic Bios – Introduction. You are going to read a comic about a woman named Ottilie Baader. You don’t need to know any history or have any experience reading comics. You will be guided through this first graphic biography. As you read along, you should practice filling out the tool. Feel free to record your responses in words or have fun and respond with art of your own. After all, the tool is designed to look like a blank comic book!

As an optional extension, your teacher may have you complete a three close reads of the “History and Memory – Graphic Biography” where you will consider the meaning of history and memory through one family’s story.