Paper and pencil

In this activity, you’ll draw a history of yourself, and then you’ll reflect upon the scale at which you examined your own history. This will help show you how your own personal narrative has a lot in common with much larger history narratives. This activity also introduces the concept of both temporal (time) and spatial (geographical) scale. This will help you understand why historians will occasionally zoom out (in terms of both time and geography) to create a larger context for understanding a single history.

Take 5 minutes to draw a “history of you”—your own personal history. This won’t be graded, and you shouldn’t get stressed out about whether you’re a good artist. You can use text to label your pictures, stick figures for people, however you want to do it is fine.

When you’re done, your teacher will ask you a series of questions, such as, how many of you wrote about:

• your time in high school
• your childhood
• your parents
• your parents’ childhoods
• your grandparents
• anything that happened over 100 years ago
• anything that happened over 1,000 years ago

You probably wrote about your childhood and your parents. You might have written about your grandparents; but you probably didn’t write about anything more than 100 years ago.

Also, did you write about anything that is further away than the state you’re currently in? Did you talk about anything that’s further away than the country you’re currently in? What is the most distant place you mentioned?

You can’t really think about history without first thinking about the scale at which you’re examining it, so it’s really important. This includes both time scales and spatial scales. In this course, you’ll use timelines to help with scale, and you’ll also use the language of spatial scale when talking about where things happened in history. We’ll use the terms personal, local, regional, national, and global to help us think and talk about scales of space. There are many other terms, but those are the ones we’ll use in this course.

Ever ask yourself, “How am I ever going to use this stuff?”. In this video, Bob Bain examines exactly what makes history usable and useful. He presents an example from his own history class where students explored the history of the city of Detroit. By looking at historical documents, talking to grandparents—and yes, even reading a little history—they developed a deeper sense of their own city today.

The World History Project places tremendous emphasis on connecting the people, places and events of history into narratives. This video introduces the idea of the frames, or narratives, of the course and how we envision you using them over the year.

Preview – Skimming for Gist

We recommend always reading the questions before you watch the video (a good habit to use in reading, too!). This pre-viewing strategy will help you know what to look and listen for as you watch the video. Because these videos move quickly, it will help you a lot if you know what to listen for. 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

Use these questions and prompts at the appropriate stopping points to check in with the students and ensure they are getting the key ideas covered in the video.

1. Bob Bain describes a long debate that politicians and educators have “waged war” over, about what should be taught in the history classroom. What are the two sides and what do they argue?
2. What was the big driving question Bains’s students in Detroit studied?
3. What did students do over the course of the school year, after they shared the stories they collected?
4. What did looking at multiple narratives help students do?
5. According to Bob Bain, what makes history usable?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. How might looking at the stories of the history of your city might help you understand the present better?
2. How might looking at the stories of the history of your city help you understand the future better?

From young children to world leaders, we are strongly impacted by stories. Our understanding of the world comes from the stories we hear and tell. So it’s important that we consider more than just one story. A single story gives us an incomplete picture of different communities. These incomplete pictures lead to stereotypes which can be harmful. Also, powerful people and groups have more control over which stories get told and how they are told. Because of this, it’s important to use stories to empower people, as stories have a huge personal, social, and political impact.

We come across many conflicting—or at the very least different—stories. We sometimes think that’s just because people have different opinions or different access to information or facts, but that’s not always the case. The purpose of this video is to support the course-level objective of understanding that history is a story, a narrative, or a combination of narratives that is shaped by the sources and perspectives one uses to tell that tale.

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 question as you watch this video:

1. What kinds of characters did Adichie write about as a young girl, and what did these characters do? Why is it significant that Adichie chose to write about those characters and their lives?
2. Why did it matter that Fide’s brother had made a beautiful patterned basket? How did that affect Adichie’s understanding of the story of Fide’s family?
3. What expectations did Adichie’s roommate have about Nigeria and Africa more broadly? According to Adichie, what gave her roommate these expectations? How does it relate to Adichie’s previous point about the story of Fide’s family?
4. Why did Adichie’s professor think her novel lacked authenticity?
5. What did Adichie witness during her trip to Guadalajara that surprised her? Why was it surprising to her? What did this make her realize?
6. Why would starting a story with “secondly” affect different communities? What are examples that Adichie gives?
7. Why did Adichie tell the student that it was a shame that young Americans were serial murderers? What was different about Adichie’s understanding of America versus the student’s understanding of Nigeria?
8. Adichie describes negative experiences she and her family and friends have experienced in Nigeria, including poor healthcare and education, limited water, repressive governments, and poverty. She also mentions war crimes and unemployment. How, according to Adichie, do these stories fit into the stereotype of Africa as a “continent full of catastrophes.” What, according to Adichie, is the problem with stereotypes?
9. What are some examples Adichie gives of stories that challenge stereotypes?

Evaluating and Corroborating

1. Adichie claims that power affects which stories are told, how they are told, and which stories become “definitive” accepted stories that people believe. Using evidence from the video and anything else you have learned in this Era, give an example of a story which has been accepted because a powerful group had told it in a certain way.
2. Adichie argues that beginning a story with “secondly” can completely change the story. How does order and context affect stories? Using an example from your life or what you have learned in past history classes, give an example of a story which can become a completely different story if you change the context or order.

The World History Project (WHP) curriculum asks you to visit and revisit the Era Problems throughout the course. The aim of this activity is to keep you and your teachers connected to the core themes of each era. The first time you encounter the Era Problems, you will be asked to evaluate each of the statements on the worksheet based on what you currently know. The second time you encounter the problems, you will be asked to more thoroughly respond to the questions and also revise and refine your initial understanding of the era’s core concepts. The emphasis here is to focus on concepts rather than formal writing. Additionally, the Era Problem Notebook (EP Notebook), helps you assess how your thinking is progressing, where you’re gaining mastery, and where you might need additional instruction.

While it might seem that you haven’t learned enough yet this year to answer these questions, that’s ok! This activity is meant to help you think about what you might already know about the ideas and concepts of the era. You’ll answer these questions again at the end of the era, and you’ll get to see how much you have learned! This activity will also give you a preview of what’s to come, as you are seeing the concepts and ideas you should pay attention to as you learn new content.

Keep this worksheet close by. You will work on these questions again to wrap up Era 1.

Use the EP Notebook – Era 1 Problem Worksheet to respond to the prompts as best as you can. Be prepared to talk about these ideas with your class.

As you know, there is a glossary of words in for this course that all students need to know to be able to take part in the course. However, you’re not all students, and there are a lot of words in the course, so it’s highly likely you’re going to come across a bunch of words you don’t know that are not in the glossary. This repeated activity will help you become more familiar with a process for how to independently learn the meaning of new words.

Throughout the course, you’ll very likely encounter new and unfamiliar words. Some of these words will be addressed as part of the whole class vocabulary activities; however, many more of those words will not. Take out the Vocab Tracker and follow your teacher’s directions about how to look up that word. Any time you encounter a word you don’t know in the course, add it to this tracker! By the end of the year, your personal lexicon will be huge, you’ll be a better writer, and you’ll very likely be better prepared for standardized tests.

Vocabulary has to be more than just a list of words to memorize and groan about. These words represent big (and sometimes medium-sized) concepts critical to the era. And, it turns out, just memorizing the definition doesn’t necessarily help you understand what the word means. To really get the meaning of each word, you need to see it in a variety of contexts. In this era, as in each era in the course, there are three types of vocab activities. Early in each era, there’s a word wall (such as the one here), which will help you become familiar with the words for that era. Later in each era, there’s a second activity that’s a deeper exploration of some of those words. In this era, for example, that second activity is live concept mapping. Finally, every era includes a vocab tracking activity, where you can keep a personalized list of words that are new to you.

Reading, writing
This activity is focused on helping you learn course vocabulary, which is one way to ensure you’re able to fully engage with the WHP course content. This is especially true for the readings in the course. If you don’t understand the words you’re reading, you won’t be able to glean the main ideas of texts, and therefore may miss out on important aspects of the topic you’re studying. Additionally, as you build up your vocabulary, you will become an even better writer.

In this activity, you’ll work with your class to create a word wall using the Era 1 vocabulary. You’re going to do this throughout the era by adding one word at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed with a big list of new words all at once.

Your teacher will assign a vocab card to each of you. Once you get yours, pretend that you have the MOST important word to help you understand Era 1, and prepare to argue why that is. Look at your vocab word and take a few minutes to look it up in the Era 1 Vocab Guide and then examine the era itself (click around and quickly skim the content) to see where in the era your word might be most applicable. Once you’ve done your research, get ready to argue for why your word is the “best” one to start with. After everyone has given a pitch on their word, you’ll all decide which word should make it onto the wall first.

Your teacher may add some fun twists to this assignment, so be sure to listen closely for directions!