You Be the Historian Logo For Teachers:
Using this activity in the classroom

"You Be the Historian" can be an excellent springboard for class discussion about primary and secondary sources and the historical process.

The "what about you?" sections of the activity encourage students to think about the study of history at a personal level. What can future historians learn about your students, your school, your class, etc. What evidence are you leaving behind?

The activity can also be used as an introduction (or supplemental material) to life in the late 1700s.


If your students have access to the Internet:

  • Challenge your students to find out how much they can learn about life in the late 1700s based on the evidence presented in the activity.
  • Focus on the documentary evidence. Print out the document transcriptions and questions for students to examine more closely. You can also add questions that we have not included based on other information found within the text.
  • Assign students to write additional questions based on answers they found in the documents.
  • Have students imagine they are part of the Springer household and write several diary entries about life in the late 1700s.
  • Have students "become" a historian from the future . Their assignment is to write a report detailing information they have learned from the evidence left behind by their family (in the present.) Ask them to make some conclusions.


If students do not have access to the Internet:

  • Focus on the documentary evidence. Print out the document transcriptions and questions for students to examine more closely. You can also add questions that we have not included based on other information found within the text.
  • Assign students to write additional questions based on answers they found in the documents.

Teachers may also print the Questions for Future Historians to go along with printed or internet material.


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