Reading Historical Childrens Letters

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Reading Historical Childrens Letters Using the
SCIM-C Strategy
To view the entire Learning Experience go to
http//www.primarysourcelearning.org/db/LE/display
.php?pOverviewk4305
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Model ActivityUnderstanding Goal

• Words have power.

Investigative Question
How might childrens letters influence adult
actions?
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Introduction

• Think of a letter that you wrote as a child. What
  was the purpose of the letter and what was the
  outcome or result?
• Share with a partner your name and your response
  to 1.
• Brainstorm three positives ()s and three
  negatives (-)s of communicating through letters
  with your partner.

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Step 1 Choose an interesting letter
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Write an Investigative Question

• Use one of the
• Investigative Questions from the table
• or create your own Investigative Question
• to guide your research.

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Group by color of folder and letter

• Find the other people with your folder color and
  letter. For example, all blue As sit together,
  all red Cs sit together.
• 2. Take out the letter on the left side of your
  folder.
• 3. Locate a SCIM-C analysis tool.
• 4. Read and analyze the letter using the SCIM-C
  analysis tool working together as a group. Each
  group member should record on their own tool the
  ideas of the small group.

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This is the SCIM-C Analysis Tool
1. Start here
2. Then work from the center
The phases of the SCIM-C Strategy should be
viewed as a precise, recursive, and thoughtful
approach to historical inquiry. Peter
Doolittle, David Hicks, and Tom Ewing, 2005
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Use additional resourcesto think about the letter

• 1. Take out additional resources from folder and
  an analysis table.
• 2. Arrange additional resources around the
  letter.
• 3. Make connections between the resources and the
  letters. Use the bibliographic information.
• 4. Summarize how the additional resources
  challenge or confirmed your thinking about the
  letter and your Investigative Question.

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Regroup by folder color and number

• 1. Regroup so that you are sitting with others
  with the same color and same number of folder.
• 2. Locate the Step 3 Note Taking Chart.
• 3. Take turns sharing your Investigative
  Question, letter, and current answer to your
  Investigative Question.
• 4. Take notes during each persons sharing in
• one of the boxes on the chart.
• 5. Summarize thinking about everything that you
  have learned to answer the question, How might
  childrens letters influence adult actions?.

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Post Reading Formal Assessment

• Create a movie with Primary Access to communicate
  your research findings.
• Go to www.PrimarySourceLearning.org.
• Search the Instructional Materials (green folder)
  for the Learning Experience, Childrens Letters.
• Transfer the resources from the Learning
  Experience to Primary Access.
• Make a movie that communicates an answer to your
  Investigative Questions and helps the audience to
  recognize how childrens letters influence adult
  behavior.

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More examples ofSCIM-C Spiraling Questions
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SCIM-C Spiraling Questions

• All questions do not need to be answered at each
  stage.
• Summary Stage 
• What type of historical document is it? 
• What specific information or details does the
  document provide? 
• What is the subject, audience or purpose of the
  document? 
• What does it directly tell us? 

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• Contextualizing Stage 
• Who produced the document? 
• When, why, and where was it produced? 
• Do we need to find out more about its origins to
  answer this question? 
• What was happening locally, nationally, and
  globally at the time the document was produced? 

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• Inferring Stage 
• What is suggested by the document? 
• What conclusions can be drawn from the document? 
  
• What biases are indicated in the document? 
• What contextualizing information, while not
  directly evident, may be suggested from the
  document?

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• Monitoring Stage 
• What is missing from the document in terms of
  evidence that is needed to answer a question.
• What ideas, images, or terms need further
  defining in order to understand the context or
  period in which the source was created? 
• How reliable is the source? 
• What questions from previous stages need to be
  revisited in order to analyze the source
  satisfactorily?

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• Corroborating stage
• What other resources could be found that relate
  to this document?
• How might these resources confirm or conflict
  with this document?
• What similarities and differences exist between
  sources?
• What gaps appear to exist that hinder the final
  interpretation of the source?