The
6

W’s
of Sourcing

Use these questions to help you think
about the
perspective
,
reliability
, and
bias
of any historical source. Based on your
answers, you can determine how much you
trust
the information in the source.
WHO
created the source?
(and what do you know about this
person?)
WHAT
is it?
WHEN
WHER
E
WHO
*
WHY*
was it created?
(a book? a speech? a chart?)
(and what was happening at this time?)
was it created?
(and what do you know about this place?)
is the audience?
(one person? a whole nation? one specific
group?)
was it created?
(what could motivate the creator?)
* These are
inference questions
. You may
have to guess or do additional research to
figure out possible answers!
Teacher Tips: Framing “sourcing” for students Sourcing can be engaging and fun for kids because it invites them to question the “authority” of a document. It is, perhaps, the central task of historians as they try to ascertain what really st
happened in the past. In addition, sourcing is an essential 21
century skill. Not only should students be considering perspective, reliability, and bias in historical documents, they should also be applying the same critical lens to the everincreasing amount of information they encounter on a daily basis (on the internet, on TV, in advertisements…). There are easy ways to incorporate this mindset into your classroom. Below are some middle school appropriate classroom tools that invite students to question what they are reading. In the final section, I have listed alternatives to the 6 W’s that also invite critical reading of sources. How it looks in a classroom Possible classroom tools to encourage sourcing: Incorporating sourcing information into writing The Oakland Unified School District’s middle school writing rubric requires students to at least identify
important information about a document’s origins in their writing to earn a “3” or “Basic” in the Evidence and Sourcing row. In ordered to be scored proficient, students must not only identify this information, but also “use the information to support the argument(s) by considering th
meaning, perspective, and/or reliability.” The 6
grade history team agreed that to help students earn a “3,” they could simply incorporate a “6 W’s sourcing statement (examples below) into their writing before citing evidence from a source. To earn a “4,” they would have to followup with commentary about how this statement impacts their interpretation of the source. Alternatives to the 6 W’s and other resources for sourcing “SOAPSTone”
http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/preap/teachers_corner/45200.html ●
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Speaker Occasion Audience Purpose Subject Tone “Claim testers” (from the “Big History” project) ● Intuition ● Authority ● Evidence ● Logic “TAAP” into the source ● Time ● Author ● Audience ● Purpose Ideas from the Stanford History Education Group: ● Intro to Historical Thinking lessons (with downloadable posters and lesson plans) http://sheg.stanford.edu/intromaterials ● Lesson for evaluating sources:
http://sheg.stanford.edu/evaluatingsources ● Background on the “Reading Like a Historian” program
http://sheg.stanford.edu/rlh Ideas from TeachingHistory.org: ● What is historical thinking?
http://teachinghistory.org/nhecblog/24434 ● Best practice lesson plans
http://teachinghistory.org/bestpractices