Question stems and prompts you can use to draw out the historical thinker in all your students
To begin a unit or lesson focused on historical significance:
• Why should we bother to learn about X (a person, event, or development)?
• Why does everyone remember Y?
• Why is X historically significant?
• What was the importance of X (a person or document)?
• Was X (a person or document) really that important?

Question stems and prompts you can use to draw out the historical thinker in all your students
To make reasoned and insightful inferences:
• This clearly shows that …
• From X (a detail) we can infer that …
• X (a detail) suggests that …
• It doesn’t say so, but … is probably the case, because X (a detail) …

Question stems and prompts you can use to draw out the historical thinker in all your students
To increase familiarity with some of the elements of continuity and change and related vocabulary:
• How would you describe the things that have stayed the same since X (a date or event)?
• How would you describe the changes? Were they widespread or limited in scope? Did they happen suddenly or slowly?
• Did the changes improve things (that is, progress), or did they make things worse (that is, decline)?
• Why did certain elements stay the same while others changed?

Question stems and prompts you can use to draw out the historical thinker in all your students
To begin a unit or lesson focused on cause and consequence:
• What were the short- and long-term causes of X (an historical event)?
• What were the consequences of X (an historical event)?
• Was it really X (a person) who gave birth to Y (a development)?
• What kind of a difference did X make to Y (a community)?
• What lay behind X (an historical event)?
• How did X (a cause or an historical event) make a difference?
• Was X a success? In what ways?
• Whose lives changed because of X (an historical event)?
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Question stems and prompts you can use to draw out the historical thinker in all your students
To consider the perspectives of people in their historical context:
• If this action doesn’t seem to make sense, isn’t what you might expect, or is surprising, why did X (a person) take this course of action?
• If this action appears to have been the best response, why did X (a person) not take this course of action?
• What did X (a group or individual) feel was most important in their life at this particular time?
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Question stems and prompts you can use to draw out the historical thinker in all your students
To think about ethical positions in a textbook:
• How do textbooks convey ethical positions?
• Whose ethical positions do they represent?
• What ethical positions does our textbook take?
• What evidence do you see of these positions? (e.g., particular words or phrases)
• Which ethical positions in this textbook do you agree with (if any); which do you disagree with (if any)?
• How can it be useful to be aware of the ethical dimension in a textbook?
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