Spring SAVY 2019, Day 1 – Mystery and History (5th/6th)
Welcome to Mystery and History! Our first class was great!
For our first session, we did a lot of brainstorming and setting the stage so that we can run with full-fledged mysteries in each of our subsequent meetings. It was so much fun to meet each of our sleuths. They have great attention for detail and already have quite an impressive knowledge of the American Revolution and Early United States.
We set things into motion by focusing on the goals of detectives and the tools they might need. Then, we compared those with the goals and tools of an historian. We found a lot of commonalities. Detectives and historians both begin with questions and look for evidence. Our sleuths talked about the ways that detectives need to assess their sources: being careful to avoid red herrings, thinking about bias, considering where and when a source originated and its purpose. They noted that detectives might need a place to collect their findings, benefit from technology, and require patience, logic, and analytical skill.
Our detectives took a few minutes to gather their thoughts and prepare their very own detective notebooks. These will be very important for the rest of our class because this is where they will take note of their evidence, produce analyses, and sketch their own arguments about the mysteries that we will examine together. We kicked off our sleuthing by focusing on a short document related to the Boston Tea Party. Many of our sleuths were already familiar with the event, but our activity helped us to begin putting into practice our detective critical thinking.
Next week, we’ll continue on our road to the American Revolution with an unsolved mystery. Will our detectives uncover new incites? I’m banking on it.
Frances Kolb