Classroom Strategies

There are innumerable ways to incorporate primary source documents into the classroom. These are just a few strategies that have increased student achievement in my own classroom.

Building Background Knowledge Workshop (BBK Workshop)	Introduction Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound surmises that the premise of a BBK Workshop is to engage students by conveying the new topic as though it were a mystery through the use of primary source documents. This structure could easily be adapted to introduce the Tibet question. (1,2)
Image Analysis Chart	*Image Analysis* A structure which can be helpful to organize a student's thinking is a simple chart: observations/inferences/synthesis.
Mapping Tibet	*Assessment* Ask students to draw, on an outline map of the Himalayan region, what they believe should be the political boundaries of Tibet based on the evidence presented in the lesson/unit. Then have them defend their border, or lack thereof, by citing evidence in a written response.

This site was created by Diane Hodson, a teacher at the Secondary School for Research, at the NEH Summer Institute "Literatures, Religions, and Arts of the Himalayan Region," held at the College of the Holy Cross, Summer 2008.