Lesson Plan: Identifying Key Themes & Processes
Sociology
Objective
This exercise is intended to help students prepare to write a historical synthesis that entails condensing several significant sources into a brief 5-page paper that can provide an overview of important events and processes. This writing assignment emphasizes strategies for distilling key themes from secondary sources and reflecting upon how these themes are connected.
Total Estimated Time
30-35 minutes
In Class
Students will have read two historical texts related to the period studied in class.
- Instructor distributes 4 passages pulled from one of the major texts.
- Students spend 10 minutes working on their own to identify and write out a central theme.
- Working in groups of 3 or 4 students discuss their respective themes and try to agree upon a common one-sentence summary statement.
- Each group then writes their summary sentence on the board and the class concludes with a discussion of how these summaries overlap or differ.
Strategies for encouraging discussion:
- Asking students to explain the rationale behind their statements. How did they determine what was important?
- Asking students to evaluate the statement of the other groups. What did they identify as key strengths of weaknesses?
- What are key words or phrases?
Developed at Brandeis University through a grant from the Davis Educational Foundation