Are you serious about teaching Social Studies skills, but looking for new ways to incorporate them? One of the hardest set of skills to teach are inferencing and drawing conclusions – both require background knowledge, and with drawing conclusions, multiple examples to draw conclusions from. These skills can be successfully practiced with History Labs!

But what is a History Lab? It is exactly what it sounds like…students examine artifacts and not only infer information from the artifact, but also draw conclusions from a multitude of examples.

Let’s take a look at a History Lab in action.  In this lesson, students are learning about the battles and key individuals involved in the Civil War.  After learning the content, they will examine artifacts in Battle Stations that consist of primary source images and quotes. Once your students examine the images and quotes, they will draw a conclusion – What is all of this information telling me? What battle are these artifacts referencing?

Once your students have analyzed the artifacts, they will write their conclusions citing their evidence.  Model your expectations for how to cite evidence. You can use a piece of evidence that is not in one of your Battle Stations for a model.  Demonstrate how to pull out key information from a source, and then use that source, as well as multiple others, to draw a conclusion.

The beauty of the History Labs comes with the opportunity to expose your students to a variety of primary sources in an engaging format – they will want to read to figure out the clues to support their answer.

Once your students have analyzed the evidence for a Battle Station, allow them to move to another to analyze new artifacts.  Also, add tangible artifacts to your History Labs if you can! A pair of army boots, a feather and an ink pot, blue and gray fabric, can all add interest to a station.

This History Lab is a part of the socialstudies+ membership with lead4ward, but look for other examples soon!