Writing historical essays—not as easy as it sounds!

Writing historical essays—not as easy as it sounds!

By Bridgette Byrd O’Connor, OER Project Team
Louisiana, USA

This was a difficult blog to write—go figure that the “writing” blog post would be the hardest to write! The problem is that historical writing is hard for anyone—whether student or adult—to master. That puts a lot of pressure on us in our role as teachers. On top of that, historical writing requires so many different elements that students often struggle to incorporate everything into their writing. There are so many things to think about—thesis, periodization, contextualization, causation, continuity and change over time (CCOT), comparison, evidence, sourcing—you get the point. So, how do we get our students thinking about all these things both before they write and during the writing process? Well, first you have to focus on the skills: Do your students know what those historical thinking practices are all about and how to use them properly in an essay? Do they understand what the prompt is asking for? With some careful planning and some handy tools, students can learn how to write a great historical essay!

The OER Project has a number of activities to help students think and write like historians. There are progression activities for reading, causation, comparison, CCOT, sourcing, claim testing, and contextualization—all of which are important skills for historical writing. Each of these progressions also has a tool to help students organize their thoughts as they work on the skill. Our writing progression asks students to incorporate many of these historical thinking skills into their writing. But first they have to figure out what the prompt is asking them to do. Don’t worry—we have a tool for that too! In WHP’s What Is This Asking? activity, we ask students to parse the question being asked of them. In this way, students learn how to break down a prompt and figure out which historical thinking skills they should use to answer it.

Once students are familiar with the historical thinking skills and can parse the prompt, they then have to write the essay. Both BHP and WHP have a writing progression that breaks down the Writing Rubric to allow students to focus on specific aspects of historical writing such as claim and focus and analysis and evidence. These activities will help students identify the elements of good writing and employ them in their own work.

When students first start writing historical essays, it might be best to stick to a formula that will guide them to use their tools. Here’s a handy list of questions you could share with your students:

  • Does your essay fully answer what the prompt is asking you to do?
  • Did you contextualize in your introduction or first body paragraph of the essay?
  • Did you include your thesis statement at the end of your introduction?
  • Did you include evidence in your body paragraphs to support your thesis, and did you cite it?
  • Did you analyze the evidence to show how it relates to your thesis?
  • Did you source the texts by including information about the author, their point of view, and/or audience?
  • Did you include a counterclaim and a refutation of that counterclaim using evidence?
  • In your conclusion, did you summarize your argument, relate the topic to a different historical issue, and/or make connections to the present or the future?

If you’re teaching in a distance learning environment, you could share these questions and arrange for student breakout rooms where they engage in peer editing. As students go through their peers’ essays. they’ll be able to look for each of these elements, which will help reinforce the characteristics of good writing.

As student writing progresses, they’ll need the formula less and less, and they might even start to go off script. This formula is a tool to build student skills and confidence. The goal of the writing progression—and all OER Project practice progressions—is to help students work (in this case write) independently.

This might seem like a lot of work for you, but the payoff is worth it: A group of students who can think critically about sources while clearly communicating their own arguments. Students will also learn how to spot good (and bad) writing in the articles and information they encounter on a daily basis. In this age of conspiracy theories that use bogus or manipulated evidence, identifying the elements of good writing will help protect them from misinformation while they formulate their own ideas.


About the author: Bridgette Byrd O’Connor holds a DPhil in history from the University of Oxford and has taught the Big History Project and World History Project courses and AP US government and politics for the past 10 years at the high-school level. She currently writes articles and activities for WHP and BHP. In addition, she has been a freelance writer and editor for the Crash Course World History and US History curricula.

Cover image: Teenager girl studying at home © FG Trade / Getty Images.

Anonymous
  • #BridgetteO'Connor    You cover much ground here.  I find the direction we receive from the BH investigation writings (argument statement; use and analysis of textual evidence; appropriate "discourse" such as CCOT, causation; and conclusion that extends the inquiry) are valuable skills for high school freshmen to consider and strengthen; these features show themselves again with the expectations of writing for History with the College Board's AP program.