Share an example of a successful activity or lesson that helped your students master claim testing!

 Riya Patel This is a good strategy. How many documents did you include in your activity? Did all the groups receive the same sources or stimuli?

In my World I Honors class, I had students write supporting evidence (3 reasons) for why Alexander the Great can be considered a 'Hero' (first claim), and second, why he can be considered a villian (second claim- 3 reasons). I provided them with one page documents from the perspective of the places he conquered from BOTH perspectives, the perspective of the conquered, and the persepective of the conquerors. By reading about the same event, from two very different point-of-views, students can see how the media and even scientific discourse is able to do the same, and enabled them to be more critical life-long thinkers. I told students I had a similar experience reading about global warming from scientists in favor of taking action against global warming and another scientist who repudiated the importance of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere in bringing global warming- both scientists provided facts, and both were rather convincing. I digress- After students wrote both positive and negative evidence about Alexander the Great, they had to come to a conclusion after reviewing the evidence of both sides (something we should all do in our modern lives), and write a paragraph about whether Alexander the Great was more of a Hero or a Villain. 

Each group received the same sources. They had 6 sources total to analyze. 

The first full DBQ that my AP World History students wrote focused on the Mongol Empire. Prior to writing the essay, and after teaching content about the Mongols, students worked through a "DBQ Scaffold" assignment that had them focus on each of the specific rubric skills in an untimed format. The specific prompt that students were given for this Scaffold was "Evaluate the extent to which the Mongols could be considered a destructive force in Eurasia." The documents presented both positive (reopening Silk Roads, spreading innovations) and negative (destruction of Baghdad and other cities, massive death toll) effects and the prompt forced students to consider the nuances of evidence and create a claim that could be supported by the provided evidence (and also by additional evidence they had learned). 

Students were then asked to pair/small group share their thesis statements (claims) and discuss the merits of each and make suggestions for improvement of each others claims. Groups then shared out the "best" claim and we discussed these examples as a class. To connect back to the DBQ (as they were writing the next class period), groups were then asked to identify the documents that supported each element of the shared claim and identify which documents they felt were easiest to effectively source. While the students were primarily focused on "how to write a good DBQ in order to get the best grade," we were actually working on claim testing. 

Next week, I will be trying a lesson plan using claim testing for the prompt, "How did different parts of the world experience the revolutionary transformations that occurred from c. 1750 to 1900 CE?", I will guide students to formulate and test historical claims about the global impact of the various revolutions during this period, such as the Industrial Revolution, the American and French Revolutions, and the movements for independence in Latin America and Haiti The lesson will begin with a brief lecture to introduce the key events and transformations of the era. Students will then be divided into groups, each focusing on a specific region (e.g., Europe, North America, Latin America, or Asia) to research how revolutionary changes were experienced differently in their assigned region. Using primary and secondary sources, students will craft claims about the nature of these transformations. Next, they will engage in claim testing by evaluating evidence that supports or challenges their claims. We will then have a whole-class discussion where students compare their findings and discuss how different regions experienced the revolutions, highlighting both similarities and differences. Students will hopefully deepen their understanding of historical change and develop critical thinking skills by testing and refining their claims with evidence. Fingers crossed:)

I created an activity where students created 2 claims and a counter-claim on the Industrial Revolution. As an intro to the activity, I taught students directly about creating good historical claims, then gave a gallery walk where they responded to 4 claims posted around the room about the Industrial Revolution before starting the activity where they created claims and then researched them on their own. I feel it worked really well to have those intro activities for them as we built up knowledge of writing historical claims. 

I wanted to try claims testing with something that might be called political slogans.  Based on where we were in WH1, we did a claims test on the Spartan slogan, "Freedom for the Greeks."  The idea was for students to determine if the slogan accurately expressed why the Spartans were fighting Athens, or was it propaganda.  Students looked at some source material such as maps of different periods with alliances, quotes, and a timeline of specific events in the Sparta/Athens relationship... shared ideas, then analyzed the claim using the the four parts of claim testing to reach a conclusion.  

I love the idea of providing a thesis and requiring students to identify the evidence that would support the claim! I will definitely be using this with my students!

In AP World History, I regularly use the sample student responses included in the past exam materials on the College Board website to help students understand what is "enough" to meet the requirements of the various rubric score points. I pick a variety of responses and have students read and score them without knowing the "actual" score and then we discuss student scores and rationales for the scores they gave.

Bonus: students are identifying evidence (or lack thereof) as they make a claim for why an essay did (or did not) earn the point! Extra claim practice and they don't even know it!

I used a SHEG lesson on factory work.  The students did the activity and examined the evidence.  I really like this lesson because the sourcing of the evidence really helps them see what strong and weak evidence looks like.  Once the students worked with the documents, I had them underline their claims and evidence.  This way students had to go back and make sure they had a strong claim and supported with evidence.

I had students find claims (and their supports) twice before creating their own claims. We were in the Age of Revolutions unit, so they had to identify claims about the cause of the French Revolution from readings I gave them about differrent causes, then find their own source about a different revolution and identify the claims/supports about the cause(s) of that revolution, then make and support their own claim about the degree of success of their revolution. Having already evaluated two different claims and the strengths (or not) of their supports helped them to make stronger arguments about their evaluation of the revolutions.