CASE (Context Analysis Source Explorations) files focus teaching and student learning on what historians do—uncovering the past through investigating the clues in the historical record. Both the Bradley Commission on History in the Schools and the national standards for historical thinking call for the use of actual historical documents and artifacts (see the Research Précis - Contextualized Learning: Addressing Standards in History), and for student analysis of historical clues and the context of events as they occurred in the past. Yet where are these sources in our history classrooms, and how do we use them in a way that gets at the skills students need to develop, and in a way that that is proven effective through research? Each CASE file contains the source materials needed to teach the unit, and a thorough teacher guide that provides explicit details for conducting the unit lessons. The strategies employed are based on research on sourcing and application of historical sourcing heuristics, as well as reading and other student abilities likely to impact student learning success.

Read more about teaching through historical source investigations from the guide. Go to: Teaching with Source Documents: Creating Meaning Through Historical Source Document Analysis

Find out more about the research on addressing potential reading problems with primary and secondary text sources. Go to: Reading Comprehension and Historical Thinking: Classroom Realities in Building a Context Connection

Check out information on the various types of sources used to analyze past events and build context. Go to: Types of Primary and Secondary Sources

Get the teacher support document (accompanied by the student activity "I Left a Trace") for using a familiar context—students' own lives—to help students become familiar with the basic concepts of historical sourcing. Go to: Using the Familiar to Introduce Students to the Study of Primary and Secondary Sources

If this is your first time to visit LearningLeads™, or if it has been awhile, be sure to take a look at the LearningLeads™ homepage and the Learning Through Context curriculum and learning strand overview page while you are here.