I believe that every History teacher should read Professor Jeffery Nokes’ well-written paper on “Recognizing and Addressing the Barriers to Adolescents’
“Reading Like Historians”. He makes a very strong argument for creating a learning and questioning culture that is more like the actual discipline of History, rather than just uncritically rote learning and accepting what is in a textbook. Nokes’ research is firmly rooted in real classroom practice, which makes it all the more powerful and easier to apply practically.

Below you will find my highlighted sections and summary of the article. There is also a very clear overview table that lists the four barriers to “Reading like a Historian” and some suggestions as to how to overcome these barriers.

Some resources:

• http://teachinghistory.org/
• A blog post about ‘ahistorical thinking’
• http://historicalthinkingmatters.org/why/
• http://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/high-school-teachers/807
• http://www.historymatters.group.shef.ac.uk/
• http://www.thinkinghistory.co.uk/index.php
• Great reading: http://www.criticalthinking.org/files/historical%20thinking.pdf
• Using the textbook as A source, not THE source. Here are some guided questions for students while reading A textbook and here are some ways to challenge the textbook, created by Stanford University.
• Nokes’ book: Building Students’ Historical Literacies: Learning to Read and Reason with Historical Texts and Evidence

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