Unit 0: Launching the Historians | Wolfingers Classroom

UNIT 0
Launching the Historian’s Workshop

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

How do historians construct accounts of the past?
Whose perspectives are preserved, centered, or omitted?
How do we decide whether a source is useful and trustworthy for a particular question?
What should we do when sources disagree?
How can local history reshape a national story?

UNIT OVERVIEW

Unit 0: Launching the Historian’s Workshop is a five-day U.S. History course launch where students learn how historians ask questions, examine sources, corroborate accounts, and build defensible interpretations. The unit uses a local-history inquiry connected to Orr Academy, the West Side, or a Chicago neighborhood to introduce identity, power, resistance, migration, citizenship, labor, and historical memory without framing the community through a deficit lens.

Students practice the core habits of historical thinking: observing carefully, generating useful questions, sourcing documents, close-reading evidence, comparing accounts, identifying missing perspectives, and communicating a defensible interpretation. By the end of the unit, students complete a Local History Mini-Inquiry in which they explain how a local story should be remembered using evidence, sourcing, corroboration, and reflection.

AT A GLANCE

In this unit you will....

Launch U.S. History by learning what historians do.
Practice the WolfOS Inquiry Cycle: Observe, Question, Investigate, Analyze, Discuss, Reflect, Act.
Use QFT to generate, improve, prioritize, and use historical questions.
Separate observation from inference when studying images, artifacts, and documents.
Source historical documents by identifying creator, date, audience, purpose, and perspective.
Close-read for claims, evidence, language, assumptions, and omissions.
Compare multiple accounts by identifying agreements, conflicts, additions, and missing perspectives.
Build a defensible CEA historical interpretation using evidence and reasoning.
Reflect on how evidence changed their question, claim, or understanding.
Connect local history to community memory and civic responsibility.

UNIT ASSESSMENTS

QUIZ 0A - Day 3

Culminating Performance Task: Local History Mini-Inquiry

Goal: Construct the most defensible answer to the compelling question using a small, teacher-curated local source set.
Role: Historian advising the school community about how an Orr Academy, West Side, or neighborhood story should be remembered.
Audience: Classmates and the school community.
Product: One CEA evidence paragraph or equivalent oral/visual explanation, a completed source-analysis record, and a brief reflection.
Success Criteria: The final product should include:
- An accurate claim
- At least two relevant pieces of evidence
- Sourcing
- Comparison/corroboration
- Explained reasoning
- Acknowledgment of a missing perspective or limitation
- Respectful communication

WOLFPACK WISDOM

The journey begins when the Wolfpack lifts its eyes to the horizon. We do not walk alone, and we do not turn back from the unknown... We move with courage, curiosity, and purpose toward what we are ready to discover.

Unit Plan