The Student as Historical Detective: . Below is an example of an Historical Detective assignment for student use.

Step 1: Select a topic. Your topic is John Brown and his involvement in trying to abolish slavery. We have already learned about John Brown - the man, his involvement in the Potawaminee Massacre, and his attack at Harper's Ferry. Now it is time for you to conduct some of your own analysis by deciding if John Brown was a great man, or a failure.

Step 2: Select a thesis.  You have two choices:  John Brown was a failure, or John Brown was a great man. 

• What you must do on your own: 
  • Make a choice of your thesis topic.
  • Define greatness or failure, depending on your choice of topic.
  • Write no more than one paragraph that defines either failure or greatness and explains your choice.

Step 3: Use a primary source to defend your thesis. You must examine several primary source documents and then pick one that you feel is THE MOST IMPORTANT in defending your thesis.

• What you must do on your own:   
  • Select three primary documents. Read all three and select one that you feel most supports your thesis.
  • Select 3-5 quotes that support your thesis.
  • Write no more than one paragraph explaining why you chose this source as your key primary document.  In your paragraph, you must include specific quotes in the document that persuaded you that your thesis was correct.
  • You must also include a bibliographic reference for each of your sthree primary documents.

Step 4:  Use a secondary souce to defend your thesis. You must find one secondary resource – a book or article - that supports your thesis.

• What you must do on your own:   
  • Select a secondary document.
  • Select 5-10 quotes from your document that support your thesis.
  • Write no more than one paragraph explaining how and why this secondary document further supports your thesis. You must include specific quotes and/or images from the book/article that persuaded you to adopt your thesis
  • Include bibliographic reference for your book or article.

Step 5: (Optional) Use another primary and/or secondary source to test your thesis. Find another primary and/or secondary source that supports - or refutes - your thesis.

• What you must do on your own:
  • Select your primary and/or secondary sources.
  • Select the quotes that support or refute your thesis.
  • Write no more than two paragraphs explaining how and why these primary and/or secondary documents support or refute your thesis. You must include specific quotes from the sources that support or refute your thesis and an explanation of how and why these documents either reinforced your own thesis or encouraged you to reconsider your thesis.
  • Include a bibliographic reference for each of your primary documents and the selected book or article.

Step 6:  Reflecting upon your work as an Historian. This is perhaps the most important part of your research and your modeling. You must now reflect upon the thesis you selected. After you closely examined the primary and secondary sources, did they still support your thesis, or did they convince you to change your mind?

• What you must do on your own:
  • Decide whether you still support your thesis or whether you have changed your mind.
  • Think about why you finally continued to support your thesis or why you changed your mind.
  • Write a 1-page essay in which you discuss and provide evidence of why you either continued to support your thesis, any doubts that arose in the course of your research about your thesis, and a statement describing the 2-3 most important points that you found in all of your resources to either support or reject your thesis.