Reading Like A Historian: Strategy – Turn To Your Partner
Program Transcript

Duvoor:
So, the first thing I’m going to do: I’m going to ask you to go ahead and turn to your partner. Let’s go ahead and make sure we do that, let’s turn to our partners, turn to our partners. Okay. So, your 8 minutes to go ahead and read and answer the questions starts now.

Shilpa Duvoor (Interview):
So the reason I have kids turn—actually physically pick up their chairs and turn to their partner is that I find that lots of times when I say, “Okay, work together,” they don’t actually know what that really means or what that looks like. And so when I actually ask them to physically turn their bodies, they are way more engaged with each other and they are way more willing to actually talk through a document together.

Student:
(reading)
“Taking into account the context of the time period and everything the British have done to the Indians, would you support Gandhi’s philosophy? Why, or why not?” I said yes.

Student:
You would just want to be peaceful and not fight back if they were, like, totally taking over your land?

Student:
Yeah, ‘cause if you fight back then you would lose—you could lose, like, a best friend or something.

Shilpa Duvoor (Interview):
And I find especially when they’re doing something like document analysis, which is not easy, it really helps to talk to somebody else to also verbalize what you are actually thinking about the document. So the turning to your partner really gets them to, like, make eye contact with their partner, gets them to ask more questions to their partner. And just that little shift, it really makes it feel like a more academic classroom, than if, you know, on a more—a classroom where the kids are really like looking out for each other versus just doing everything on their own.

#####