The document outlines six ways to analyze and open up a textbook for deeper understanding: 1) Compare accounts between textbooks or time periods 2) Use primary documents to challenge facts or interpretations 3) Examine where narratives begin and end 4) Identify voices left out of the narrative 5) Add more depth and context to people/events only briefly mentioned 6) Closely read word choices, titles, and other details. It also lists five questions to drive classroom discussion about a text's meaning and larger ideas.

1. Six ways to open up the textbook are:
1. Comparison: Comparing two textbook accounts—e.g.
U.S. to non-U.S, old to new.
2. Direct Challenge: Using primary documents to challenge
textbook facts or interpretation.
3. Narrativization: Where does a textbook begin to tell the
story, where does it end it?
4. Articulating Silences: Who is left out of the textbook's
narrative? Try bringing in voices of the silenced or
moving issues of narrative choice to the surface.
5. Vivification: Breathing life into a text that only mentions,
or omits.
6. Close Reading: Careful, attentive focus on word choice,
including adjectives, titles, and the like.
Source: TeachingHistory.org

2. These questions drive a classroom
conversation about the text's meaning.
1. Who or what is doing or being something?
2. What are they doing or being?
3. What are the relationships between ideas in
the passage?
4. Can we determine the author's perspective?
5. How does this information help us answer the
larger investigative question?
Source: TeachingHistory.org

3. THE 6 C’S of PRIMARY SOURCE
ANALYSIS
CONTENT
Main Idea
Describe in detail what you
see.
CITATION
Author/Creator
When was this created?
CONTEXT
What is going on in the
world, the country, the
region,
or the locality when this
was created?
CONNECTIONS
Prior Knowledge
Link the primary source to
other things that you
already know
or have learned about.
COMMUNICATION
Point-of-view or bias
Is this source reliable?
CONCLUSIONS
How does the primary
source contribute to our
understanding of history?
Source: The History Project- Univ. of California, Irvine