Teacher Rubric: Historical Lesson
A Central Historical Question, CHQ, was designed to facilitate deep, analytical discussion in an urban classroom. The idea is that students start with a CHQ and then look at a set of documents in order to discuss the CHQ. However, for the purpose of this inquiry, I will be opening up the use of the CHQ to include all types of lessons. It is a question that grounds the students in the historical content and that we can keep referring to in order to reorient students. A CHQ can range from “What are the social implications of the Cold War?” or “How did the Weimar Republic lead to the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party?” Asking students to connect patterns of cyclical history can be daunting for them and so a CHQ allows students to have an anchor in their mind about the original event a lesson covers (Reisman, 2012).