- think critically
- write with clarity
Both of these skills come with practice, practice, and more practice! And I will be going over both in turn.
The first of these involves a skill known as O-P-V-L. This is now a formal part of the MYP Humanities framework, which is outlined as one strand of criterion C. This is also an important part of IB History assessment as well, with this skill being an important part of the Internal Assessment (criterion C) and Paper One (Question 3), both of which are components of final IB History grades. Traditionally, IB students are to look at a series of sources and...
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| Modern Mechanix, Nov. 1936 |
With reference to the origin and purpose, assess the value and the limitation of this source for a historian studying German domestic policy between 1933 and 1939.
This particular item would be something that an IB Topics student would be asked to evaluate. Sophisticated? Absolutely, but it exhibits one of the strengths of the IB program overall. Students are taught to question not only sources, but as they move through the program, they are taught to question the premise of questions themselves. They are taught to consider context, intent, omission, and much more.
In order to successfully answer this question, the students need to consider:
ORIGIN: What is the source?
PURPOSE: Why was the source created?
VALUE: How would this help a historian research the topic?
LIMITATIONS: What problems are there with this source?
Take a few minutes and write down what you think the answers to this OPVL question are. How would you respond to this question?
I would expect at least one or two sentences per element and for students to not give me what I consider "throw away" answers. An example of this would be the following. As the postcard from WW1 is in German, students are tempted to say that a limitation of the source is that any translation could misinterpret the meaning of the original text. Possible? Yes, but not likely. (Translation: "I am, if you grant the request, the third of your federation.") Another "throw away" is when students make snap assumptions about the motivations or perspectives of an author. An academic writing in the US, for example, is not necessarily writing from a pro-American stance. Good responses need to go much deeper.
So that's the goal. But what about 9th graders? First of all, I would not give them the same source, but would give them something more like this:
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| "Change in Business and Consumer Strength of Germany in Comparison with France and England" |
With reference to the origin and purpose, assess the value and the limitation of this source for a historian studying German domestic policy between 1933 and 1939.
This source is more appropriate for 9th and 10th grade students, but it gets at the same point, and my WHG2-H students last year were able to understand the point of including this primary source when we did an OPVL with it in class as an informal formative assessment during a lecture on the lead-up to WW2.
Take another few minutes and write down what you think an OPVL response for this source might be.
The analytical and writing skills that come along with formal/informal and formative/summative use of OPVLs in history instruction are, I hope, rather obvious now. While it has been a formal part of IB History for many years, it is now a formal part of MYP Humanities as well. The analytical skills are also valuable in preparation for SOLs, as students have to make the more complex intellectual reaches needed more and more frequently in an SOL setting. The OPVL is not only used with primary sources, but can also be used with secondary sources as well. I have one lesson that uses radio broadcast, video propaganda, and archival video images to both introduce content knowledge, but an opportunity to practice OPVL skills as well. I am happy to show you how to use the many OPVL exercises that I use for warm-up and exit tickets as well as in examinations and homework, and share with you the OPVL resources I have created for my students.
OH -- and the answers!
OPVL 1: The origin of this source is an interest magazine called Modern Mechanix published in November 1936. The source includes a photograph and a short description of the "Clock of Lives" located in Berlin. The purpose was to share information about this official statistical clock with readers who are interested in mechanical objects. The value is that it shows the historian how important the domestic policy of demographic growth was for the Nazi regime, as the clock would very openly indicate with tolling bells the advent of a German birth or death. It supports the fact that one goal of Nazism was to grow the population, and this clock would be a very visible way of supporting this policy by actually sounding each German birth every 15 minutes. A limitation of the source is that one does not know how accurate the clock is, even though it is run by the Statistical Office. The article does not show if the German people paid much attention to the information provided by the "Clock of Lives" either.
OPVL 2: The origin of this second source is an information card created by the Nazi regime. The purpose of the card is to show that the economic power of the Germans has grown in comparison with that of France and Britain based on demographic information from 1938. The value of this source is that a historian can see how statistics were used to show the German people that their lives had improved economically by using birth, death, and overall population change statistics in a very visual way. It is an example of how the regime used statistics to support its official propaganda, which in this case was to highlight the economic success of the Nazi regime. The source also supports the domestic policy of population growth, especially the push to increase German birth rates. The limitation of this source is that we do not know when the card was produced (other than it was post-1938), who had access to it, how many were published, where the statistics came from, or whether or not the statistics were correct.
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