Historical Assessments of Thinking (H.A.T.s) - Examples
In social studies we focus on the "doing" of history over the memorization of historical facts. Students are introduced to the foundational thinking skills that historians use when investigating the past. Those skills include sourcing, contextualization, corroboration, and close reading. To check for the development of those skills students take short Historical Assessments of Thinking or HATs for short. Each one of these HATs usually addresses one (maybe two) of the skills. Sometimes students will have to pull in their knowledge of a historical event to help them answer the question and sometimes simply use the source to answer the questions. Below are completed examples that touch on all of the skills. Close reading is not found below because it is utilized in all of the assessments.
Westward Expansion Historical Assessment of Thinking Documents
Sourcing #1 Example
Contextualization Example
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Sourcing #2 Example
Corroboration Example
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