Eighth-graders’ Historical Reading, Thinking, and Writing about Convict-leasing

To best spark students’ critical and historical thinking, teachers must rely on age-appropriate sources and discipline-specific strategies. This article details an eighth-grade class’s guided inquiry into Birmingham’s convict-leasing system, an oft-forgotten era in the Black Freedom Movement. This week-long inquiry centered on close reading, text-based writing, and historical thinking. Researchers extracted meaning from qualitatively analyzing and coding student work samples. Students ably sourced and contextualized complex texts while analyzing causes and consequences; they articulated diverse perspectives and considered elements of continuity and change. Many of students’ text-based writing, however, was brief and underdeveloped. Findings are not generalizable as this was but a single class.