Historical Thinking and Skills

Historian Skills

Content Statement #3

Historians analyze cause, effect, sequence, and correlation in historical events, including multiple causation and long- and short-term causal relations.

Content Elaboration

When studying a historical event or person in history, historians analyze cause-and-effect relationships. For example, to understand the impact of the Great Migration, an analysis would include its causes and effects.

An analysis also would include an examination of the sequence and correlation of events. How did one event lead to another? How do they relate to one another?

An examination of the Great Migration would include the demand for workers in the industrial north as a short-term cause and the introduction of Jim Crow legislation as a long-term factor contributing to internal migration.

Cause-and-Effect
Description	Cause-and-effect words signal that one thing causes another thing to happen. Sometimes a cause-and-effect relationship is shown within a sentence that contains these kinds of signals.
Signal Words	because	causes	effects	for this reason,	leads
	produces	in order to	since	consequently	as a result,

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Sequence
Description	Sequence words tell the order of events and are useful when there is reference to time in the passage. It can help you place events in chronological order so you can analyze the possible relationship between events. Generally, when a sequence structure is used, the earlier events preceded later events, but did not cause those later events.
Signal Words	first	second	next	initially	finally
	not long after	now	following	before	after

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Analyzing
Description	Analyzing primary sources is a 3-step process and each step helps us to better understand the historical sources we select for our research projects.
Signal Words	Observe: take time to look at the source	Reflect: take time to create and test hypotheses about the source	Question: ask the 5 Ws; who, what, when, where, and why

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