For Educators
Explore Common Sense offers classrooms an opportunity to interact with a revolutionary text to better understand what it meant to its readers, both in the colonies and in England.
The site uses the annotation software Hypothes.is as a tool to provide commentary to the text. We invite all visitors to the site to add their own commentary to the text using Hypothes.is.
Hypothes.is is an excellent tool to facilitate critical analysis and discussion of the text. As an educator, you can invite students to a group to share and review commentary as a class. Only members of the group can view these annotations, highlights, and notes. Follow this link to access teachers' guides and tutorials on how to use hypothesis as an educational tool.
We are pleased to share several lesson plans and activity guides for using Explore Common Sense in your classroom.
Check out this PDF Teacher’s Guide with lesson and activity plans especially suited for high school level or entry level college courses.
The Explore Common Sense team was pleased to have the opportunity to utilize the website in a Western Civilization survey class at Loyola University Chicago. Follow the link below for a copy of lesson plan and activity we used.
Explore Common Sense College Class Lesson
Setting Up Hypothes.is for Group Use
Here’s what one instructor had to say about using Explore Common Sense in their classroom:
The Explore Common Sense team invites an undergraduate Western Civilization survey class to annotate the site based on themes from their course.
"Explore Common Sense is a dynamic teaching tool that helps to convey complex concepts about political thought in the early modern Atlantic world to students through engaging active-learning techniques. By reading passages from the British edition of Thomas Paine's famous treatise and identifying the differences between this and other editions of the same work, students learn important lessons about the relationship between language, ideas, and political action, as well as censorship and the power of the written word. Additionally, Explore Common Sense provides students with the opportunity to add their own ideas about the text to the larger body of thought surrounding this important work, thereby enriching our collective understanding of this past and its connections to the present. I highly recommend this tool for anyone teaching or learning about political thought in the Atlantic world, textual studies, or digital humanities."
– Hope Shannon, PhD Candidate at Loyola University Chicago who used Explore Common Sense in her Spring 2018 undergraduate Western Civilizations Survey course.
Explore Common Sense can be used in the classroom to meet the following Common Core standards in English Language Arts for History/Social Studies. Other standards from the K-12 Reading Standards may also apply, but are not listed here. Please visit the Common Core website for more detail.
English Language Arts Standards for History/Social Studies, Grades 6-8
Key Ideas and Details:
Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources.
Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.
Identify key steps in a text's description of a process related to history/social studies (e.g., how a bill becomes law, how interest rates are raised or lowered).
Craft and Structure:
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies.
Describe how a text presents information (e.g., sequentially, comparatively, causally).
Identify aspects of a text that reveal an author's point of view or purpose (e.g., loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas:
Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos, or maps) with other information in print and digital texts.
Distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.
Analyze the relationship between a primary and secondary source on the same topic.
English Language Arts Standards for History/Social Studies, Grades 9-10
Key Ideas and Details:
Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, attending to such features as the date and origin of the information.
Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of how key events or ideas develop over the course of the text.
Analyze in detail a series of events described in a text; determine whether earlier events caused later ones or simply preceded them.
Craft and Structure:
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary describing political, social, or economic aspects of history/social science.
Analyze how a text uses structure to emphasize key points or advance an explanation or analysis.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas:
Integrate quantitative or technical analysis (e.g., charts, research data) with qualitative analysis in print or digital text.
Assess the extent to which the reasoning and evidence in a text support the author's claims.
Compare and contrast treatments of the same topic in several primary and secondary sources.
English Language Arts Standards for Histort/Social Studies, Grades 11-12
Key Ideas and Details:
Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.
Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas.
Evaluate various explanations for actions or events and determine which explanation best accords with textual evidence, acknowledging where the text leaves matters uncertain.
Craft and Structure:
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including analyzing how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term over the course of a text (e.g., how Madison defines faction in Federalist No. 10).
Analyze in detail how a complex primary source is structured, including how key sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text contribute to the whole.
Integration of Knowledge and Ideas:
Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in order to address a question or solve a problem.
Integrate information from diverse sources, both primary and secondary, into a coherent understanding of an idea or event, noting discrepancies among sources.