Craig Nicoletti is an AP® U.S. History teacher and Humanities. Program Chair at Christian Brothers College High School in St. Louis.

All teachers have certain “first moments” in the classroom. The first time your lesson doesn’t go as planned. The first time you feel like crying at the end of a class period. The first time a student responds in a way that completely catches you off guard. And often, many of those moments happen on your very first day. 

But teachers also experience moments that change them more profoundly—moments that cause them to reevaluate their own practices and beliefs about teaching. Sometimes those moments come from observing a respected colleague, working with an instructional coach, or attending a professional learning conference. 

One of those moments happened early in my career when I first read the work of Sam Wineburg in Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts. 

Wineburg, a Stanford Education Professor and founder of the now called Digital Inquiry Group, argues that students should learn to “think like historians” not because they will become professional historians, but “precisely because they won’t.” The goal of studying history, he writes, is to help students “tolerate complexity, adapt to new situations, and resist the first answer that comes to mind.”*

To achieve that, teachers must show students not only what historians produce, but how historians think and then guide students as they learn to practice that process themselves. 

For years, my history courses, especially my AP^® U.S. History course, looked fairly typical. Students read the textbook and took notes using the Cornell Method, analyzed primary sources, practiced writing essays, and discussed major themes in American history. But something was missing. Although students could often recall information, they sometimes struggled to explain how historians construct arguments about the past. They also tended to respond to prompts in abstract ways, and often struggled to recall specific historical details. 

The breakthrough came when I leaned more heavily into something historians read constantly, but students rarely encounter in high school: secondary scholarly sources. 

Once I began emphasizing this approach with my students, the focus of my courses shifted. Instead of beginning with writing strategies or exam preparation, we started with understanding how historians build arguments. 

Secondary sources became the perfect entry point for this approach. 

Each historical period in my course includes several scholarly readings.  Typically, students read one reading per week as their only homework. Roughly three readings are assigned to each major era of American history. The readings generally run between seven and ten pages, which is long enough for a historian to develop a clear argument, but manageable for high school students with the right support.  

When I search for readings—whether in Google Scholar, JSTOR, academic monographs, or book chapters—I’m not just looking for information. I’m looking for stories. Stories that help students make sense of larger historical concepts, that touch multiple AP^® Key Concepts at once, and that connect back to the broader themes we revisit throughout the semester. 

At the beginning of the year, students receive a reading schedule and print copies of the readings. Their task is not simply to read but to study the sources the way historians do. 

Students begin by annotating the reading. In their annotations, they make connections to previous readings, note the historian’s arguments, summarize longer passages, and comment on the broader historical context. 

For example, students read Chapter Two from Gerald Carson’s book The Social History of Bourbon, titled “Watermelon Armies and Whiskey Boys.” The chapter explores the Whiskey Rebellion and how the new republic under George Washington enforced excise taxes on whiskey to demonstrate the authority of the newly ratified Constitution. 

One student boxed the date March 3, 1791, in the text and wrote, “This must have been soon after ratification.” Later in the reading he added, “I see what Hamilton’s up to. This reminds me of the Motley Crew reading and the Sons of Liberty.” In just a few annotations, he was connecting political ideas, historical actors, and earlier readings—exactly the type of thinking historians do. 

When we meet in class, discussion becomes the centerpiece of learning. For thirty to forty minutes, students work together to unpack the reading. We begin by identifying the historian’s thesis and then trace how the argument unfolds across the piece—the line of reasoning. Students are required to contribute to the discussion and add to their annotations. Students are far less intimidated when they do not have to understand everything, but they have to offer something. 

To help students visualize the historian’s line of reasoning, I tell them to think of the reading like a campus tour. Each section of the campus represents a different part of the historian’s argument, and the rooms we visit represent the evidence that supports that claim. At the end of the tour, we return to the entrance of campus and revisit the central thesis with a clearer understanding of how all the pieces fit together. 

During the following class period, students write a short reflection about the reading. In about a page, they rewrite the historian’s thesis in their own words, paraphrase the major components of the argument, identify the most compelling piece of evidence for each subtopic, and explain how that evidence supports the overall claim. By the end of the year, students will have analyzed a dozen or so scholarly interpretations of American history. 

At first glance, assigning scholarly readings in a high school classroom may seem daunting. Many teachers worry that the readings will be too dense or time-consuming, or that valuable class time would be better spent covering more discrete content—especially in a course like AP^® U.S. History with its demanding timeline. 

In practice, however, this approach actually encourages deeper retention of historical material. Students think more carefully about the content because they are constantly connecting ideas across readings and units. They revisit themes and arguments repeatedly as they annotate and discuss each new reading. 

It also allows students to learn in one of the most natural ways possible: through story. 

Instead of simply memorizing a chart of goods exchanged in the Columbian Exchange, students read Sarah Toby Evans’s reading “Concubines and Cloth.” The reading traces how concubinage played a central role in the Aztec textile economy and how Spanish colonization disrupted that system through the introduction of Catholic marriage norms and European livestock like sheep. 

By placing historical developments within a narrative, students find the material far more meaningful, and therefore, far more memorable. 

From an AP^® U.S. History exam perspective, secondary sources also offer significant advantages. First, analyzing historians’ arguments directly prepares students for short answer questions, which frequently include excerpts from secondary sources. Students who regularly read historical arguments become far more comfortable identifying a thesis, understanding reasoning, and evaluating evidence—a point of emphasis in every annual AP^® Chief Reader Report.  

Second, secondary sources help students develop complexity in longer essays, such as the DBQ and LEQ. When students see how historians construct layered interpretations, they begin doing the same in their own writing. 

These readings eventually become what my students jokingly call “cheat codes” for historical evidence as they are memorable examples they can draw upon when writing essays or answering exam questions. 

Secondary sources also create opportunities to highlight the evolving nature of historical interpretation. 

One of my favorite examples occurs during our unit on Reconstruction. Students first read historian James MacGregor Burns’s description of Reconstruction as “the revolution that failed.” Around the classroom, I then post excerpts from historians representing different schools of interpretation and written decades apart. 

Students move through the room in a gallery walk, comparing how historians from different eras explain the same historical period. 

What emerges is a powerful realization: history is not just about what happened—it is also about how we interpret what happened. 

Students see firsthand how historians’ perspectives change depending on the evidence available, the questions they ask, and even the historical moment in which they are writing. 

By the end of the activity, students are no longer simply studying Reconstruction. They are studying Reconstruction historiography. And that is when students truly begin to think like historians. 

In the end, making secondary sources a central part of the classroom transforms how students experience history. 

Instead of viewing history as a collection of facts to memorize, students begin to see it as an ongoing conversation among historians. They learn that historical arguments are constructed, debated, and revised. They see how evidence supports claims, and how interpretations evolve as new questions are asked. 

Most important, they begin to realize that they themselves can participate in that conversation. 

When students analyze historians’ arguments, discuss interpretations with their classmates, and construct their own claims about the past, they are doing far more than preparing for an exam. They are practicing the very skills that define historical thinking. An act that may be “unnatural” according to Wineburg, but one that is certainly “essential.” 

For a full list of the readings Nicoletti assigns for each historical unit and a reading schedule example, feel free to reach out at NicolettiC@cbchs.org. 

Interested in incorporating more sources in your classroom? Norton’s America: The Essential Learning Edition includes primary and secondary sources alongside the print textbook and in an online reader. Learn more about our high school history program here . 

AP^® is a trademark registered and/or owned by the College Board, which was not involved in the production of, and does not endorse, this product. 

*Wineburg, Sam. Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past. Temple University Press, 2001.

MEET THE AUTHOR