Crafting a Research Question: Differentiated Teaching for Instruction With Primary Sources Across Diverse Learning Levels

This case study illustrates methods for drawing on primary sources to instruct students on how to generate and refine research questions (Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy, learning objective 1C) and to recognize that research questions may change (Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy, learning objective 1D). The authors are educators with the Brooklyn Connections program, the school outreach arm of Brooklyn Public Library’s archive and rare book division. Given the diversity of the students served by this program, this case study focuses on adapting a lesson to three examples of lesson implementation, one each in elementary, middle, and high school, varyingly composed of honors, English language learners, and special education students. By looking at varied settings we can reflect on how instructional approaches and materials can be scaffolded for different classrooms, and how different learning goals around the same objectives can be achieved with different and diverse types of students