A Graphic Organizer & Two Key Phrases: Teaching Question Three
Question Three ("Why then and there?") is by far the most difficult of the Questions for students and teachers to grasp. It requires us to back out from the specifics of our narrative to try to understand the underlying factors that made the story much more likely to happen when and where it did. We use two phrases to guide our thinking: "Factors, not Actors" helps us to remember that we're trying to describe underlying conditions, not specific elements of the narrative. And "Explain a change with a change and a difference with a difference" helps us to identify those conditions that have existed for a long time or in many places, and thus cannot be considered real causes of the events of our story, and those that are new or unique, and thus are more likely explanations of events. This resource is a blank Question Three graphic organizer, and an example of a completed one about the rise of Nazism in Germany, with the changes in Germany circled.