Go back in time:

Now, lets go back to the beginning and start this process once again, this time presenting the students, not with dolls, but with historical figures.

Depending on the class and the historical period that you are teaching, you will present your students with historical figures, (American abolitionists and members of the civil rights movement, apartheid resistance leaders from South Africa, Latin-American liberators) and have them choose one of them to explore and investigate.

You must provide each figure with a brief biographical statement, so that the student can choose the one that he or she is most interested in.

Then the student must answer the same questions answered with the dolls, this time, delving into some historical research in order to find the answers.

Back in class you must create a workshop type of environment to discuss their findings. It's important to note that if some students choose the same historical figure, their answers will differ depending on their individual experiences or knowledge. These differences will allow us to analyze the subjectivity of history and the way we "read" into it, as we look back into the past.

The students, without even knowing it, will be teaching one another and learning about history through their own eyes, using their own perspectives. You will help them to guide their findings, anchoring them at certain moments, but always allowing them the freedom to "discover" history by themselves.

As a final step, they must gather all their research and write an essay on the person they choose. At this point, this far away character that existed somewhere in history has become alive for them, since the students actively participated in finding who they were.
Refer to Standards 2.0 Writing Applications (Genres and Their Characteristics)