Students will launch the San Diego history investigation by connecting their own histories to place, examining how local history is constructed from evidence and perspective, and preparing for neighborhood-based research, interviews, writing, and revision across the project.

Students will investigate early San Diego histories through a community-grounded field experience, analyze conflicting accounts and source reliability, and refine a focused question, hypothesis, and bias-check plan for their assigned neighborhood inquiry.

Students will finalize an investigable question for their San Diego community study and design a defensible method for gathering, checking, and organizing evidence from documents, maps, biology-linked sources, and community interviews. They will build search tools, tracking systems, and peer-review protocols that make later research traceable, credible, and ready for analysis and writing.

Students will gather traceable evidence for their neighborhood investigation by collecting oral histories, photographs, maps, and historical readings; documenting source origin, context, and reliability; and organizing findings into a usable evidence set for later comparison and interpretation.

Students will analyze their collected sources, interviews, maps, and biology/place evidence to test claims about San Diego communities, identify contradictions and patterns, and turn their findings into polished chapter drafts and debate arguments. They will move through structured critique, revision, and milestone checks so their historical interpretations are evidence-based, contextualized, and ready for public sharing in the final phase.

Students will present their neighborhood history chapters and debate claims to an authentic audience, gather community feedback on accuracy and relevance, and complete a final reflection that evaluates their evidence use, collaboration, mindfulness, study strategies, and growth as historical investigators.