Making Personal Connections to the Past by Finding Historians

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Photograph, Man at Telephone I, 1920-50, Theodor Horydczak, LOC
Question

Is there a historian that would be willing to Skype a 4th -grade classroom on the American Revolution?

Answer

At a National Archives lecture historian David McCullough once made a startling but quite obvious assertion. "Each of us has," he reminded the audience, "at our disposal the world's greatest research device: the telephone." Times have changed since that 1993 lecture I attended and so too has technology, but McCullough's message still serves us well almost two decades later. If you want to find something—or in the case of this article, someone—you have to reach out.

It matters not what grade level you teach. If you are interested in hooking up with historians . . . you must be the one to make the leap.

It matters not what grade level you teach. If you are interested in hooking up with historians to help you enliven your curriculum or fuel your own intellectual yearnings, you must be the one to make the leap. I have been literally connecting historians with my Applied History class at West Springfield High School since 1992, when we held a long-distance phone conference with filmmaker Ken Burns. Since then students have connected with many historians by speaker phone including Edward Linenthal, Louis Masur, Robert Utley, Nicholas Lemann, and the late Walter Lord, among others.

Since the inception of the collaborative Teaching American History Grants I believe that historians, more than ever, are willing to talk with you and your students. So how do you get started and once you have the process in place what do you do?

Say you are studying the American Revolution and George Washington and you want your students to interact with a Revolutionary War era historian or biographer. Start with where George lived, his home in Mount Vernon, VA. Most top-drawer historic sites have a direct pipeline or e-connection to historians who are working in the site-specific subject matter. Chances are these sites have educational curators or specialists on staff that can help you find someone who can speak articulately to the topic at hand.

Plan Carefully

What is essential is that once the process gets underway you and your students do their homework. Like any research project you and your students must invest the necessary time to make it successful and meaningful. Planning is essential. You need to consider how far out into your curriculum you want to hold such a conference. We all have busy schedules and it is imperative that you be flexible with the person to whom you are connecting. I generally plan for two months out or longer when I make my first pitch. Your students need to prepare, too. If you are connecting with an author you must ensure that your students read the author's work beforehand; otherwise, there will be awkward pauses.

Point out that "how" questions and "why" questions will elicit more of the historian's expertise than factual ones that can be answered by consulting a textbook or encyclopedia.

What I do is have students submit to me, several days before the scheduled conference, an index card with a question that they are posing for the author. I read through the cards and select the best questions. Before I make the phone call I pass out the cards to the students and then bring them up to the speakerphone one by one. A brief introduction is made and then the question is posed. What generally evolves is a conversation between the students and the historians with me facilitating the call, but staying in the background. These are moments for the students.

For elementary students, you may need to do even more preparation. Make sure students have studied the topic recently and are familiar with what historians do. While they may not have the reading skills to read the historian's text, you can still introduce his or her area of expertise, the subject matter that she or he studies, and some age-appropriate texts. Introduce the kinds of questions that may be appropriate for the conference, for example, pointing out that "how" questions and "why" questions will elicit more of the historian's expertise than factual ones that can be answered by consulting a textbook or encyclopedia. This is an opportunity for students to also ask questions that get at what is exciting, puzzling, or ambiguous about the historical topic. And they can find out more about why a person would become an historian, the day-to-day aspects of research, and the ways historians work to decipher history through investigating pieces of the past. In any case, you may need to devote some lessons to effectively preparing your young students for a productive conversation.

Look for Local Resources

Consider also working with your local university history departments. With collaboration being the operative word in education these days, make it real. You might even be able to get the person to come and visit your classes, taking the whole process to a very different level. Also, for information on museums and historic locations in your area, check out the Museums and Historic Sites section of our website.

Ambling down this path may at first seem risky, and it is. I was very nervous when I contacted Ken Burns's studio in 1992 to ascertain the possibility of such a conference call. What I have discovered since then is, if you are genuinely sincere about your motives on behalf of your students then you and they will discover the power of making just such a connection. And I honestly believe that the person on the other end of the line from you and your students actually enjoys the outcome, too. I have never received an answer of "no" from anyone of whom I have made the request. And that I think speaks volumes.

America: The Story of US

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DVD case, America: The Story of US, web shop, history.com
Question

I have been watching The History Channel, America: The Story of US. I have read the comments from other readers. Some believe that it is a good video for use in the classroom, others say that it is full of misinformation. I would like to have an opinion from a master teacher. What do you think about this video series? Is the information factual or full of misinformation?

Answer

America: The Story of US is a 12-hour, six-part survey by cable channel History, formerly known as The History Channel. The most watched and highest rated program in the network's history, the series is also going to be sent free of charge to every school in the country. So how historically accurate is the program, and how useful is it for the classroom?

As Dr. Jeremy Stern writes for History News Network, the answer is: not enough. "History’s much-touted event is, in reality," he writes, "a shallow and fragmentary jumble." Dramatic moments are "ripped from any larger historical context or explanation in a welter of reenactments and frenzied CGI animation, while celebrity talking-heads [. . .] spout feel-good banalities and populist clichés." Leaning towards "unquestioningly laudatory and simplistic patriotism," the series is not likely to offend.

But How Can We Make Best Use of It in the History Classroom?

One way to do this is by thinking of it as another secondary account, similar to a textbook. You might employ the technique of "opening up the textbook." Even though the series is a TV production, the same techniques apply. In the "Superpower" episode, for instance, the series, tells the story of the creation of the interstate highway. As one commentator notes, "the car was your ticket to personal freedom." Such an excerpt might be paired with documents for students to analyze. Did all Americans feel positively about the interstate highway system? Who was in favor of it? Who was against it? When was each source produced and for what purpose? How does this influence the story they tell? After comparing the video excerpt with additional sources, ask students to synthesize the information and make a claim that can be supported by the evidence.

. . . just remember that it's a source like any other and that students should be encouraged to question, examine, and evaluate it.

Another way the series might be used in the classroom is as an "authority" to challenge. The technique of "questioning textbook authority", like the technique of opening up the textbook, works equally well with
a video source. For this exercise, you might show students a clip from the "Millennium" episode focusing on Vietnam War protests. Start by giving students sources on the topic. Then, after students have digested them, show them the clip and ask them to critique it. What does the video get right? What does it get wrong? What is included? What is left out? Which claims are supported and which ones aren't?

Alternatively, have them analyze a short clip closely. Ask students to identify the argument or viewpoint represented by the clip and how it conveys that argument. Have students consider features such as word choice, camera angles, soundtrack, and sequencing of images to uncover how the clip conveys its message. Ask students whose voices and perspectives are missing from the clip.

We haven't watched the whole series, and it's too long to show students in it's entirety. But America: The Story of US can potentially be used in a number of productive ways in the classroom; just remember that it's a source like any other and that students should be encouraged to question, examine, and evaluate it.

Idea of America

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Photo, 2007 Powwow, Ken Rahaim, Smithsonian Institution, Flickr Commons
Annotation

The Idea of America invites student discussion concerning the historical and present day manifestations of ideals such as unity and diversity, equality and freedom, common wealth and private wealth, and law and ethics. Note that high school students and educators comprise the intended audience.

The website is divided into two major portions—Current Events and the Virtual Republic. Current Events offers more than 80 case studies, each of which includes an introduction, key questions (ex: "What makes the nation decide it is the right time to expand the promise of freedom and equality?"), questions connecting these broader key questions to the specific current event, and links to news columns and videos. Recently added topics include women in the military; the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell; and the line between hate speech and First Amendment rights protection.

The Virtual Republic is the place for debate. Here, students are encouraged to write and publish statements on their opinions, beginning with "We believe. . . " These statements can form the basis for debate or support among schools and student groups across the country. Participation requires free student and teacher registration. Students engage as active citizens, and essentially form a microcosm of the Great Debate which has existed throughout the history of the United States.

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Ideas & Ideologies
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Joe Jelen: Old Newspapers Find a Home in New Technology

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Photography, News Boy, 20 Jul 2007, Flickr CC
Article Body

Increasingly, people are turning to online outlets for their daily news (see Pew Research Center’s State of the Media Report). In fact, when I watch students interact with newspapers, they almost seem to treat newspapers as quaint. The reality is that newspapers remain great records of history, and today’s newspapers continue to reflect society's concerns and values. Social studies teachers should continue to teach students how newspapers are laid out and how effective news stories are written.

Newspapers of Yesterday

Consider putting an old newspaper in the hands of students. It does not need to be a special newspaper to hold significant information for students to analyze. While it would be neat for students to hold the front page of the Washington Post from the day Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon or Pearl Harbor was attacked, “atmosphere” newspapers can be just as illuminating and cheaper to obtain. An “atmosphere” newspaper can come from the era of World War I, World War II, or the space race, but not have a specific notable headline. These newspapers can be bought online from sites like eBay or online dealers for less than five dollars, more for older newspapers.

Today’s newspapers continue to reflect society's concerns and values.

If laying hands on an actual old newspaper seems unnecessary, there are plenty of sites that will help you find articles related to your desired era of study. Chronicling America is part of the Library of Congress’s collection and contains searchable newspaper pages from 1860 to 1922. The Google News Archive contains a searchable database of many newspapers, largely from the 20th and 21st centuries. Finally, this site contains a great collection of Civil War-era copies of Harper’s Weekly.

In addition, many newspapers like the New York Times maintain a searchable archive of old articles, some viewable for free and others for a fee. However, many of these same types of big newspaper archives can be searched using subscription services from your school library.

Newspapers of Today

While there are lots of ways to use your local newspaper in the classroom, there are a few sites that stand out for bringing newspapers from around the world to your computer.

Newspapermap.com displays a clickable map of available online newspapers from around the world. The site also offers to translate foreign newspapers. I've found that students get a sense of population distribution in the world and language distribution using this map.

The Newseum has a cool map that displays the day’s front pages from around the world. This can provide students an opportunity to see what makes news in different parts of the world and different parts of the United States.

Lesson Ideas

In a history classroom, students could compare a newspaper today with a newspaper from 25, 50, or 100 years ago. This comparison can be a jumping-off point to several important conversations with students, perhaps even ending with predictions of what news will look like 25 years from now. Likely when students compare newspapers of today with newspapers of the past they will find that there was more paper dedicated to a newspaper (paper costs have increased over time, condensing newspaper size). Students will also find more wire stories, more local news, and more color printing in the newspapers of today.

To better understand the past, perhaps students could categorize articles from an old newspaper.

Another lesson idea to help students practice summarizing main ideas is to cover up the headlines of a few articles and have students develop their own. Students can share their headlines aloud or post headlines anonymously on a wall to gauge understanding as a whole class.

To better understand the past, perhaps students could categorize articles from an old newspaper. Students could categorize according to bias vs. unbiased articles (or categorize by different types of bias), or articles dealing with the federal government vs. state government. This largely depends on the lesson objective.

Finally, students could rewrite newspaper articles with new information or using additional eyewitness accounts. By rewriting articles students are forced to detect bias or corroborate additional sources with their assigned newspaper article. For effect, students can create their own newspaper clippings using this site.

Newspapers offer students a unique glimpse into the past and, alongside new technology, offer fun ways to better understand past, present, and future.

For more information

Historian John Buescher has more suggestions for finding archived newspaper articles online, and our Website Reviews can guide you to even more options. Professor John Lee reminds readers that students (and teachers) may have scrapbooked newspaper articles in their homes, as well.

And don't feel limited to the articles! A close reading of a newspaper illustration, photograph, or cartoon can reveal just as much, as 4th-grade teacher Stacy Hoeflich demonstrates.

Building a Statewide Teaching American History Community

Article Body

There is an old saying in teaching that borrowing an idea is the sincerest form of flattery. Experienced educators are always on the prowl for good ideas. One of the things many of us enjoy about attending the national Teaching American History (TAH) meeting is the chance it gives us to talk and share ideas with other TAH project directors. If you've ever looked around during the lunch session, you've seen hundreds of TAH people busily doing just that. As evidenced by the H-TAH listserve on a national level, sharing ideas and expertise enriches everyone's program. But what about state or regional level communication and collaboration?

Opening lines of communication at the state or regional level encourages the sharing of best practices, offers support to TAH directors new and old, and strengthens the overall TAH community—all at the "cost" of a few phone calls and emails. We see each other at the national conference, but what kind of communication do individual grant directors and staff have with other TAH grants in their state and region the rest of the year? Too often the answer is no communication or at best too little communication. In many states and regions, including my own state of California, TAH directors have taken steps to ensure regular communication and the sharing of information among themselves.

. . . digital communication (a fancy term for email and the phone) is the key to keeping in contact and sharing information among the state's TAH directors and history professionals.

There are over 50 active TAH grants spread across California, which in case you haven't noticed is a pretty large state. In fact, it's an 850-mile drive from our northernmost TAH grant near the Oregon border to San Diego and attending our yearly statewide meeting requires a flight (or two) for most of us. I don't mention this merely to bore you with geographic facts you already know but to make a point—in a state or region the size of California, digital communication (a fancy term for email and the phone) is the key to keeping in contact and sharing information among the state's TAH directors and history professionals. And it is the key to creating real collaboration among the various TAH programs in a state or region.

Get the Ball Rolling

Identify your state or region's TAH directors: The first step toward creating a collaborating group is to identify all the TAH directors in your target area. I've found the easiest way to do this is to contact your TAH supervisor in Washington, D.C., and ask for the current names, contact information, and email addresses for the state's TAH directors. What is listed on the Department of Education TAH website doesn't reflect changes in personnel. Once you have the names it is a matter of picking up the phone and/or sending an email. [Note: A state and national directory of TAH programs and personnel is now available on the National History Education Clearinghouse website.]

Start sending emails: If the longest journeys begin with one step, building a statewide TAH group begins with one email. Start by sharing information and ideas. I try to send my teachers a resource- and opportunity-laden email every few weeks. These emails might include information about summer Gilder Lehrman or NEH Landmarks of American History workshops along with information about state resources. For instance, I send a copy of the Constitutional Rights Foundation's This Month in History calendar each month. Whenever I send an email of this type, I send a second copy to the other California TAH directors to share with their teachers.

I try to send my teachers a resource- and opportunity-laden email every few weeks.

Hold a meeting: Some states like Louisiana and Florida do this quarterly, others such as California meet twice a year (once at the national meeting and once during the other semester). It all depends on your local circumstances. Agenda items can vary from state-specific issues to TAH-related issues. We invite the California Department of Education's history/social studies consultant to join our group because we feel it is important to include the state department of education in our communications—partly to ensure they know about TAH (which they didn't when we started this some years ago). Feel free to invite state or national park historians or speakers from nonprofits and other organizations to the meeting to share what they have to offer. Another idea is to meet at your state's Council for History Education or Council for Social Studies conferences—many TAH programs take teachers to these meetings so it is perfectly reasonable to ask the conference organizers (many who are involved in TAH) for the space to meet as a TAH group.

Take advantage of your own expertise: Make experienced TAH directors available to share their experience and resources with newer directors. This can all be done digitally. For instance, in past years we have shared copies of year-end reports and other report data among ourselves. When one grant unexpectedly found itself without an evaluator, the director was able to ask other directors for recommendations and in short order a suitable replacement was found.

Make experienced TAH directors available to share their experience and resources with newer directors.

Share resources: Grant directors have worked together to share the cost of bringing prominent speakers to California. For instance, a few years ago two TAH directors who lived about 250 miles apart collaborated to bring the Civil Right's icon Fred Shuttlesworth to speak to their teachers. Other grant directors collaborate on their summer travel—they share the cost of buses and speakers. Some grants invite each other's teachers to their sessions. I've heard that the four TAH directors in Louisiana have collaborated to create a standard teacher evaluation.

The key is to communicate—whether you meet quarterly or communicate exclusively by email; whether you communicate to discuss national or regional issues; whether you share curriculum or focus more on sharing practical advice. All it takes is a few phone calls and emails and a TAH director or small group of TAH directors willing to start the ball rolling.

Planning TAH Courses

Video Overview

Gerri Hayes talks through the steps involved in planning and implementing professional development courses for high school teachers—from writing the framework for the course, to hiring historians, to encouraging leadership and community among participating teachers.

Video Clip Name
LL_Gerri1.mov
LL_Gerri2.mov
LL_Gerri3.mov
Video Clip Title
Planning a Course
Forming a Team
Encouraging Community
Video Clip Duration
2:18
1:34
Transcript Text

We do courses, thirty-hour courses, for the high school teachers [that] meet after school and on some Saturdays. And, the teachers can either receive "P-credit," professional credit, towards their next salary differential or they receive a stipend for their work, and of course they produce a product, which is a good thing. And in the second History in the Classroom we've started sort of chronologically with our course and it was conflict, continuity, and change, which was right in the beginning; and the most recent course, which we're in right now, is the Civil War and Reconstruction—actually the Crisis of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

And the way we do it is we hire usually an historian that is about to get his or her doctorate, so they're young and they're very interested in spreading their wings. So that comes—actually a lesson learned—that comes with good points and points that you have to grapple with a little bit. The best thing is they will take—usually—direction so we come out with a product that we really want. You have to do very careful planning upfront.

So how it usually works is I design the course over a period of time, so I'm writing this course really without the historian, and I'm thinking about what is already written in the grant that says that we're going to accomplish; and I'm also, since I'm from New York, thinking about the New York state regions, which I have taught for many years myself, so I like to hit sort of a balance where we're getting some really interesting history that perhaps the teachers might be unfamiliar with, some more cutting edge sort of history, and then of course I want the history they're going to need for the assessment, that the youngsters are going to need to graduate from high school.

The other lesson that I have learned is that you have to really build a cohesive team. So I'm writing the course before I've met the team, so to speak. So once we hire the historian, and I work with our museum or cultural partners, and I work with a person that is in our grant that is called the "historian in residence," and the educator, whom I represent.

And the historian in residence is really an interesting role. She is a young doctoral student also, and she actually advertises the position through her connections with the various universities, so we can find—and she decides—she calls the various resumes and decides who might be the best candidates to teach this course. And then of course we interview along with the project director and the historian in residence and so on to find the best person; and, quite frankly, I’ve learned over time, you have to just cut to the chase and tell them exactly what it is that you're looking for—exactly how the course works, because the course is actually co-taught between the historian and the educator. And that we have to be on the same wavelength.

And I think the other thing that I have learned over the period of, I guess, five years is the ability to build teacher capacity; and I believe you do that by building a great community of teachers. Normally our courses are between 26 and 30 high school teachers, and many of them are social studies teachers. Some are special ed. teachers. Some are English language learning—learners [are] their focus. So, really to know who your teachers are. Some of them are what we call SINI schools, who are schools in need of improvement. I would say one-third of the teachers come from schools in need of improvement, but I know a lot of the Manhattan schools, and many of them work with underprepared students whether they are from schools in need of improvement or not classified as such.

So, I think it's important to build a community of learners, so I always make certain that the teachers are able to communicate with one another by email, and I work a lot in group sort of activities during the class to make certain that they get to interact with people that they don't know. And, it tends that teachers, once I sort of hook them in, they come for other courses, which is great.

And sometimes you get to know over a period of time what people’s strengths are, so I have learned to tap into those teachers and sometimes I give them a portion. They see where they could fit in in a particular course. I like to give the teachers an opportunity to become leaders—to be able to shine in front of their colleagues, and I find that the community of teachers that we have or the community of learners that we have, they're so supportive of one another. It’s really terrific to watch.

So careful planning and building a good team that you will know we're all together on this; we have the same goal. And the idea of allowing the teachers to become leaders, allowing them to show how they can shine and teach their colleagues.

Evidence-Based Historical Writing

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A student completing an in-class writing assignment. NHEC
Article Body

The act of writing alone is not enough to teach evidence-based essay writing in the history/social studies classroom. This study shows that several practices can help students develop the skills necessary to write effective historical interpretations.

Using the results of these assessments. . . Monte-Sano found that students who experienced instruction with five specific qualities were more effective at writing evidence-based argumentative essays.
The Study

Working with two high school teachers in urban, demographically representative Northern California high schools, University of Maryland Professor Chauncey Monte-Sano sought to determine what instructional practices help students develop historical thinking and writing skills. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, Monte-Sano observed two classrooms over the course of seven months. She observed what each teacher did in his or her classroom, including how they represented history and what they asked students to do. She also conducted pre- and post- assessments of students’ historical understanding with 42 students from those classes. For these assessments, students wrote essays where they responded to a prompt with an argumentative essay that used evidence from multiple documents.

Using the results of these assessments that tracked student growth in both written arguments and reasoning, Monte-Sano found that students who experienced instruction with five specific qualities were more effective at writing evidence-based argumentative essays. These qualities of instruction were:

  1. Approaching history as evidence-based interpretation.
  2. Reading historical texts and considering them as interpretations.
  3. Supporting reading comprehension and historical thinking.
  4. Putting students in the role of developing interpretations and supporting them with evidence.
  5. Using direct instruction, guided practice, independent practice, and feedback to teach evidence-based writing.
History as Evidence-Based Interpretation

One teacher, Ms. Bobeck, taught her students to approach history the way historians do, focusing on analysis and argumentation over memorization and summary. As Bobeck put it, “when kids think about opinions, they often think that every opinion is right . . . it’s just someone’s opinion. That’s not something that I particularly want to encourage. . . . You can support or refute the accuracy of what someone is saying in terms of the evidence that they’re using to support that opinion.”

Examining Texts

In Ms. Bobeck’s classroom, students were asked to closely examine texts. Because textbooks tend to hide interpretation and conflict, she incorporated primary and secondary sources that raised questions for students about the past. Students were reminded that each secondary source is the interpretation of an author and that primary sources are the raw materials for constructing interpretations. In approaching readings, students were routinely asked to identify arguments in the text and find the author’s support for those arguments.

Conventions of Analytical Writing

Ms. Bobeck not only asked students to search for interpretations and evidence in texts but also to create their own interpretations using primary source documents. To help them meet this challenge, she made visible the hidden processes inherent in writing analytical history essays. Such work included direct instruction and modeling in important skills like annotating documents, varied scaffolding activities, and providing continuous feedback.

In the Classroom
  • Have students write frequently. Consider the demands of the writing tasks you use and have students write analytic pieces and historical arguments, not just descriptive or summary pieces.
  • Teach students to write historical arguments where they make claims and support them with evidence.
  • Segment and model this task. For example, teach students how to write thesis statements and share and evaluate models of effective theses.
  • Reading multiple texts is essential to teaching evidence-based historical argument. Have students write analyses of single sources and also look across sources to answer a question.
  • Select texts carefully so students encounter models of argument and also see how sources are the raw materials for making historical arguments.
  • Use tools to make these ways of thinking explicit and routine for students. (For example, the acronym SOAP reminds students to question a primary source along these dimensions: Source, Occasion, Audience, and Purpose.)
Sample Application

In Ms. Bobeck’s class, students were frequently asked to examine texts, locating arguments and identifying evidence that supported those arguments. They were then asked to write analytical responses to specific prompts. In one assignment, for instance, Bobeck asked the class to complete the following three tasks:

  • First, write a brief summary of Zinn’s argument. . . . Your summary should be approximately one paragraph in length. Remember that a summary should address his main argument and supporting information.
  • Some historians have argued that Africans accepted their servitude. After all, historians reason, if they truly rebelled, wouldn’t they have been able to overthrow the slave system? Identify the evidence that Zinn offers to the contrary. (You should have at least four examples.)
  • Would Frederick Douglass agree with that assessment? Provide evidence from his book to support your interpretation.

Ms. Bobeck wanted her students to display their comprehension of the reading. After that, however, it was important that her students recognize that they were reading a particular historical interpretation (“Some historians have argued . . .”). Equally important was that her students seek evidence to substantiate or refute such interpretations (“Identify the evidence . . .”). Finally, she asked students to create their own interpretations using evidence from a particular source (“Provide evidence from his book . . .”).

For more information

Monte-Sano, C. (2008). "Qualities of Effective Writing Instruction in History Classrooms: A Cross-Case Comparison of Two Teachers’ Practices." American Educational Research Journal, 45(4), 1045-1079.

See here for a guide on how to help your students annotate documents and read them closely.

Also see this guide on teaching high school students how to write effective thesis statements.

This research brief addresses the teaching of historical writing to middle school students.

Making Sense of American Popular Songs

Article Body

Tunes, lyrics, recordings, sheet music—all are components of popular songs, and all can serve as evidence of peoples, places, and attitudes of the past. Written by Ronald J. Walters and John Spitzer, the guide "Making Sense of American Popular Song" provides a place for students and teachers to begin working with songs as a way of understanding the past.

Website
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/mse/songs/
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