Library of Congress Summer Institute

Description

From the Library of Congress website:

"The four-day institute will provide educators with the tools and resources to effectively integrate primary sources into classroom teaching.

Though many teachers are familiar with the importance of primary sources, they are not sure how to use them in the classroom, how to develop inquiry-based lessons, or how to help students use them in projects. In this institute, Library of Congress education specialists will introduce participants to the unique characteristics of primary sources, while helping them explore some of the millions of digitized primary sources available on the Library's Web site. Participants will be able to work with like-minded teachers from around the country to explore methods for effectively integrating primary sources into classroom activities.

After participating in the Summer Teacher Institutes, participants will:

  • Understand and analyze primary sources
  • Employ primary sources in classroom activities
  • Access primary sources from the Library of Congress
  • Understand the legal and ethical use of digital resources
  • Understand the inquiry process
  • Create inquiry-based activities using primary sources"
Contact email
summerinstitute@loc.gov
Registration Deadline
Sponsoring Organization
Library of Congress
Target Audience
4-12
Start Date
Cost
Free
Course Credit
"Although the Library cannot provide college or professional development credits for those participating in the Teacher Institutes, we will provide a certificate of completion."
Duration
Four days
End Date
Website
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/professionaldevelopment/teacherinstitute/

NCSS Network Webinar with C-Span Classroom

Description

From the National Council for the Social Studies Ning website:

"Learn about C-Span Classroom's outstanding free resources for social studies educators."

Note: To participate in this conference, you should be registered with the National Council for the Social Studies' Ning network.

Sponsoring Organization
National Council for the Social Studies, C-SPAN
Target Audience
K-12
Start Date
Website
http://fs12.formsite.com/thwt/form506408571/index.html

Famous Americans

Description

From MAGPI's website:

"Have your students explore American History as they research and portray famous Americans as part of this engaging, interactive videoconference! Each participating class will give three '60 second' presentations about three different famous Americans. Snapshots should include pertinent facts about the famous American—and the student representing the famous American should be dressed like the person they are portraying. After the presentations, there will be a 5 minute 'reflection period' where teachers can facilitate classroom discussion and students can deduce which famous Americans were being portrayed.

Each school will get a turn to present. After schools select which three Americans they will research, presentations will be grouped by category. For example, three different schools might present as part of the 'Famous American Women' category and those same schools might also have a presentation as part of the 'American Explorers' category. Categories will be determined at least one week prior to the videoconference event.

This project is adaptable for whatever content area you are covering as part of your social studies curriculum. If there is a famous American that you would like your students to investigate—and he or she is not already on the list—we'd be happy to add that person!"

Contact name
Heather Weisse Walsh
Contact email
hweisse@magpi.net
Sponsoring Organization
MAGPI
Target Audience
4-5
Start Date
Cost
Free; "Must be a MAGPI Member to participate in this videoconference"
Duration
Two and a quarter hours
Website
http://www.magpi.net/Community/Programs/Famous-Americans-%E2%80%93-Upper-Elemen…

Illinois Law-related Education Conference

Description

From the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago website:

"CRFC's annual conference features over 20 teacher workshops on legal and political issues, interactive teaching methods, and innovative materials for the classroom. Participants can attend dynamic workshops featuring nationally recognized presenters, exchange ideas with colleagues from throughout the state, and take back free resource materials."

Website
http://www.crfc.org/programs/lreconf.php
Sponsoring Organization
Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago
Contact email
chan@crfc.org
Location
Oak Brook, IL
Contact name
Margie Chan
Phone number
800-801-9933
Start Date
Registration Deadline

Transportation: Past, Present and Future

Teaser

What pushes and pulls people into new ways of life? In this lesson, students use artifacts, documents, and photographs to help them answer this question.

lesson_image
Website
The Henry Ford Museum
Description

What pushes and pulls people into new ways of life? In this lesson, students use artifacts, documents, and photographs to help them answer this question.

Article Body

The Henry Ford Museum’s "Early 20th Century Migration—Transportation: Past, Present and Future" is a thematically rich teaching unit. Through artifacts, documents and photographs, students explore the overarching question, What pushes and pulls people into new ways of life? How did the lure of jobs in U.S. factories “pull” Europeans and people of the American South to northern cities and new ways of living? The lessons are both rigorous and relevant, and continuously engage students in considering the impact of the past on the present.

Dubbed an Educator DigiKit, the unit includes extensive materials for teachers. The Teacher’s Guide includes timelines on various historic themes relevant to the lesson topics, a glossary, bibliographies, connections to Michigan and national standards, and field trip suggestions. The lesson plans introduce the assembly line concept, technological and economic forces that cause large-scale migration, fair labor issues, challenges faced by immigrants, and the ongoing changing nature of work up to the present. All of the lessons include links to primary sources in the Henry Ford Museum Online Collection and they utilize a range of activities, including simulations, math-based problem solving, and source analysis.

Teachers will want to consider supplementing this unit by incorporating a rigorous, systematic approach to analyzing primary sources. Borrowing one from another site (see possibilities here) could strengthen the individual lessons and unit. A rich resource, 20th Century Migration honors middle elementary children by challenging them to ponder and interpret significant topics in history that continue to affect their world today.

Topic
Continuity and Change
Time Estimate
Varies
flexibility_scale
4
Rubric_Content_Accurate_Scholarship

Yes
Not only are the details accurate, but the breadth of the perspectives in the lessons helps students develop an accurately complex sense of the unit topics.

Rubric_Content_Historical_Background

Yes
Brief secondary sources provide context for the investigations. For examples, see an essay on the nature of assembly line work on page 44, or a PowerPoint on urbanization that is linked from pages 36 or 37.

Rubric_Content_Read_Write

Yes

Includes a few explicit writing exercises, primarily short-answer assessments. Class discussion questions might be used as writing prompts in older grade levels.

For an example, see writing prompts for primary source analysis on page 55.

Rubric_Analytical_Construct_Interpretations

Yes
Would have liked to see primary source analysis embedded earlier in the unit; it is not introduced until near the end of the unit. The unit would also be more powerful if it introduced a systematic model for source analysis.

Rubric_Analytical_Close_Reading_Sourcing

No
The source analysis guides do not ask students to consider the author or creator of a source. The informal mini-biographies used as primary sources in Lesson 6 are intriguing; the lesson would help students better understand the nature of historical analysis if they engaged them in asking who created the biographies and why.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Appropriate

Yes
The lessons lend themselves to ready adaptation not only in grades 3-5, but for middle school as well.

Rubric_Scaffolding_Supports_Historical_Thinking

Yes

Rubric_Structure_Assessment

Yes
Topical knowledge is emphasized in the unit. Nonetheless, the unit does include activities to engage children in interpreting historical documents for basic understanding. No criteria for assessment are included.

Rubric_Structure_Realistic

Yes
The learning goals are topical.

Rubric_Structure_Learning_Goals

Yes
The learning goals are topical.

The Struggle for Time: Using Persuasive Essays to Teach Elementary History

Image
For more information

This is just a slice of a much broader work entitled, Freedom to Express: Promoting Civic Literacy, Reading, and Writing for the English Language Learner. This curriculum uses the First Amendment, namely, Freedom of Expression, as a frame of reference to launch and systematically teach ELLs how to successfully write a persuasive essay. To secure a copy please contact Michelle Herzog at Herczog_Michelle at lacoe dot edu.

Educators are all too familiar with the unfortunate truth that what is tested drives a teacher’s instructional focus, energy, and time. Unfortunately, because history/social studies is not a formally tested subject in elementary schools in many states it frequently becomes the neglected subject. Additionally, with little to no sense of urgency to teach history thoroughly, it is easy to rely on “sound bite” instruction rather than quality, in-depth teaching. It can be a constant challenge for elementary educators to designate significant amounts of time for social studies instruction.

Crop It

Image
Article Body
What is it?

Crop It is a four-step hands-on learning routine where teachers pose questions and students use paper cropping tools to deeply explore a visual primary source.

Rationale

In our fast-paced daily activities we make sense of thousands of images in just a short glance. Crop It slows the sense-making process down to provide time for students to think. It gives them a way to seek evidence, multiple viewpoints, and a deeper, more detailed, understanding before determining the meaning of a primary source.

Description

This routine helps young students look carefully at a primary source to focus on details and visual information and use these to generate and support ideas. Students use evidence from their “crops” to build an interpretation or make a claim. Crop It can be completed as part of a lesson, and can be used with different kinds of visual sources (for example cropping a work of art, a poem, or a page from a textbook).

Teacher Preparation
  1. Print a collection of primary sources related to the unit or topic under study. The collection may include:
      • various types of sources that include images, such as photographs, cartoons, advertisements, and newspaper articles. Consider images that challenge students to use varying amounts of background knowledge and vocabulary, or that can be read by students working on different reading levels;
      • sources representing different perspectives on the topic;
      • sources depicting the people, places, and events that will be tested in a unit;
      • sources representing perspectives that are missing from the textbook’s account.
  2. Print enough copies so each student can have one source: it’s fine if some students have the same image.
  3. Print and cut out enough Crop It tools so that each student has a set of two tools.
  4. Prepare to display a series of questions either through a PowerPoint presentation or on chart paper.
In the Classroom

Step One: Choose an Image

Ask students to choose a source from the collection that either:

    • connects to an experience that you have had;
    • relates to something that you know a lot about, and/or
    • leaves you with questions.

*Note: other criteria may be substituted such as choose an image that relates to a question you have about the unit, relates to your favorite part of this unit, or that represents the most important topic or idea of this unit.

Step Two: Explore the Image

Crop the image to the part that first caught your eye. Think: Why did you notice this part? Crop to show who or what this image is about. Think: Why is this person or thing important? Crop to a clue that shows where this takes place. Think: What has happened at this place?

  1. Pass out a set of two Crop It tools to each student. Demonstrate how to use the Crop It tools to focus on a particular piece of a source. Students can make various sizes of triangles, rectangles, and lines to “crop” or focus attention on an important part of the source.
  2. Invite students to carefully explore their image by using the tools. Pose a question and ask students to look carefully and “crop” to an answer. For example, ask students to:
  3. (See Question Sets Handout for additional sample questions.) Invite students to revise their answer by choosing another crop that could answer the same question. Encourage students to consider: if they could only have one answer, then which crop would be best? Why? Allow students to look at the crops of other students. Students can explain their crop to a partner. Or ask students to place their source and crop on their desk, and invite students to silently walk around and notice the different types of evidence that students used to answer the same question.

Step Three: Identify the Evidence

Collect the types of evidence students cropped on large chart paper by asking them to recall the different types of details that they cropped. These charts encourage students to notice details and can be used later, when adding descriptions to writing or as supports for answers during class discussions. The charts might look like the example below and will constantly grow as students discover how details help them build meaning. Chart

Step Four: Close the Lesson

Conclude the lesson by asking students what they learned about the topic related to the collection. Ask them to reflect on what they learned about looking at sources, and when in their life they might use the Crop It routine to understand something.

Common Pitfalls

Avoid asking too many questions during Step Two: Explore. Keep the questions and the cropping moving fairly quickly so students stay engaged and focused on their primary source. To increase the amount of thinking for everyone, don’t allow students to share their own crops with a partner or the class right away. Ask students to revise their own crop by trying different ideas before sharing.

Example

See Image Set Handout for samples that you might use with this strategy. These images represent some events key to understanding the Great Depression of the 1930s (e.g., FDR’s inauguration and the Bonus Army’s march on Washington) and could be used to review or preview a unit of study.

For more information

Finding Collections of Primary Sources to Crop

Find Primary Source Sets at the Library of Congress.

See this entry on finding primary sources or search Website Reviews to find useful sources.

Other Resources

Visible Thinking, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Artful Thinking, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Richhart, R., Palmer, P., Church, M., & S. Tishman. (April 2006). Thinking Routines: Establishing Patterns in the Thinking Classroom. Paper prepared for the American Educational Research Association.

Bibliography

Crop It was developed by Rhonda Bondie through the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Northern Virginia.

Exploring Historical Fiction

Image
Question

Do you have any suggestions for historical fiction that could be incorporated into our Language Arts classes on the topics of the Oregon Trail or Lewis and Clark? Currently we use Will Hobbs's Ghost Canoe to help reinforce teaching about Coastal Native Americans in the history classes.

Answer

Thanks for your inquiry. We often get requests for recommendations of historical fiction to use when studying particular time periods and historical events. So below, I first list some open-access digital databanks of fiction (and occasionally nonfiction) to use in the history/social studies classroom. Then I share some recommendations specific to your request.

Databases of Recommended Books

The National Council for the Social Studies’ (NCSS) Notable Books lists are a great resource. Each year, a panel of educators and librarians read more than 200 books to select these “notable books.” Lists from prior years can be downloaded for free and you can purchase the most recent list or access it for free with membership in NCSS. For each of these books, general reading levels and applicable NCSS standards are identified and a brief annotation gives an overview of content. OurStory, a project of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, provides a useful bookfinder. Here you can search by general historical topic, age group, book type, and award. Searching this bookfinder for “19th century history” and "middle school" brings up 47 fiction and nonfiction books. Please note that it’s not clear when this list was last updated as it does not include recent award winners. The American Library Association's yearly list of Notable Children’s Books includes books suitable for children up to, and including, age 14. Books that win awards such as the Coretta Scott King Award and Newbery Medal are added to the list. (The ALA also has a page dedicated to book lists, but few specifically pertain to the history classroom.) The Reading and Writing Project at Teacher’s College has generated a list of historical fiction using teachers’ recommendations which can be accessed as a PDF here. This list just includes title, author, book type (i.e., picture or chapter) and level, but organizes the books by historical topic including a set of recommendations for “Westward Expansion and Prairie Life.” PBS has a list of historical fiction for grades four and five, which can be accessed here. Some states provide lists of historical fiction and nonfiction. Search California’s database using “Oregon” as keyword or “Lewis” as keyword and you will get more than 20 fiction and nonfiction books.

Specific Recommendations

All these online resources can help you find a book, but don’t forget your local and school libraries and independent bookstores. Often children’s librarians will have wonderful suggestions and your local bookseller may also have a quality selection of historical fiction. Indeed, Martha Dyer, librarian at Mission Hill Middle School in California, helped me compile the following recommendations. (One source she used that is not mentioned here is a database available at the local public library, “NoveList,” produced by Ebscohost.) Here are some titles worth investigating: Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie: The Oregon Trail Diary of Hattie Campbell (1997) by Kristiana Gregory. This is a quality selection from the Dear America series. My Travels with Capts. Lewis and Clark, by George Shannon (2004) by Kate McMullan. Seaman: The Dog Who Explored the West with Lewis & Clark (1999) by Gail Langer Karwoski. The Journal of Jedediah Barstow, an Emigrant on the Oregon Trail: Overland, 1845 (2002) by Ellen Levine. This is part of the My Name is America series. Thomas Jefferson: Letters from a Philadelphia Bookworm (2000) by Jennifer Armstrong. This is part of the Dear Mr. President series. The books below do not directly address the specific time period or event you ask about, but they could also be good choices as they are engaging and relevant.

  • Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903)
  • The Devil’s Paintbox by Virginia McKernan (2010)
  • The Game of Silence by Louise Erdrich (2005)
  • The Journal of Wong Ming-Chung: a Chinese Miner, California, 1852 by Laurence Yep (2000)

And finally, consider one experienced middle school history teacher’s response to your question: “I usually have my students reading excerpts from Lewis and Clark's journals. Some of those read like a fictional story at times!” Good luck!

For more information

Teachinghistory.org addresses World War I and II literature in another Ask a Master Teacher response and 20th-century literature for the high school classroom in another.

See this response for five picture books for teaching the American Revolution to fifth graders.

Also see this Teaching Guide on using “book sets” that include fiction and nonfiction texts.

Subscribe to 4