The theme for this conference will be "Ohio Schools in a Global Setting."
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.
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!"
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes
The lessons lend themselves to ready adaptation not only in grades 3-5, but for middle school as well.
Yes
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.
Yes
The learning goals are topical.
Yes
The learning goals are topical.
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 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.
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.
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).
Ask students to choose a source from the collection that either:
*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.
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?
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. 
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.
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.
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.
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.
Crop It was developed by Rhonda Bondie through the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Northern Virginia.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Elementary and middle school classrooms often require students to read history textbooks. Historical accounts in textbooks, however, can often be dry or difficult to grasp. Learning Menus offer students a variety of active methods to access the textbook, remember pertinent information, and learn to regulate their own learning. This strategy can be adapted for multiple grade levels.
Learning Menus are forms of differentiated learning that give students a choice in how they learn. Each choice on the Menu encourages students to engage in an activity that requires actively reading, re-reading, and then summarizing important textbook content. After a student has completed an activity on the Menu, the teacher immediately assesses his or her work before she or he can move on. Learning Menus come in various forms and can include tic-tac-toe boards, restaurant-like menus, matrices, and multiple-choice grids. For example, students can be given a Learning Menu structured like that of a dinner menu with the headings “Appetizer,” “Entrée,” and “Dessert” and be instructed to follow the order of the menu just as they would in a restaurant. Within each “course” students choose from a list of activities. The assignment sheet includes a Well-defined Description for how to complete a chosen activity, the Possible Points one can earn for it, and the textbook Section it covers. At least one task must be completed for each book section, although students are always free to choose their own tasks from the menu choices. After the completion of each “course,” the teacher assesses the result in Points Earned before the student moves to the next one. In the dinner menu example, “Appetizer” activities focus on summarizing the overall content in each section of the textbook reading with activity choices like “Flash Cards,” “Outline,” and “Summary.” “Entrée” activities center on a closer reading of details and give students an opportunity to be creative with options like make a website or travel brochure. For “Dessert” students must choose a short activity that provides an overall summary of the most important themes found in the entire textbook reading.
For an example of a Learning Menu in action, see the video Differentiating with Learning Menus on the Teaching Channel website. In this video, Mary Vagenas uses a “dinner menu” strategy with her 7th-grade social studies students at the Queens School of Inquiry in Flushing, NY. Below the video and in the right-hand column under “Supporting Materials” one can find a sample Learning Menu and a full transcript of the video in Word (DOC) format.
Learning Menus are a method of differentiating instruction that provides flexible ways to engage students, and that can be adapted to various classroom environments. Students become familiar with different types of study methods that they can use to self-regulate learning in the future. Tasks can include simpler activities for struggling students and more complex activities to challenge advanced students. Continual assessment and feedback can help ensure that each student makes progress towards the learning goals. Learning Menus also liven up textbook reading activities by giving students choices about how to extract essential information. These choices can help motivate reluctant readers. However, no matter what a student chooses from the menu, he or she engages in actively reading and making sense of textbook content, helping build historical knowledge.
See more on this topic elsewhere on Teachinghistory.org.
Graphic organizers are another strategy for scaffolding and breaking down challenging texts. Learn more about them, and consider including them in Learning Menus.
Also see the Institutes on Academic Diversity (IAD) at the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education.