Professor Leo Marx presents the protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," Jay Gatsby, as "a representative American," using the arc of the character's development to explore popular myths and understandings of U.S. origins, developments, and dangers.
Richard Carwardine is Rhodes Professor of American History at Oxford University, author of Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power, and winner of the 2004 Lincoln Book Prize. In this lecture, he discusses different aspects of Lincoln's life. Why is Lincoln a mythic figure? How early in his career did he develop his views against slavery? What role did religion play in his life? Professor Carwardine analyzes Lincoln's greatness as well as his humility.
According to the Gilder Lehrman website:
"Distinguished American historian and counselor to presidents, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. had a ringside seat to the most pivotal moments of the 20th century. Schlesinger's Journals: 1952-2000, the second volume of his journals, were published in 2007 to great acclaim. The Gilder Lehrman Institute presents a 2001 Historians' Forum that he delivered on the first volume of his journals, A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917-1950. Schlesinger focuses particularly on how perceptions of progress, government, and human nature changed in the face of the two World Wars and the rise of government forms that challenged democracy."
Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities and Director of the American Studies Program at Columbia University Andrew Delbanco examines the evolution of the American Dream—the idea that anyone may rise above his or her station, regardless of birth. Beginning with the Puritans, Professor Delbanco traces the origins of the American Dream from the Calvinist fire-and-brimstone of Jonathan Edwards, to the swelling optimism of Emerson and Melville, to the present day.
When a student’s [writing] consists of nothing more than handouts and notes copied verbatim, a learning opportunity has been missed.
—Amy Benjamin (1)
I emphasize student writing in my teaching. Writing, after all, is simply putting thoughts on paper and so, in a very real sense, writing is thinking. If my students learn to write clearly, concisely, accurately, and completely they are disciplining their historical thinking. As I tell students in my 7th-grade classroom, because of this emphasis their writing is what will count the most in my class—not the quizzes or the test, but the writing.
There is one overriding thing that we can do to help our students improve their writing: have them write a lot, and write substantively. I have created several posters that I have up in my classroom that relate to the writing that students will undertake in class. One lists the thinking standards that are emphasized in class ("be clear, be accurate, be complete, be deep"; see my earlier blog entry) and the second contains a quote from Albert Einstein: "You do not understand something until you can explain it to your grandmother." "Everything you write," I tell them, "must be so clear, so accurate, so complete, that even a person who knows nothing of the topic about which you are writing (say your grandmother), will understand it after they have finished reading what you wrote."
Processing Notebooks. Students can use writing notebooks to process the varied learning experiences in which they engage. Whatever these experiences, be they interacting with learning stations, viewing a segment from a video, or reading from primary sources or their textbooks, students need to process the information and ideas they are learning. There are many quick-write strategies that can be used for this processing. Whatever students write, the emphasis should be on clarity and completeness (“make it short and sweet”).
Magnet Summaries. The magnet summary strategy is an excellent strategy that asks your students to process their understanding of content by thinking it through completely and writing it out. Students read over a passage and then write a one- or two-word “magnet word” which captures what that passage is all about (it may be the title of a section or speech). This word, or phrase holds the rest of the ideas together (as a magnet would hold nails). The magnet word "attracts" just main ideas, so students next list three or four phrases that contain the main ideas of the section. They then use the magnet words and main idea phrases in writing a concise summary of one or two sentences that briefly but completely explains the content of the reading. Following the summary, I ask students for a connection piece. Connection is a literacy strategy in which students think and write about how a reading connects to something they have learned previously, something in current events, or something in their daily lives.
As an example, imagine you have assigned a magnet summary for President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Here is what a magnet summary might look like:
Summary: In the Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln spoke of the Revolutionary War and the creation of the American nation dedicated to freedom and liberty for all people. He told the people that we were now fighting a Civil War testing whether this type of government could survive, fighting to bring about a new birth of freedom for those held in slavery who did not have liberty, and fighting to ensure that our form of government (by and for the people of America) would last forever.
Connection: I connect President Lincoln’s new birth of freedom to the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in our Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. President Lincoln said that we were fighting the Civil War to make certain everyone had those rights.
Magnet summaries can be used in a variety of ways, but their essence is always the same: having our students think through what they are reading and write about their thoughts in a way that is concise yet complete. My favorite use is in a cooperative group where each student has a role. The roles are printed on four cards: read, main ideas, summary, connection. After they have read a section, students will identify the main ideas, write a shared magnet summary, and then exchange cards for the next section of the reading.
Sam Wineburg and Daisy Martin wrote "The teaching of history should have reading and writing at its core" (2). Using notebooks to process information and ideas and using strategies like the magnet summary to prompt students to learn to identify, articulate, and connect main ideas from their readings helps us teach the literacy essential to history and historical thinking.
1 Benjamin, Amy. Writing in the Content Areas. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education, 2005.
2 Schmoker, Mike. Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2011. The fifth chapter, "Social Studies with Reading and Writing at the Core," makes extensive use of the ideas of Sam Wineburg and Daisy Martin.
Mike Yell shares many more of his teaching strategies in our blog! Click here to explore them.
Remember that writing is a vital skill for students at all levels of ability and English comprehension! In Teaching English Language Learners, From the University describes tips for assigning and evaluating written work. Know the purpose behind the assignment, and grade according to that purpose!
Find more quick-write strategies in Teaching Guides, from annotating to blogging.
Research Briefs demonstrate the effectiveness of reading and writing that promotes understanding.
Professor David Foster analyzes Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, looking at what the novel, its characters, and the life of its author reveal about the "American character" and views of American ideals and life at the time of its writing.
This lecture continues from the lecture Mark Twain and the American Character, Part One.
For the lecture, follow the link below and scroll down to the second seminar under Wednesday, August 4.
An older version of this lecture can be found here.
Professor David Foster analyzes Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, looking at what the novel, its characters, and the life of its author reveal about the "American character" and views of American ideals and life at the time of its writing.
For the lecture, follow the Website Title link and scroll down to the first seminar under Wednesday, August 4.
This lecture continues in Mark Twain and the American Character, Part Two.
An older version of this lecture can be found here.
In this lecture, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author David Levering Lewis examines Du Bois's largely-forgotten work as a writer of historical fiction, whose journey "beyond the borders of social science certitude" was the result of a "poetic temperament combined with an intellectual's dissatisfaction about the limits of the historically knowable." Lewis discusses Du Bois's early historical novels, The Quest of the Silver Fleece and Dark Princess; as well as the later Black Flame Trilogy (The Ordeal of Mansart, Mansart Builds a School, and Worlds of Color). In a brief question and answer session, Lewis comments on Du Bois's persecution at the hands of the U.S. government during the 1950s, his reputation as a "ladies' man," and his early life and education in Great Barrington, MA.
Close to 3,000 life histories from 19361940, compiled and transcribed by the staff of the Folklore Project, are presented here. They are part of the Federal Writers' Project for the U.S. Works Progress (later Work Projects) Administration (WPA). Documents represent the work of more than 300 writers from 24 states. The histories, usually between 2,000 and 15,000 words in length, take the form of narratives, dialogs, reports, and case histories. Drafts and revisions are included. A typical history may offer information on family life, education, income, occupation, political views, religion, mores, medical needs, diet, and observations on society and culture.
"Voices from the Thirties,” illustrated with photographs of the project's staff at work, interviewees, and their environment, provides contextual information on the creation of the collection. This multifaceted site offers firsthand accounts on subjects such as slavery, 19th-century American folk cultures, and the social history of the Great Depression.
Offering 16 separate databases of digitized materials, this website provides firsthand accounts (diaries, letters, and memoirs) and literary efforts (poetry, drama, and fiction). Twelve databases pertain to American history and culture.
"Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment" offers primary sources documenting cultural interactions from 1534 to 1850. "The American Civil War: Letters and Diaries" draws on more than 400 sources and supplies a day-by-day chronology with links to documents. "Black Thought and Culture" furnishes monographs, speeches, essays, articles, and interviews. "North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories" covers 1840 to the present. "North American Women's Letters and Diaries: Colonial to 1950" provides full-text letters and diaries from more than 1,000 women—totaling more than 21,000 documents and approximately 120,000 pages—written between 1675 and 1950.
Five databases present American literary writings: "Latino Literature"; "Black Drama"; "Asian American Drama"; "North American Women's Drama"; and "American Film Scripts Online." In addition, "Oral History Online" provides a reference work with links to texts, audio, and video files. While the databases include previously published documents, many also contain thousands of pages of unpublished material. In addition to keyword searching, the databases provide "semantic indexing"—extensive categorical search capabilities.