Focus on Primary Sources - Jackie Robinson

My kids love reading about sports stars, and when I ran across this material about Jackie Robinson recently, I knew it would be perfect for them.

And it was.

The National Archives has put together a fabulous set of resources, including primary sources and lesson plans, about this incredible baseball player.  A staunch advocate of civil rights for African Americans, Jackie wrote letters to several presidents, corresponded with NAACP leaders, and worked tirelessly for equal rights.  Fortunately, these artifacts have been archived and are available in digital format for students' use in the classroom.

They ate it up.  We began by doing a one minute quick write, to check and activate their background knowledge, and we were all surprised that very few students knew of him . . . and those who did had some pretty significant misconceptions.  Then we dove into the material, reading and talking and arguing and writing.  At the end, we revisited their quick write, and they were all astonished at how much they'd learned about the great number 42.

Of course, this isn't the only group of resources the National Archives is curated, but it is one that my thirders really enjoyed.

Which means they learned.

Home run.

What's Going On in This Picture?

My kids are LOVING this resource I stumbled across.

What's Going On in This Picture is a part of The Learning Network Blog at The New York Times.  Here's how it works.

Each Monday, The Times posts a new picture . . . but there's no caption.  You discuss it with your kids, closely analyzing the picture, and see if you can determine what is going on.  If you want, your class can contribute to the comments on the blog, comparing their answers with others from across the nation.  Then, on Friday, they post a caption, a short explanation, and a link to a full news story explaining the event.

We are using a lot of See, Think, Wonder with this, and I am amazed every Monday at what the kids are noticing.  It's great for getting them to slow down, really notice details, discuss and debate, and support inferences.  For example, this past Monday, my kids inferred that the guy jumping the fire was American (the clothes), that it was happening on or near a roadway (the tires and if you look REALLY closely you can make out the outline of a road sign to the right), and that it was likely cold (again the clothing).  Some of their ideas were right, others wrong, but they loved finding out on Friday how close they were to the real story.

It's easy to incorporate in your classroom.  On Monday mornings, I have the picture up when they come in and begin working on morning work, so they have plenty of time to really study it.  After the bell rings, we take 5 or 10 minutes to discuss and write our comments.  Same thing on Friday - it's up to remind them of the picture, we review what we talked about on Monday, and we unveil the story.

Since today's Monday, now's the perfect time to give it a try!

Because, you know, a picture's worth .  .  .

Focus on Primary Sources - American Rhetoric

Today's focus on primary sources is all about speeches.  Speeches are sometimes forgotten when we talk about primary sources, but they are powerful pieces of history.  Just think about some of the famous speeches we all know:  Gettysburg Address, I Have a Dream, FDR's Fireside Chats.  Studying speeches - especially within the context of their associated historical events and periods - is a great way to integrate close reading with social studies content.

Of course, you could search for each speech individually, but American Rhetoric has them housed all in one place!

The online speech bank here is great - you can search by speeches to find what you need.  They also have a compilation of the top 100 speeches of all time that is a great place to discover new jewels.

What I especially love about American Rhetoric is that they have audio recordings of the speeches, too.  Where possible, the original speaker is recorded, and for others they have narrators or celebrities reading the speeches.  I think it would be fun to have the students study the speech closely, THEN listen to it and see if their understanding or perceptions of the speech changed after listening.

This is a definite "must add" to your sites for primary sources!

Focus on Primary Sources - Traveling Trunks

If you haven't been following along with this series, check the "Primary Source" label at the bottom right to get caught up!  If you have been following along, you'll know we've talked about why it's important to use primary sources in the classroom and how to use the Library of Congress to find some really good pictures, maps, and documents.

Today's resource is one that I get really excited about, because I learned about it this summer, and I just think it's one of the coolest things ever.  Did you know that many museums offer some version of a traveling trunk program?  I'm in Tennessee, and here the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville and the Pink Palace Museum in Memphis both have traveling trunks!  Here's a video from the state museum that describes how they work.

I mean, you really don't get much more primary than that!!

Now, I know that you may not be in Tennessee . . . but don't worry!  Many, many museums offer traveling trunks, or some variation on them.  Many also ship out of state (I know that the TN State Museum does), and it's not as costly as you'd think.  For example, the TN State Museum will ship the trunk anywhere within the state for free, and you just pay return shipping, which is usually around $10.  Out of state teachers would just pay shipping both ways.

Of course, Tennessee isn't the only one with this type of program.  For example, the Civil War Trust has a fantastic traveling trunk program (it's already booked for this school year, but I'd get my request in early for next year!)  The George W. Bush Library in Texas has a traveling trunk program.  The University of Mississippi has one focused on art, and so does the San Antonio Museum of Art.

And I found all of those with just a quick Google search!

So, check around in your area and see what's available.  These primary sources can really help history and culture come to life for your students.

Focus on Primary Sources - Exploring the Library of Congress

Today we're heading back into the land of using primary sources in our classrooms.  If you missed the first post in this series, you can go back and read it here.  

In the last post, I wrote about the importance of using primary sources.  Which usually leads to, "That's great.  I want to do that.  Where do I find them?"

And that question leads us to more resources for primary sources than you would think.  In fact, the plethora of websites and digital collections can be pretty overwhelming.  So, when people ask me where to look, I usually send them to the Library of Congress first.  It's one of the best and most comprehensive places to find primary sources that we have available.

To start, click here to go straight to the LOC's classroom materials page.  

There are lots of ways to search, as you can see, and please feel free to explore ANY of these.  But the quickest and easiest is to simply search by your state standard.

To do that, just click the State Content button.  You can see that options for state, grade, and subject are available.  Since I'm me, I'm going to choose Tennessee, third grade, and social studies.

And you can see the resources that they have available!  Of course, they don't have something for every single standard, but they do have a LOT (if you keep scrolling when you do this yourself, you'll see what I mean).  Here, I see that they have resources that align with Tennessee's social studies standard 3.2.  I can tell that they have 23 classroom materials available:  9 primary source sets (this will be a collection of photos, maps, etc.), 1 lesson plan, 1 activity, and 12 Collection Connections.

Collection Connections allow you to dig really deep into different aspects of this standard.  For example, this standard is all about geography and maps.  If I click on Collection Connections, I get this:

These are some of the Connections resources that are available.  If I choose to learn more about The Hotchkiss Map, I click on the link and see this:

 

I could spend DAYS in this site and not explore everything that the LOC has to offer.  It truly is your one stop shop for using primary sources in the classroom.  Because it is so much, here are a few tips and tricks to help you navigate these resources a little easier.

1.  Have a question?  

See that button that says "Ask a Librarian" at the top?  That goes to a real live person who knows what he or she is talking about.  So, let's say I teach 4th grade and I need help gathering primary sources about the American Revolution.  I can send an e-mail using this button and someone will get back to me - usually within 24 hours.  AND the majority of the librarians have education backgrounds, so they won't give you resources appropriate for 9th graders when you teach 4th.

2.  Download your pictures, don't just print them.

When you find a picture you want to use, you will see a "print" option to print directly from the site.  However, when you do this, the picture will print out pretty small and you'll get pages of text about the picture.  It's much better to download the picture to your computer, then print it as a full page picture from there.

3.  Check out the TPS Partners link.

See that TPS Partners link on the left?  The 4th bullet point?  The LOC offered grants to institutions who would create resources for teachers to use primary resources in their classrooms.  Clicking here will take you to the partners who've created good things for you to use.  I'd suggest focusing on partners located in your state, so that the standards will align for you.

Of course, you can explore the site as much and however you'd like.  I've just found it's easier if someone gives me a bit of a map at first to help me find some things quickly, and then I can go back and really hunt on my own.  But, for convenience and really fantastic stuff, the LOC just can't be beat.  As you begin planning for the year, think about ways and times you can use some of these lesson plans and activities in your classroom.  

The kids will LOVE it!

Focus on Primary Sources

I have had an absolute blast facilitating social studies professional development this summer for Tennessee teachers.  I have no doubt that I've learned more from them than they have from me, and the experience has left me with a lot of information and resources for teaching social studies this year.  So, I'm going to start this Focus on Social Studies series, and share some of my favorite findings!

Let me take a moment and back up and explain a bit about Tennessee social studies standards.  Last year, we adopted and implemented new - way more rigorous - standards.  You can read about them here.  So, this summer, the Department of Education offered free training for teachers across the state in how to understand, implement, and provide instruction in the standards, along with continued training about our ELA and math standards.

Today, we're focusing on primary sources - and what exactly that means.  

                           

Primary sources are any kind of artifact that provides a firsthand account of a historical event.  When we think about primary sources, text-based ones often spring to mind first - diaries, autobiographies, memoirs - but there is so much more than that!  Here is a sampling of primary sources you may not have considered:

• Photographs
• Maps
• Legal documents - birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, land deeds, court rulings, immigration records, etc.
• Weapons
• Clothing
• Political cartoons
• Video footage - think news footage, home movies, films, etc.
• Advertisements
• Propaganda - think Rosie the Riveter, etc.
• Archaeological artifacts - rocks, arrowheads, fossils, etc.
• Flags
• Speeches - text and audio
• Poems
• Songs and music
• Research data - census records, etc.
• Art - paintings, sculpture, etc.
• Literature - poems, plays, novels, manuscripts

So . . . what's the big deal about primary sources you ask?  To me, there are two main reasons to use primary sources.

1.  It's what historians DO.  You can't get much closer to history than looking at, examining, and studying the things that were really there during that time period.  And we need our kids to think like historians - to analyze multiple sources of information and then synthesize across all of those sources to make sound, values-based judgements about what they think and why they think it.  Because that, people, is what good, informed citizens do when they are part of a community.  I am TIRED - tired, I tell you - of people basing personal decisions or even public policy on things as innocuous as Facebook and Twitter feeds!  We need for our kids to analyze the information straight from the source and then make a decision - not simply accept whatever they hear.  

2.  It's FUN.  These are the things kids love to work with when we "do" social studies!  They love to listen to period music, wear costumes or uniforms, take time to analyze photos, and compare political cartoons.  And it's really fun for our struggling readers, because when you're working with non-text-based primary sources, such as pictures or advertisements, they can do some really deep thinking without worrying about not being able to access the text.

I hope that this gets your wheels turning about what types of things you can pull for your classroom next year.  I have tons of resources for finding and using primary sources, and I'll be sharing those over the course of this series, but start thinking about these things:

1.  What do I have at home, right now, that I could use as a primary source?  Do you have family members who came through Ellis Island?  Do you have newspaper clippings from major news events?  Do your parents or grandparents have military uniforms, pictures, or souvenirs?  

2.  How could I use these resources in my classroom?  To introduce a unit?  As a daily thinking routine?  In a center or as part of reading or writing workshop?

Check back soon.  In my next post, I'll share some top resources for finding primary sources to use in your classroom!