TPS Spotlight: KidCitizen

KidCitizen is part of the Congress, Civic Participation, and Primary Sources Project, which is supported by a grant from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program. KidCitizen is a digital interactive for K-5 learners that promotes historical inquiry, civic engagement and literacy through the investigation of primary sources from the Library of Congress and making connections to their daily lives.

To learn more about the design and pedagogy of the digital interactive, don’t miss this recorded Library webinar –
Turning Inquiry into Action: How to Engage Young Learners with KidCitizen | session materials. You can also catch them live on October 7 at 4:00 pm EST as part of the TPS Virginia Presents! Fall Wednesday Webinar series. Email to register.

There are currently eight KidCitizen episodes, with more on the way, and Spanish-language versions of several episodes. Each episode capitalizes on the active and social nature of young children’s learning, using primary sources for rich demonstrations, interactions, and models of literacy in the course of innovative hands-on activities that make academic content meaningful, building on prior experiences and fostering visual literacy and historical inquiry skills. Each episode also features a Teacher’s Guide that includes an essential question, TPS and curricular connections, historical background, citations of all primary sources in the episode, teaching suggestions, and related resources.

KidCitizen runs on PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, and iOS and Android devices. The cloud-based KidCitizen Editor is a digital tool that empowers educators to create their own episodes and share them with students. Using the KidCitizen Editor, educators can create activities using primary source photographs that are especially relevant to their students and community.