Developed in partnership with middle school social studies teachers, Read.Inquire.Write. (RIW) supports students in inquiry and argument writing in social studies. All resources are free, thanks to a grant from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program, but access to specific materials requires a free teacher account. As students progress through investigations in World Geography, Ancient World History, and U.S. History, they draw on their own rich and diverse … [Read more...]
Finding Resources: Story Maps
Story Maps are immersive web applications that tell the incredible stories of the Library’s collections through narrative, multimedia, and interactive maps. The story maps are created within a Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based software platform created by Esri. Story Maps are chock full of primary sources, including photographs, illustrations, texts, newspaper articles, and even maps. “I find story maps to be a twenty-first-century tool for a twenty-first-century library,” said … [Read more...]
TPS Spotlight: State Historical Society of Iowa
Through the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) grant, the State Historical Society of Iowa developed free and downloadable Primary Source Sets to help K-12 educators meet the Iowa Core Content Standards for Social Studies. These sets address national and international history as well as Iowa-specific history. Educators outside of Iowa are encouraged to use the sets in conjunction with primary sources from their states (see PSN curated sets of state resources). There are … [Read more...]
Literature Links: 2020 National Book Festival
Overview The 2020 National Book Festival ran from September 25-27 and featured a combination of prerecorded and interactive live Q&A programs with more than 120 authors, poets and illustrators. For a complete line-up of authors and their video presentations, please see the full video on demand list. Highlights from Children’s and Teen Stages at Virtual National Book Festival 2020 Minerva’s Kaleidoscope blog October 2, 2020 Democracy in the 21st Century Democracies around the world are … [Read more...]
Literature Links: National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature
Library of Congress News The Library of Congress, the Children’s Book Council and Every Child a Reader today announced the appointment of Jacqueline Woodson, four-time Newbery Honor Medalist, Coretta Scott King Book Award winner and former Young People’s Poet Laureate for her memoir-in-verse “Brown Girl Dreaming,” as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. The program was established by the three organizations in 2008 to emphasize the importance of young people’s literature as it … [Read more...]
Teaching Now: Integrating Literacy, History & Geography
Informed citizens have knowledge and understanding of geography and history (see the College, Career & Civic C3 Framework). This is a guest post from Nicole Woulfe, a middle school social studies teacher from New Hampshire and a Citizen U pilot lesson implementer. I created the Geography & the Civil War lesson to allow my students to grow as geographers as we studied the Civil War. So often, students are overwhelmed by the dates of battles, the number of casualties, and the famous names … [Read more...]
Teaching Now: Predicting & Inferring with Primary Sources & Literature
This is a guest post from elementary teacher and adjunct university instructor Kimberly Heckart, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “I developed the Predict and Infer strategy to help students develop historical comprehension skills while comparing, contrasting, and evaluating information from primary sources related to a particular time period. This strategy motivates students to predict the relevance and meanings of sources and then discover information that will help them make sense of the sources while … [Read more...]