When paired together, primary sources and historical picture books provide learners opportunities to explore and create meaning around small moments in time and bigger events. Compelling primary sources further help students contextualize elements of a story to better understand and relate to it. On the flip side, historical fiction and nonfiction picture books can increase…
Read the article, then answer the questions below. If you need help, click the links in the Related resources section below. What was happening in the world at the time this article was published? Who was Mrs. Roosevelt and why was what she had to say important? Who else attended the conference and what groups…
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…
Primary Source Sets with Teacher Guides Guided Primary Source Analyses Inquiry Starter Sets Lesson Plans Collection Connections Welcome to Congress KidCitizen interactive episode for early elementary Primary Source Spotlight: Asian American Pacific Islanders History & Heritage
Overview By pairing primary sources with poetry, students consider the proverb, “Good fences make good neighbors” in the context of their own lives as well as in a local, national or global context. Lesson Steps Display the primary source image and analyze it together as a class using the Library of Congress Primary Source Analysis…
Poetry has a long history of addressing and illuminating public issues and events but a disjointed and relatively short history of inclusion in presidential inauguration ceremonies. These moments, however, provide additional nuance to the state of the country during these important transitional moments in our nation. Use the links below to read and listen to…
The Teacher’s section on LOC.gov features close to 100 teacher-created lesson plans. As you can see from the image above, lesson plans are listed in alphabetical order and there is a handy search bar to help you easily conduct a keyword search. Use the links below to jump to select groupings of the LOC.gov lesson…
Engaging Congress—part of the Congress, Civic Participation, and Primary Sources Project supported by a grant from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program—is a free digital interactive for grades 6-12 that uses primary source documents from the Library and other digital collections to explore the basic tenets of representative government and the challenges…
Look closely at the photo. What do you see? Do any of these items look familiar? What does this image make you think about or feel? What questions do you have? How has teamwork been a part of your life? Reflect on how being part of a team or group has helped shape your identity….
This is a guest post from Kasey Short, an eighth-grade English teacher at Charlotte Country Day school in North Carolina. When I moved from 6th to 8th grade last year, one thing I thought about a lot was how I would approach teaching To Kill a Mockingbird. I knew that I wanted to provide historical…
Political conventions have been part of the presidential nominating process for many years, but where conventions are held, who attends, and what happens at them has changed over time. First, analyze sources related to the Democratic Party’s national conventions in 1928 and in 1960. What similarities do you see? What differences? In particular, look for…
Take a close look at this image to notice small details as well as the bigger picture. Then fill out an Event Happenings worksheet. Next, review the complete work and the source record. What more did you learn? Now look closely at two more images of the same event; the first is a modified image…