Timely Connections: Fake News & Civic Reasoning

Timely Connections: Fake News & Civic Reasoning

Practicing primary source analysis helps students develop historical thinking skills that also happen to be very important civic literacy skills. In an article from the Fall 2017 issue of American Educator, Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) provides assessments of online civic reasoning and tips for going beyond identifying news as “fake” or “real” to understanding where…

Primary Source Learning: Information Literacy & Inquiry

Primary Source Learning: Information Literacy & Inquiry

The Library of Congress has long realized that teaching with primary sources engages students and promotes critical thinking skills and helps them to construct knowledge. With a shift from a primary focus on content knowledge to the process of interacting with and comprehending, analyzing, and evaluating content, we can help forge deeper content knowledge while…

Learning from the Source: Indian Territory Resettlement

Learning from the Source: Indian Territory Resettlement

In his article, “Thinking Like an Historian“, from the TPS Quarterly archive (now the TPS Journal), Sam Wineburg points out how many students’ view of history—memorization—diverges from that of historians—investigation—and offers advice for using primary sources to engage students in the “historical approach”. Doing so will help students make more authentic and lasting connections to important…