Since 2006, the Library has awarded Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) grants to build a nationwide network of organizations that deliver educational programming, and create teaching materials and tools based on the Library’s digitized primary sources and other online resources. Each year members of this network, called the TPS Consortium, support tens of thousands of…
Students will analyze historical and contemporary primary sources to examine how citizens persevered to overcome injustice and affect change during the 1960s civil rights era and consider the lessons the first March to Selma in 1965 provides for us today. Enduring understanding: Time, place, and culture influence our perspectives on people and issues. Essential question:…
In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor and the author of the book The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President, discusses the dichotomies between Madison’s moral views of slavery and his actions. Delving into the past, he contends, can provide us with lessons in racism for…
This is a guest post from Tim Anderson, a middle school English teacher and Google Certified Educator at Sulphur Springs Elementary School in Jonesborough, Tennessee. There often seems to be a disconnect between students and historical events. Connecting literature to history helps make it come alive for students. Since my eighth graders are studying the…
“Conspiracy theories run amok. Fear of spies and meddling in American politics at the highest levels by foreign powers. A bipartisan divide so bitter that the federal government moves to muzzle what many politicians believe to be a biased, out-of-control news media.” Current events? Actually, the excerpt paints a picture of the political climate during…
In the Guardian of Democracy: the Civic Mission of Schools report, Lee H. Hamilton, founder of the Center on Congress and U.S. Representative from Indiana (1965 to 1999), wrote: Citizenship requires both knowledge about government and the ability to be involved in governance. It means knowing how to identify and inform yourself about issues, explore…
Missouri high school social studies teacher @Bethany_Petty posted a creative idea for integrating technology into primary source learning that she dubbed as Hashtags Through History. Here is a brief overview from her blog Teaching with Technology. This activity requires students to locate an image that depicts a historic event, create a username for a person that lived…
Today in History–December 6–TPS-Barat features the Halifax explosion, which occurred on this day in 1917. The largest man-made explosion in history, killed nearly 2,000, injured around 9,000, and left approximately 6,000 people homeless. It’s a story of local devastation but also of multinational cooperation. Click the primary sources and other resources below to learn more….
Today in History–November 25–the Library of Congress features Sacramento, California, a boom town during the mid-19th-century gold rush. By 1854 the city had become the state capital. Learn more about the city of Sacramento by visiting the Today in History section, then click the links below to access more primary sources. Pioneer Life in Sacramento from America’s Library…
The article, In a Lost Essay, a Glimpse of an Elusive Poet and Slave (The New York Times Sept. 25, 2017), tells the intriguing story of the discovery of a primary source text by Jonathan Senchyne, an assistant professor of book history at the University of Wisconsin. The essay, “Individual Influence” by North Carolina slave and poet George…
The Barat Education Foundation (BEF), a long time member of the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Program (TPS), began working with the Constitutional Rights Foundation (CRF) in 2016 to create multidisciplinary lessons that feature primary sources from the Library of Congress and infuse civic learning across the curriculum (stay tuned, coming soon). Primary source learning…
Students deepen their understanding of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution with this primary source image sequencing activity. Lesson implementation Direct students to work individually, in pairs or in small groups to write a definition of the word “democracy”. When students have finished, tell them that the word “democracy” comes from two Greek words: “demos”…