Citizen U lessons infuse civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions across the core subjects in elementary, middle, and high school grades. This interactive webinar featured practice with interdisciplinary civics, inquiry-based learning, and teaching with primary sources, and information about three ELA-Civics lessons about Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers. The lessons reach across grade levels to…
Elementary teacher librarian and former teacher in residence at the Library of Congress, Tom Bober (@CaptainLibrary), details a plan for pairing primary source analysis with the book, Ruth and the Green Book by Calvin Alexander Ramsey, to help students make connections to history and geography. In his post on Knowledge Quest from the American Association of School Librarians, Tom also…
There are two ways to browse content on the TPS-Barat Primary Source Nexus: by content category or by using the top navigation menus. Content Categories Each post on this blog is assigned to one of five categories listed in the Browse Content Categories box in the middle column on the homepage. Primary Source Picks: curated…
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…