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Looking Back: Outstanding Blog Posts from Former Teacher in Residence Rebecca Newland

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Exploring the stacks during a Main Reading Room Tour, Summer Teacher Institute 2014
Exploring the stacks during a Main Reading Room Tour, Summer Teacher Institute 2014

As we welcome the Library’s 2016-17 Teacher in Residence, we thought we would take a look back at select posts from our previous Teachers in Residence.

Rebecca Newland, 2013-15 Teacher in Residence,  is supporting the needs of faculty and students in a school library. She also continues to contribute to the Library of Congress Poetry Center’s blog, From the Catbird Seat. She left behind a number of outstanding blog posts, including:

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn: Controversy at the Heart of a Classic

One of our most popular blog posts, this post looks at the classic book from a different point of view and ties it to the writings of noted abolitionist, Frederick Douglass.

Primary Sources and Research: Part III: Evaluating Sources and Using Evidence

Part of a series on using primary sources to spur the research process, this post demonstrates comparing primary sources on the same topic to corroborate where sources agree and disagree, identify different points of view and possible discrepancies and help students find answers and identify additional questions.

Electricity and Primary Sources: Engaging Second Graders

Wondering how to use primary sources with second graders? What about second graders who are hearing impaired? Rebecca writes about a school visit where she was able to watch a teacher engage her deaf second graders using primary sources.

Lunar animals and other objects Discovered by Sir John Herschel in his observatory at the Cape of Good Hope and copied from sketches in the Edinburgh Journal of Science. Benjamin Henry Day, 1835.
Lunar animals and other objects Discovered by Sir John Herschel in his observatory at the Cape of Good Hope and copied from sketches in the Edinburgh Journal of Science. Benjamin Henry Day, 1835.

Primary Sources and April Fools Day: The Great Moon Hoax of 1825

In 1825, the Sun newspaper published a series of articles on life on the moon. Rebecca prompts students to explore the article and encourage students to determine how this series was able to fool so many.

Who’s Buried in Grant’s Tomb: Grave Insights into Customs and Cultures

For Halloween, learn how gravesites provide information about how people memorialize loved ones as well as the cultural norms surrounding death and memory.

Engaging Students with Primary Source Maps

Most of us think of maps as a way to plan a route or find one’s location. This post provides suggestions on some of the other kinds of information found in maps and how teachers can use that information to enhance classroom instruction.

The Great Gatsby: Establishing the Historical Context with Primary Sources

Help students access the historical context behind noted pieces of literature using The Great Gatsby as a model.

To see more of Rebecca’s blog posts, use the search box on the left side of the Teaching with the Library of Congress blog page. And let us know in the comments what you would like to see in future blog posts.

Comments

  1. I’m going to have to give a shout out to Rebecca’s Primary Sources and Research Part II blog post where she writes about sourcing and contextualizing. It is a sophisticated look at teaching that made me rethink how my students were interacting with primary sources.

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