As the school year starts to wind down, we are ramping up for our busiest season – summer!

The warmest months give us an opportunity to spend time with educators from across the country as they work on-site at the Library of Congress at the Summer Teacher Institutes. Participants spend a week unpacking teaching strategies for using primary sources in the classroom and discuss possibilities to further student engagement, develop their critical thinking skills, and build content knowledge.

This year, the Library will host five institutes serving approximately 150 educators from K-16 and across the content areas. We love the institutes because we get to learn about what’s happening in classrooms and school libraries around the country. We hear time and time again, that our PD events are memorable because teachers make a shift in developing learning activities that truly become about students being in control of their own learning.

Listen to what three teachers from New York City share about their experiences with the Library after their PD session.

Tovelah Hirsch, a teacher from Miami Dade County Schools, adds from her experience at a 2011 institute, “I had a paradigm shift. I went from trying to include primary and secondary sources to meet state standards to [an a-ha moment]! It is natural to include real resources because it adds quality and authenticity with a human face.  I also will be able to take what I have been given and share, disseminate, using all the ‘propaganda’ you have given me into perpetuity, with rigor!”

This post from last summer provides a sampling of the sorts of primary sources teachers discover in the course of an institute.

We would love to hear from you on what makes PD memorable for you.

In the second post, we will show you how you can use our materials and resources to build and deliver your own PD event.

This is a fairly recent post, but it’s one that I keep coming back to. I love getting to see the students in Teresa St. Angelo’s classroom engage with the films and photographs and carefully identify evidence, of course. But the photos and stories in this post are also a valuable reminder that primary sources are powerful teaching tools at any grade level.

What favorite posts of ours would you like to recommend?

Kindergarten Historians: Primary Sources in an Early Elementary Classroom

This post is co-authored by the Library of Congress Teacher in Residence, Earnestine Sweeting and a Library of Congress 2011 Summer Teacher Institute participant, Teresa St. Angelo. 

If you’ve ever wondered how early elementary students develop historical thinking skills, check out this lesson with a group of kindergarten historians. The Class of 2025 demonstrated their educational readiness while engaged in analyzing primary sources from the Library of Congress.

Discussing primary sources with an adult

Teresa St. Angelo, a Library of Congress 2011 Summer Teacher Institute participant, teaches kindergarten at the John I. Dawes Early Learning Center in Manalapan, N.J., headed by Melissa Foy. State curriculum requires students to understand different roles in the family, school, and community, including occupations.  This lesson using primary sources shows an exciting way for kindergarteners to discover how mail was transported and delivered in the past.

Motion picture discussion

The young historians watched two early motion pictures.  The first, a 1903 short film titled “Collecting mail” shows a man wearing the uniform of a mailman removing mail from the mailbox.  From the moment the class electrician shut the lights off, the students were hooked. After the video, the students were asked to express their ideas about what they thought was happening. “My dad watches black and white movies all the time” provided evidence of one student making a personal connection.

In the next short film, the students observed a train taking up a mailbag.  At the end of the film, when the mailbag was snatched from the suspension device, all the students started laughing and one girl said, “This is hilarious!”

Identifying evidence in historic photographs

The students were asked to independently analyze a photo of men working in a railway mail train. “Circle what you see that helps you guess where you think these men are working.”  One student replied, “In a kitchen.”

Teresa’s response cultivated the skills of citing evidence to support ideas and evaluating information.  She asked him to think about the things we see in a kitchen and find them in the image. When he couldn’t find the stove or the refrigerator, he reconsidered his conclusion.  Teresa emphasized that discovery learning offers students opportunities to prove, or investigate, their ideas.  The thinking routines they use to make observations and reflections when analyzing visual primary sources are carried over into other academic areas, notably literacy and science.

In small group conversations with their peers and adults, historians then expressed their thoughts and ideas around a set of three early 1900s photographs of a horse-drawn U.S Mail wagon at a railway station, unsorted mail at the post office, and a girl handing a letter to the mailman in “A letter to papa”. Their task was to describe the similarities and differences between mail delivery then and now.

To model the mail delivery that they had observed in these primary sources, each student created his or her own postcard using the 1904 stereograph “A letter to papa”. Each student wrote a message on the postcard, which was mailed home.  Some students wrote, “I love history lessons,” “I love mail,” and “I love the Library of Congress.”

Tell us how you might use primary sources to promote discovery learning and introduce new information to your students.

A child labor reform exhibit panel with photographs by Lewis Hine

When you hear the word “multimedia”, what do you think of? A video presentation on an interactive whiteboard? A mashup on YouTube?

Common Core State Standards and many other standards require that students compare informational texts in different media. However, multimedia texts aren’t limited to the 21^st century. In fact, one of the most compelling multimedia campaigns in U.S. history was launched more than one hundred years ago, using paper, glue, and an effective set of persuasive techniques.

In the early 20^th century, a battle was being waged over the role of children in the workforce, and much of that battle took place in the public sphere. Reform organizations like the National Child Labor Committee used all the tools of the growing mass media to make the case against child labor, including newspaper exposés, magazine articles, and illustrated lectures. (For more on this topic, try the Library of Congress lesson plan “Child Labor and the Building of America.”)

One of the powerful tools that reform organizations used, though, was also the most media-rich: the child labor exhibit panel. These poster-sized display boards were made to be persuasive yet portable, and child labor opponents took them almost everywhere, displaying them at conferences, on city streets, in the halls of Congress, and even at expositions like the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915.

Exhibit panel with photographs by Lewis Hine

The panels were dense with information in many different media. Charts, diagrams, and statistics were juxtaposed with cartoons and hand-drawn graphics. Text in a mix of sizes and shapes spelled out slogans and calls to action: “No future and low wages;” “What are we going to do about it;” “A national menace needs a national cure.” In the midst of all the rhetoric, child workers stared out at the viewer from photographs taken by the legendary NCLC photographer Lewis Wicks Hine.

The struggle over child labor continued off and on for decades. Today, these panels let students explore the persuasive power of multimedia texts. Students can browse some of the Library’s child labor exhibit panels and try the following:

• Choose one exhibit panel and identify how many different media are used in it. Which element do you think is most effective in communicating the panel’s message? How would the panel’s impact change if one of the elements were removed?
• Study one panel and summarize its argument in a single sentence. How much does this panel use evidence to make its case? How much does it use emotional appeals?
• Look closely at the photographs of working children. If the children in the photos had a chance to see these panels on display, how do you think they would have felt about how their images were being used?

Do you have a favorite among these panels? We’d love for you to share it in the comments.

Daisies gathered for Decoration Day, May 30, 1899

In 1868, John Logan, the Commander in Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, an organization for Union veterans, issued an order designating May 30^th as a memorial day. He said this day should be for the purpose of “strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.” Logan also asked that we guard their graves so that future generations can remember the cost of a free and undivided republic.

Primary sources from the Library of Congress can help students explore some of the ways people have commemorated Memorial Day in the past.

People cleaning and decorating graves at Pineview Cemetery on Memorial Day weekend

Students can:

• Listen to the recording of the poem The Blue and the Gray. Ask them to explore the symbolism of the poem. What does it mean and how does it relate to the creation of Decoration Day?
• Read the oral histories of Kate Flenniken, Lula Bowers, Herbert Ruft, and the Poppy Lady and compare how different people at different periods of U.S. history observed Decoration Day/Memorial Day.
• Compare the images found in Halt of the Grenadiers Rochambeau in Union Square New York. “Decoration day” May 30, 1884, and Cérémonie du “Memorial Day” au Cimetière Américain de Suresnes, le 30 Mai 1920 using this primary source analysis tool. Explore the differences between each image. Do the students believe that these are appropriate ways to remember the war dead? Explain why or why not.

What comparisons did students make between  these commemorations from the past and the commemorations of today? Let us know in the comments.

You know him as the inventor of the telephone. You may have recently heard his voice. But before he became known the world over as an inventor and an entrepreneur, Alexander Graham Bell pursued another career. To mark Teacher Appreciation Week, we’d like to take a look at the work of Alexander Graham Bell, educator.

Teachers and students at a Boston school for the deaf, 1871. Bell is on the top step.

Education ran in Bell’s family. His father lectured on elocution and developed communication tools for deaf and hard of hearing students. Following in his father’s footsteps, Bell taught at schools for the deaf in London, Boston, and Hartford, Connecticut.

Bell had a lifelong interest in the mechanics of speech and hearing, and throughout his time in the classroom conducted experiments with new speech systems and with communication devices like the phonoautograph. Even when he left formal teaching, though, he continued to tutor individual students, including Helen Keller.

After Bell developed the telephone in 1876, his identity as an educator was eclipsed by his fame as an inventor. But his technical innovations were in large part fueled by his passion for teaching, and for helping his students communicate. Although today the validity of his deaf education efforts have come into question, to the end of his life Bell was sought out as an educator and provided advice and guidance to students and teachers.

Letter to Alexander Graham Bell from Lars Larson, the New Mexico Institute for the Deaf and the Blind, 1896

Alexander Graham Bell wrote thousands of letters on many different topics and filled countless notebooks with his ideas. Examining Bell’s papers provides many opportunities to explore his scientific ideas and the personal interests behind them.

Students can:

• Analyze the diagrams and notes in this early letter to his father. What concepts can you see that might have been influenced by his family’s interest in hearing and speech? Are there any ideas that might be connected to his later invention of the telephone?
• Bell had a wide range of interests in addition to science and education. Sample a selection of his letters on different topics, from aeronautics to photography to farming and beyond. What common threads can you find to connect these diverse subjects? Is there anything that surprises you?

What other sides of Alexander Graham Bell can your students discover?

May highlights include the first Mother’s Day (introductory; advanced) and the origins of Memorial Day (introductory; advanced), as well as milestones related to:

Empire State building. From south

The Built Environment

• May 1, 1931: the Empire State Building opened (introductory; advanced),
• May 27, 1937: the Golden Gate Bridge was completed and opened (introductory; advanced);

Exploration

• May 6, 1856: Robert E. Peary, who claimed discovery of the North Pole, was born (introductory; advanced),
• May 14, 1607:  the first permanent British settlement in North America was established at Jamestown, Virginia (introductory; advanced);

Law

• May 16,1868: the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson (introductory; advanced),
• May 18,1896: The Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that separate-but-equal facilities were insufficient to satisfy the Fourteenth Amendment (introductory; advanced);

The Arts

Illustration from “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”

• May 15, 1856: author Lyman Frank Baum was born (introductory; advanced), and
• May 25, 1878: Performer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson was born in Richmond, Virginia (introductory; advanced);

Invention

• May 24, 1844: Samuel F. B. Morse dispatched the first paper tape code message over an experimental telegraph line (introductory;  advanced).

To engage your students immediately,  distribute or display one primary source from an entry and invite them to jot down a single detail they notice and then share. To draw your students deeper into analyzing the primary sources, ask them to record observations, reflections and questions on the Library’s primary source analysis tool. Anne Savage offers tips in  Blog Round-Up: Using the Primary Source Analysis Tool.

Students can also:

• Compare a secondary source account, such as a textbook explanation, to a primary source account. What can be learned from each? What cannot be learned from each? What questions do students have?
• Consider how a series of primary sources support or challenge information and understanding on a particular topic. Ask students to refine or revise conclusions based on their study of each subsequent primary source.
• Use the bulleted list of additional resources at the end of each Today in History entry to search for additional primary sources.

Some of our favorite ideas for using these resources came in the comments reacting to Primary Sources Every Day from the Library of Congress. Let us know how you use them!

El Democrata Fronterizo of Laredo, Texas, December 1, 1917

Fierce newspaper and pamphlet debates in Spanish and English.

Sewing handbooks designed to advance “Americanization”.

Tales of divided sympathies during the Civil War and patriotic service in World War II.

Each of these historical artifacts is a part of the history of Mexican American communities in the 19th and 20th centuries. And each one can be found in the new Library of Congress primary source set, Mexican American Migrations and Communities.

This teacher resource showcases a wide variety of primary sources from over 200 years, providing students with a chance to explore many of the political and cultural developments that marked Mexican American life in that period. They also give teachers an opportunity to begin discussion of gaps in the historical record, and to look at the possible causes of those gaps.

This set is an especially good match for Common Core teachers, who will find informational texts in multiple formats, from newspapers and pamphlets to maps and oral histories, along with ripe opportunities to explore point of view and persuasive strategies.

Movie theater in San Antonio, Texas, 1939

There is no single Mexican American story, but rather multiple ones that primary sources can illuminate like nothing else can. We hope you’ll let us know if you have any favorites in this set, and tell us how you plan to use them in your own classroom.

May is Bike Month, a time to celebrate the many reasons that people around the world ride bicycles. In the United States, bicycles exploded in popularity in the 1890s. Although at first limited to the wealthy, bicycle use quickly became widespread. They were used for commuting to work and school, recreation and sport, much like now. Clubs of bicycle riders, called “wheelmen,” were formed. A sampling of Library of Congress primary sources from the the end of the nineteenth century suggests that changes brought by bicycles extended beyond transportation.

The bicycle – the great dress reformer of the nineteenth century!

Controversy developed around women’s ridership of bicycles, particularly related to fashion. During the Victorian era, women often wore long skirts that covered their ankles, and some considered women in pants improper. For many women, however, wearing pants while riding was simply more comfortable.

Bicycles allowed women more freedom and the rise of the bicycle coincided with the image of a “New Woman” who was more likely to take work outside of the home and become involved in politics, such as the women’s suffrage movement. This political cartoon by Frederick Burr Opper, for example, shows a woman engaging in various activities that were perceived to be unladylike.

Early bicycle culture provides an excellent opportunity to explore the lasting–and sometimes surprising!–consequences of a new technology

The “new woman” and her bicycle – there will be several varieties of her

Teachers can:

• Challenge students to explain Opper’s message in this political cartoon, and to cite evidence for their ideas. How does the woman in pants at the center of the cartoon contrast with the woman in the frame (behind her)?
• Encourage students to compare and contrast this picture of a messenger boy and this one of a messenger girl. What differences in the way they are dressed do you notice? How does their style differ from modern forms of dress?
• Select a few primary sources from and ask students how many predictions of change they can identify.

What other modes of transportation have had a major impact on U.S. society?

May is Physical Fitness Month. Based on America’s popular culture obsession with physical fitness, one might be tempted to label fitness as a modern phenomenon. Primary sources hardly come to mind, but in fact, students can discover a rich and extensive history of physical fitness through the collections of the Library of Congress.

Female students exercising, one with a wall-mounted device using ropes and pulleys

As early as the 1820s, schools began to introduce gymnastics and hygiene training into the curriculum, but physical education did not become a formal requirement until after the Civil War. This 1899 photograph of high school girls exercising with “a wall-mounted device using ropes and pulleys” does not look much different from gym equipment today, although fitness fashion has changed dramatically.

Boys in the “commando” course, part of the physical education program, learning the fireman’s “carry,” or the correct method of carrying a wounded comrade

Conscription data released during World War I and II identified up to half of all military draftees physically unfit for combat.  Schools heard the message.  This 1942 photograph shows  “Boys in the ‘commando’ course, part of the physical education program, learning the fireman’s ‘carry,’ or the correct method of carrying a wounded comrade.” You can find a gallery of similar images here.

• Work as a whole class to analyze the exercise equipment visible in the  1899 photograph of high school girls exercising and then to compare it with exercise equipment the students are familiar with or have used. How is the equipment today different from the equipment in the photographs? Why has it changed?
• Encourage your students to interview their parents or grandparents about their physical education experiences and to locate images as illustrations for those stories. What did they wear? What were their favorite activities? Why?

What else can be discovered by exploring the history of physical education in the U.S.?

The Americanese wall – as Congressman Burnett would build it

The more complex the issue, the more varied the perspectives on it, and those perspectives are expressed in sometimes unexpected documents, like political cartoons and popular songs. Inviting students to engage with these raw materials of history requires them to evaluate as well as comprehend complex texts.

Primary source sets  offer a great starting place. Skim the titles for a topic related to your teaching goals and select primary sources for use in your classroom.

For example, you might select documents about immigration to the United States in the early 20^th century from the primary source set Immigration Challenges for New Americans and ask students to study them to learn about attitudes toward immigration in the US in the early 20^thcentury.

Immigration figures for 1903

A sequence that we have used effectively with teachers starts with Immigration figures for 1903. Looking carefully at the audience and purpose for this document is crucial to evaluating it. Students must understand the point of view or purpose and determine how that shapes the document. Direct students as needed with questions selected from the Teacher’s Guide: Analyzing Books & Other Printed Texts. (Be sure they consider the organization name on the front page, and read the description on the back.)

Don’t bite the hand that’s feeding you

Students may compare and contrast the information and attitudes in “The Americanese Wall” to the information and attitudes in “Don’t Bite the Hand That’s Feeding You” (sheet music and recording).

Questions to consider: What is the song’s message about immigration? Is the cartoon in favor of Congressman Burnett’s “wall” or opposed? What evidence do they see to support their hypothesis?

Finally, play the recording and ask the students: How is it different to listen than to read the lyrics? Did the melody sound like they expected after reading the lyrics? How does each have a different impact?

Students might learn more about what Congressman Burnett proposed by reading newspapers of the day.

What can be learned from comparing multiple documents? What other unusual formats can be studied as informational texts?