Looking for primary sources relating to a specific period in United States history? Try using the American Memory Timeline from the Library of Congress.
National Hispanic Heritage Month is September 15th to October 15th, and the collections of the Library of Congress are rich in primary sources for your students to explore.
The first time I tried facilitating a primary source activity during my post-graduate museum education studies, I only had to guide my peers’ analysis of a single artifact for five minutes. Yet so much of what I learned from this experience later proved invaluable to me when teaching with primary sources “for real.”
Looking for a Constitution Day activity? Have students zoom in on actual draft documents to learn what’s behind the main ideas in the Constitution. They’re sure to discover some intriguing changes along the way.
Primary sources from the online collections of the Library of Congress can be powerful instructional tools. Analyzing these photos, films, maps, and audio recordings can help students engage with content, build their critical thinking skills, and construct knowledge.
The Library of Congress now bids farewell to its own rock star ambassador to the K-12 education community: our 2010-2011 Teacher in Residence, Sara Suiter.
Part of the power of teaching with primary sources comes from their immediacy—eyewitness accounts of historic events can have an emotional impact that secondary sources might lack. This is especially true of primary sources relating to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
What’s the most frustrating part of teaching with primary sources? They’re often incomplete and have little context. What’s the most rewarding part of teaching with primary sources? They’re often incomplete and have little context.