In the September 2014 issue of Social Education, the journal of the National Council for the Social Studies, our "Sources and Strategies" article focused on the economic challenges facing the young United States at the time of the Constitutional Convention. We suggested that continental currency might ignite student interest in the subject.
On Tuesday, September 23, at 7 PM ET, education experts from the Library will offer a webinar that will engage participants in a model photograph analysis activity, facilitate a discussion about the power of teaching with visual images, and demonstrate how to find visual images from the Library of Congress.
Throughout the year, the Library will be hosting educator webinars every other Tuesday at 7:00 ET focusing on a variety of instructional strategies for using primary sources in instruction. The 2014 schedule and information about joining the webinar is now available from loc.gov/teachers.
Welcome (or welcome back!) to Teaching with the Library of Congress, where we hope you discover and discuss the most effective techniques for using Library of Congress primary sources in the classroom. We invite readers to engage with topics ranging from What Makes a Primary Source a Primary Source? to what's happening "next month in history?" Here are staff picks for places to start - or continue - teaching with primary sources.
History is most fascinating when we feel connected to the people who lived in the past. One way to pique student interest is by using primary sources from the Library of Congress -- letters, photographs, and oral histories -- that document real people's lives. The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress recently launched the Civil Rights History Project, a digitized collection of interviews with active participants in the Civil Rights movement and essays about the movement.
In my first blog post as Teacher in Residence, I set a number of goals: to connect primary sources to literature, to create research questions to advance inquiry, and to foster library skills. I was able to meet these goals in a number of ways and to reach out to teachers and librarians with approaches to working with primary sources and teaching research skills.
