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Compare and Contrast Student School Experiences with Library of Congress Primary Sources

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This post is by Jessica Ellison, a Teacher Educator at the Minnesota Historical Society. The Minnesota Historical Society is a member of the Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Consortium.

Compare and contrast is a stalwart social studies skill for students of all ages. When paired with content applicable to kids, this skill can be a powerful way to boost history’s relevance. Using photographs from the Library of Congress online collections, teachers can encourage students to recognize similarities and differences between their lived experiences and those of children in the past.

School in Session. Lewis Hine, 1921

Selecting primary sources that reflect students’ experiences can help them make connections to their own lives while learning about the past. Since students have a common experience of being in school, photographs such as these can help them feel comfortable in making comparisons to their own schools. Lewis Hine took this photograph in West Virginia in 1921 as part of his efforts to document children’s lives and fight against child labor. Using a simple Venn diagram, ask students to note unique details about the photograph, unique details about their own school, and common elements in the intersecting part of the diagram.

To distinguish between past and present school experiences, direct students’ attention to the feet of the students in the front row – they might notice that two students in the front row are barefoot. Ask questions to help students make comparisons between those children and themselves, without passi