Newspapers offer rich examples of complex text, and they often have features to help readers understand and put it into context. Chronicling America offers digitized historical newspaper pages from 1836-1922, including a time-saving list of Recommended Topics. In this election season, I was drawn to the pages about presidential elections. Here are a few particulars that caught my attention, with teaching ideas that came to mind.
Common Core State Standards, and many state content standards, emphasize reading informational text. Explore primary sources from the Library of Congress to discover informational text in many formats--including some formats that might surprise you.
Staff from the Library of Congress will be in booth 151 at the annual convention of the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) in Houston on November 16-18, and we'd love to chat with you and give you a personalized tour of the Library's primary source collections, teaching materials, and professional development resources.
Since the Teaching with the Library of Congress blog launched in 2011, we’ve published more than 900 posts covering a wide range of topics and suggesting various strategies for deepening student engagement and learning. This is the first of a series of posts revisiting some of our favorite strategies; we invite you to read along …
As I began to reflect on my year as Teacher-in-Residence, I found myself thinking about a great number of people who have taught me valuable lessons this year.
Prepare students to analyze the four versions highlighted here by asking them to recall personal experiences hearing Auld Lang Syne: Who performed, and where? How did the audience respond? What was the purpose of the performance?
Primary sources such as the letters and diaries of Civil War Nurse Mary Ann Bickerdyke offer rich insights into the lives of real people. The fragmented, personal nature of these sources requires careful reading in context and comparison across multiple accounts to glean information and construct understanding.
Rob Williams first used the Library’s digital newspaper collections more than a decade ago as a high-school teacher of U.S. history in Powhatan County, Virginia, near Richmond. Today, he’s a recording artist—he released his third album, “An Hour Before Daylight,” in October. But he still draws inspiration from the same online resources that captivated his history students.
