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Posted by: Anne Savage
With winter arriving this month, my thoughts turned to a different kind of cleaning: snow removal. How were city streets cleared long ago, and what was life like before plows and snowblowers? I discovered some intriguing images that answer some of my questions and raise many new ones.
Posted in: Science Technology and Math, Teaching Strategies
Posted by: Cheryl Lederle
The bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, changed the lives of many Americans. On the homefront, one of the most dramatic changes was the transformation of the lives of Japanese Americans.
Posted in: Industrial United States, World Wars and the Great Depression (1914-1945), Lesson Ideas, Teaching Strategies
Posted by: Anne Savage
Information literacy standards require students to think about the creator’s purpose and determine the meaning of symbols. The Thomas Jefferson Building: Secret Messages is an online activity that helps students do both.
Posted in: Teaching Strategies, Teaching Tools
Posted by: Anne Savage
Helping students explore popular ideas about Thanksgiving is about as traditional as roast turkey and all the trimmings. Primary sources from the Library can help your students compare today’s images with those from the past.
Posted in: Holidays, Teaching Strategies
Posted by: Danna Bell
At the 12th Annual Library of Congress National Book Festival, we explored the use of primary sources along with books to address a variety of teaching points for students at any level.
Posted in: Lesson Ideas, Poetry and Literature, Teaching Strategies
Posted by: Danna Bell
Creatively sharpen your students thinking skills with headlines. Encourage direct student involvement in a analyzing headlines through maps.
Posted in: Teaching Strategies
Posted by: Cheryl Lederle
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.
Posted in: Government and Law, Lesson Ideas, Teaching Strategies
Posted by: Cheryl Lederle
How do 21st century children respond to photographs of child labor? Barbara Natanson, who works in the Prints and Photographs Division at the Library of Congress, recently wrote a blog post about what her children saw in selected photographs that Lewis Hine took for the National Child Labor Committee. Replicating what Barbara did would be an easy way to introduce students to learning with primary sources.
Posted in: Teaching Strategies
Posted by: Anne Savage
Helping students get to know one another is important in the first few weeks of school. Did you know that using primary sources from the Library of Congress can help you accomplish this?
Posted in: Teaching Strategies