Timelines are timesavers for busy teachers, and the Teaching with the Library of Congress blog has highlighted some. The Teachers page offers even more, and the busy start of school seems like an auspicious time to point out a few.
In our earlier post on Memorable Professional Development, we heard from several teachers about the shift they went through as a result of the Library’s Summer Teacher Institutes. So, if you’ve had a shift in your teaching practice as a result of using primary sources, how can you share with your colleagues?
“I had a paradigm shift. I went from trying to include primary and secondary sources to meet state standards to [an a-ha moment]! It is natural to include real resources because it adds quality and authenticity with a human face. I also will be able to take what I have been given and share, disseminate, using all the 'propaganda' you have given me into perpetuity, with rigor!”
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.
When we ask teachers how they use primary sources, they often have rich and creative answers about how they hook students’ attention, deepen understanding, and even review concepts and content. We hear less about assessment, and most of the responses are questions about how to construct assessments using primary sources.
The Stanford History Education Group has created formative assessments using primary sources from the Library of Congress. With these tools, teachers can gauge students’ historical understanding and ability to apply critical thinking skills by evaluating their analysis of primary source materials.The Spring 2013 issue of the TPS Journal, an online publication focused on pedagogical approaches to teaching with the Library’s digitized primary sources in K-12 classrooms, looks at how a teacher can assess not only content knowledge, but also critical thinking skills.