Using Primary Sources In The Classroom

Developed by social studies specialists, this resource helps teachers turn classrooms into primary source learning environments. This engaging book offers effective, creative strategies for integrating primary source materials and providing cross-curricular ideas. This resource is aligned to the interdisciplinary themes from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.

Teaching with primary sources can be overwhelming to teachers who have minimal time to teach social studies. Turn your classroom into a primary source learning environment with this easy-to-use resource that has everything you need to incorporate primary sources into today’s classrooms. Primary sources provide firsthand accounts of history that will capture students’ curiosity about the past. Students who observe, reflect on, and question primary sources understand history at a deeper level than students who only learn about social studies through textbooks. With more than 100 digital primary sources, this book by Kathleen Vest delves deeply into a wide variety of primary sources and details how they can be used in any K–12 classroom. Model lessons for three grade ranges (K–3, 4–8, 9–12) reduce teacher prep time. With fun and engaging activities and a chapter devoted to strategies for using social media posts as primary sources in the classroom, this resource is essential for today’s social studies classrooms.

This collection brings together the work of archivists, librarians, museum professionals, and other educators who evoke the power of primary sources to teach information literacy skills to a variety of audiences.

A look at how to teach history in the age of easily accessible—but not always reliable—information. Let’s start with two truths about our era that are so inescapable as to have become clichés: We are surrounded by more readily available information than ever before. And a huge percent of it is inaccurate. Some of the bad info is well-meaning but ignorant. Some of it is deliberately deceptive. All of it is pernicious. With the Internet at our fingertips, what’s a teacher of history to do? In Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone), professor Sam Wineburg has the answers, beginning with this: We can’t stick to the same old read-the-chapter-answer-the-question snoozefest. If we want to educate citizens who can separate fact from fake, we have to equip them with new tools. Historical thinking, Wineburg shows, has nothing to do with the ability to memorize facts. Instead, it’s an orientation to the world that cultivates reasoned skepticism and counters our tendency to confirm our biases. Wineburg lays out a mine-filled landscape, but one that with care, attention, and awareness, we can learn to navigate. The future of the past may rest on our screens. But its fate rests in our hands. Praise for Why Learn History (When It’s Already on Your Phone) “If every K-12 teacher of history and social studies read just three chapters of this book—”Crazy for History,” “Changing History . . . One Classroom at a Time,” and “Why Google Can’t Save Us” —the ensuing transformation of our populace would save our democracy.” —James W. Lowen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me and Teaching What Really Happened “A sobering and urgent report from the leading expert on how American history is taught in the nation’s schools. . . . A bracing, edifying, and vital book.” —Jill Lepore, New Yorker staff writer and author of These Truths “Wineburg is a true innovator who has thought more deeply about the relevance of history to the Internet—and vice versa—than any other scholar I know. Anyone interested in the uses and abuses of history today has a duty to read this book.” —Niall Ferguson, senior fellow, Hoover Institution, and author of The Ascent of Money and Civilization

Developed by social studies specialists, this resource helps teachers turn classrooms into primary source learning environments. Offers effective, creative strategies for integrating primary source materials and providing cross-curricular ideas.

Learn how to integrate and evaluate primary and secondary sources by using the SOURCES framework. SOURCES is an acronym for an approach that educators can use with students in all grades and content areas: Scrutinize the fundamental source, Organize thoughts, Understand the context, Read between the lines, Corroborate and refute, Establish a plausible narrative, and Summarize final thoughts. Waring outlines a clearly delineated, step-by-step process of how to progress through the seven stages of the framework, and provides suggestions for seamlessly integrating emerging technologies into instruction. The text provides classroom-ready examples and explicit scaffolding, such as sources analysis sheets for various types of primary and secondary sources. Readers can use this resource to give students the skills and knowledge necessary to think critically and create evidence-based narratives, in a manner similar to professionals in the field. Book Features: Offers a grounded means for conducting higher-order reasoning and inquiry.Demonstrates how to integrate this approach in various disciplinary areas, such as social studies, English/language arts, mathematics, and science. Provides user-friendly lessons and activities.Includes resources to assist students throughout the inquiry process.

Teaching with primary sources can be overwhelming to teachers who have minimal time to teach social studies. Turn your classroom into a primary source learning environment with this easy-to-use resource that has everything you need to incorporate primary sources into today’s classrooms. Primary sources provide firsthand accounts of history that will capture students’ curiosity about the past. Students who observe, reflect on, and question primary sources understand history at a deeper level than students who only learn about social studies through textbooks. With more than 100 digital primary sources, this book by Kathleen Vest delves deeply into a wide variety of primary sources and details how they can be used in any K–12 classroom. Model lessons for three grade ranges (K–3, 4–8, 9–12) reduce teacher prep time. With fun and engaging activities and a chapter devoted to strategies for using social media posts as primary sources in the classroom, this resource is essential for today’s social studies classrooms.

Focusing on student analysis of primary sources, this book explores several proven analysis strategies to use with students, including methods from the Library of Congress, the Stanford History Education Group, and Harvard's Project Zero. Many elementary school librarians and teachers want to incorporate primary sources into their lessons but struggle with how to do it. Whether you are starting from the beginning, have used strategies that didn't seem to work, or were underwhelmed by others' suggestions, this book shows you how you can successfully supplement and deepen your students' learning with primary sources. Focusing on proven strategies for elementary students, the book is divided into four sections, each of which demonstrates the strategies through real-world examples of student work. In the first three parts, it explores the three major considerations for using primary sources, strategies for analyzing primary sources, effectively using primary sources to teach different subject areas, and special considerations for different primary source formats. In the final part, the author shares tips that he has learned after years of bringing primary sources into his elementary school that will ensure success in students' primary source analysis.