Primary sources – Copy / Paste

Teachers are looking for resources for online instruction. So I am reposting lessons from my Social Studies Methods Course at the University of Portland’s School of Education. See original post here.

Most materials are in the public domain if they were produced before 1923. I see this as roughly equivalent to everything that happened in the world up to and including World War I! If you’re looking for newspaper articles in Chronicling America, for example, you will note that coverage ends in 1922.

Primary sources produced by the federal government are normally in the public domain both before and after the magic copyright date of 1923. That explains why we as teachers can use the fabulous oral history interviews of former slaves collected between 1936 and 1938 by workers from the Federal Writers’ Project.

Focusing your search using a search operator. [site:loc.gov]

Image Detective Activity (inspired by Crop It lesson)

Being able to find and curate historical source material is a foundation of historical thinking. This activity merges three instructional goals: finding / curating historical sources, looking closely at historical sources and using WordPress tools to add images and hyperlinks. It will help students learn how to find material for future lesson design activities.

Find 3 historical images – use these historical archive sites
For each image: provide full image with citation in hyperlink back to source
Then add a of crop area of each image to show one of the following clues (add clue in the image caption) Tips on how to crop an image
Put all content into a post. Give it a clever title. Include a featured image.

who or what this image is about.
where this takes place.
when this happened or was created.
what is the creator’s point of view or purpose.
something I have a question about

Example: Image with two crops

African American Soldiers in an Automobile Source

When? It’s an upside down 1919 NYS license plate.
I think they are returning Black WWI soldiers in a parade.

These Black soldiers are being honored in a parade. Knowing 1919 is in the Jim Crow / KKK era,
I wonder what else faced them back in America?

In class practice images. Choose one. Add to a sample post. Include source hyperlink and crop with comment.

Smartly dressed couple seated on an 1886-model bicycle for two 1886. Source
The 8th Avenue trolley, NYC, sharing the street with horse-drawn produce wagon and an open automobile 1904 Source
Automobile helped through sandy wash onto mesa 1911. Source
Women’s Machine Gun Squad Police Reserves, New York City 1918 Source

Sample student work from this assignment

American Culture in the 1920s

Notice some of the fashion choices of these women. For example, all but one of these women have chosen to wear pants rather than skirts. Do you think this was a normal clothing choice for women in the 1920s? Could their outfits be related to the social statement they are making?

Exploring Constantinople 1880-1922

This photo of a bakery is taken in 1922.
The languages on sign include Armenian, Ladino, English, Greek and Russian.

Teachers can use historical documents to build literacy skills in a content area while empowering students to be the historian in the classroom. But document-based instruction in this context requires four key elements to be successful:

The right documents. (shouldn’t be reliant on background knowledge)
Knowing how to “read” the historical document.
Letting students discover their own patterns, then asking students to describe, compare and defend what they found.
Basing the task on enduring questions, the kind that students might actually want to answer.

In Class 7 we will practice some strategies for assisting students to more closely read a document (in all their multimedia formats) by answering three Common Core questions. Broad version:

What does it say?
How does it say it?
What’s it mean to me?

More specifically, what do we mean by close reading? Teachers can guide students with scaffolding questions that explore “texts” (in all their forms).

Key Ideas and Details:

What does the text say? Identify the key ideas. What claims does the author make? What evidence does the author use to support those claims?

Craft and Structure:

Who created the document? What’s their point of view / purpose? How did the text say it? How does it reflect its historic time period?

Integration of Knowledge and ideas:

Distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text. Recognize disparities between multiple accounts. Compare text to other media / genres. How does it connect to what we’re learning?

And what’s it mean to me?

IN CLASS ACTIVITY

Find a historical image and pair it with one of the Primary Source Icebreakers. The post to the padlet below. Include title of icebreaker, response to prompt and hyperlinked source of image. (See example below) These icebreakers are from TPS Connect at MSU Denver.