NCHE Day Two – Authors in the Archives

LeAnn Potter and Megan Jones from the National Archives are sharing some cool stuff about American authors and how to use their NARA stuff in class.

The National Archives are designed to hold and maintain the records of the American government. But NARA also has some incredibly interesting things relating to authors that many of us have read. The key? NARA has them because they did other things besides write books.

They started with a cool activity asking us to look at list of traditional American authors and work to figure out why their stuff would be in the National Archives and where it might be housed. They shared some of the documents that connected the authors to NARA and led a fun discussion.

Your turn. What do you think?

A couple of examples. Poe was kicked out of West Point. Pearl Buck, John Steinbeck, and Thornton Wilder (among 35 other authors) sent a telegram to FDR urging him to respond to the Nazi Party’s KristallNacht attack on Jews in 1938.

The idea is that American authors have lives and values and interesting stories beyond their work. We can use these things to engage our kids in historical context.

They also shared a bit about the very cool NARA tool called DocsTeach.

DocsTeach has thousands of primary sources and uses those documents to create activities that encourage high levels of thinking. The cool thing is that the ed specialists at the Archives have created tons of these activities already but teachers can use the same tools to create their own activities.

These activities can then viewed and used by all the other teachers who use the site. You can search by type of activity, by keyword, and by time period. Megan highlighted the process by sharing an exercise based on the discussion on American authors.

Get more info on DocsTeach here. One other great place for lesson plans and primary sources created by Lee Ann Potter is the NCSS Teaching with Primary Sources page.

Both are truly no-brainer sites for social studies teachers. And it’s free. What’s not to like?

NCHE Day Two – Smithsonian art and reading history

Okay, a quick tip for everyone. Don’t go to the 11:15 pm showing of the Friday night 2.5 hour long The Hunger Games movie with your daughter before the 8:00 am start of NCHE day two.

I’m just saying.

But I’m awake and ready to go. Really. Starbucks is a wonderful drug.

The 8:00 session looks good – if for no other reason that it’s by the Smithsonian Art Museum people and a middle school teacher from Wichita.

The Art Museum/Portrait Gallery has over 40,000 pieces and is a phenomenal resource. I was able to spend some time there last fall and every much enjoyed their Civil War exhibit.

Victoria Lichtendorf and Adrienne L. Gayoso from the museum started the session with a hook activity using a postcard template. Use the template to create a card using

Victoria shared the idea of using something called Visual Thinking Strategy. (Use Google to find lots of resources on the VTS idea.)

The strategy is a inquiry-based pedagogy that encourages open ended discussion, scaffolding, and  group collaboration while enhancing thinking skills, verbal communication and visual literacy. Works great for visual things but also other sorts of primary sources.

The concept was designed for non-art sorts of people like . . . well, me. And probably you and most social studies teachers

Based on three basic questions:

• What’s going on this image?
• What do you see that makes you say that?
• What more can you find?

Paraphrase what students say and repeat back to them while introducing new vocabulary. Be careful to remain neutral. It’s basically a feedback system to help kids look for details, support their conclusions with evidence, and to continually look for new clues.

Use a laser pointer or “magic wand” (a piece of white card stock taped to a yardstick ) to point out specific pieces of the image but limit student use of this so that they strengthen their use of verbal skills.

Once students have worked through this activity, provide more contextual information concerning, time, artist, contemporary events, etc. Ask students to revisit the image and

They used George Catlin’s Egghead painting to demonstrate the idea.

Another idea is called Connect / Extend / Challenge. Dave teaches a middle school history class and showed how he used the idea with his kids.

Dave started with an image called States Names by Jaune Quick-To-See Smith. He’s got some cool stuff, be sure to get his Prezi here.)

Connect:
How are the ideas and information presented connected to what you already knew?

Extend:
What new ideas did you get that extended or pushed your thinking in new directions?

Challenge:
What is still challenging or confusing for you to get your mind around? What questions, wonderings, or puzzles do you now have?

Dave also suggested that the Making Thinking Visible book is another great resource.

NCHE Session V – Graphic organizers and primary sources

The finish line is in sight. Last session. Great day so far. Met a ton of new people and have had the chance to re-connect with old friends.

Deb Brown and Amanda Jesse, an old friend and a new friend, from the Shawnee Mission, Kansas district are sharing a wide variety of great graphic organizers to help kids make sense of history stuff. Some really nice stuff here.

Primary sources belong to everyone. Not just the smart kids.

I like that. They also stress the idea that they want

kids to read like a detective and write like an investigative reporter.

They call their graphic organizers “pathway strategies” and shared eight different types for a variety of primary / secondary sources. I included a basic overview of each, at least an idea of what the acronym stands for.

POSERS  – visuals, photos, paintings

• People
• Objects
• Setting – place and/or time
• Engagement / Action
• Relationships
• Summary

They suggest using a cheap magnifying glass for kids up to 8th grade and maybe even high school.

We want kids to think of themselves as detectives. What better way to do that than to give them a magnifying glass?

They used a photo from 1878 highlighting a buffalo skin dealer and John Gast’s Manifest Destiny painting.

MUSEUMS – artifacts and objects

• Materials
• Used by
• Setting
• Exact Description
• Used for
• Modern equivalent
• Significance / Story of the artifact

They demonstrated the process using the artifact below excavated at the Jamestown site. Any guesses?

LUKCAS – Charts and graphs

• Label
• Units
• Key
• Content
• Assumptions or attitudes
• Summary

TOADSKI – Maps

• Title
• Orientation
• Author
• Date
• Scale
• Key
• Insets / Index

SOAPS grades 4-6 / APPARTS middle school and high school – Documents

SOAPS

• Source
• Occasion
• Audience
• Purpose
• Speaker

APPARTS

• Author
• Place and Time
• Prior Knowledge
• Audience
• Reason
• The Main Idea
• Significance

SPRITES – Events

• Settings
• Politics
• Religion
• Intellectual
• Technology
• Economic
• Summary

TACOS – cartoons

• Time
• Action
• Caption
• Objects
• Summary

Some awesome stuff! And a great way to end a very long day.

(The artifact from Jamestown? A luxury item used by the rich to clean out earwax and pick their teeth.)

NCHE Session IV – Read Kansas cards and lessons

I started the day picking on the NCHE “history nerds” a bit and how they love cranking up their conference way too early. I’m not making fun anymore. This is becoming a long day. Two more sessions and a quick run through the vendor area before things wrap up.

But it’s a good kind of tired.

And two of my favorite people are hosting a session so I’m off to Ballroom Pershing South and Kansas Read cards with Mary Madden and Marcia Fox. Mary and Marcia are from the Kansas State Historical Society. They have been instrumental in creating and distributing 76 different lessons for K-12 students.

The cards are designed to deeply engage kids in primary and secondary sources, historical thinking skills, and cooperative learning. And they are awesome.

Just so you know – Read Kansas cards are written to help Kansas teachers teach Kansas history. But . . . because there are so many historical periods, events, and people that are really national events (John Brown, Bleeding Kansas, Indian Removal Act, Brown v. Board) the Read Kansas cards can be used by just about everyone.

You can purchase the cards and get sweet, full color laminated sets. Or download PDF black and white versions for free. Either way you get great lessons aligned with state standards and the Common Core.

NCHE Session III – Connecting the Common Core and Content

This is the tough part of the day – right after lunch. I’m full of chicken burrito, black bean soup, and charros. Must . . . stay  . . .  awake. Wish me luck.

But I have been looking forward to this one. Dr. Fritz Fischer from the University Northern Colorado, former middle school teacher, former NCHE president, is leading the charge in a session dealing with the Common Core.

I had the chance several years ago to take part in a Gilder Lehrman teacher summer seminar on elementary literacy that Fritz lead. It was incredible. So  . . . figured I couldn’t go wrong this afternoon.

He starts off

Like it or not, social studies teachers will have to become very familiar with the Common Core.

The Common Core is all about English and math. So how does it apply to us? There are specific connections between social studies and literacy at all grade levels. The focus in these connections is on historical process, not content.

The question? How to connect the content of social studies with the process of the Common Core?

The concern by many when first hearing about the Common Core, national standards targeting ELA and math, was that social studies was once again getting thrown to the gutter. Upon further reading, it has become apparent that using the Common Core encourages historical thinking and the NCHE Habits of Mind.

Beth Scarbrough, from the Georgia Council for History Education, highlighted a specific lesson on the Boston massacre. She gave us seven documents of the event and asked us to analyze the different versions. Part of what you should use is Revere’s woodcut of the event.

Write down your own short account of the event using whatever historical skills you might have.

The first step after coming back together is to agree on the core facts such as date, who was there, where it happened, etc. But the next step involved sharing our accounts. These varied, of course. This led to a nice conversation about how to train kids to source information and employ historical thinking.

It sounds very similar to Geoffrey Scheurman’s exercise on the Battle of Lexington.

We’re training kids to look at history and historical stuff differently. And the Common Core helps us do that:

• RH.6-8.7. Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos, or maps) with other information in print and digital texts.
• RH.6-8.8. Distinguish among fact, opinion, and reasoned judgment in a text.
• RH.6-8.9. Analyze the relationship between a primary and secondary source on the same topic.

Fritz shared a different standard – a high school English standard that he suggests is better taught by a history teacher, one who understands historical content and habits of mind.

• RI.11-12.4. Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term or terms over the course of a text (e.g., how Madison defines faction in Federalist No. 10).

Fritz says that most English teachers will simply stop with defining the words and phrases – without focusing on the context.

So we need to spend time discussing what Madison was trying to say in Federalist No. 10 not only in the context of the times but also what it means for us today in terms of special interest groups and Super PACs. And it’s not just the context but using history specific skills such as analyzing primary source documents.

I plan to talk about the Common Core and Social Studies a bit more sometime next week. But what I’m seeing over the last few months is that the Common Core does a good job of encouraging high levels of social studies instruction and learning.

(Needed more Fritz! And a nap.)

NCHE Session II – Picturing America and the Common Core

A few years ago, I posted a few things here and here about the very cool Picturing America program from the National Endowment for the Humanities and EDSITEment. This session is discussing how to use art, specifically the Picturing America collection, to help meet Common Core literacy standards.

Robert Dytell from Queens College in New Your,  starts with Grant Wood’s 1931 painting of Paul Revere’s ride. We need to ask our kids some questions:

What do you see in here? Where does your eye go first? Where? When? What? What clues do you see? How do you know? What can you infer?

Is this what a New England town actually looked like? Should we accept art as actual fact? Did this event really happen?

What was the context of the time period in which the painting was created? Where was the painter from? Who was the intended audience? Why did Woods select this topic?

Dytell then gives kids a copy of Longfellow’s traditional poem – The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. And like with the painting, we need to train our kids to “source” the text. What most Americans know about Revere’s ride comes from this poem. Of course, the poem is not necessarily very accurate.

Dytell then highlights a nice article from the New York Times that highlights how the poem was really writing against slavery, not documenting Revere’s ride.

Together with the painting, these two pieces of text gives us the chance to ask kids to do stuff that the Common Core wants us to do – which is to ask great questions. Kids can begin to see how history is not cut and dried, not cookie cutter – that history is complex and nuanced and hard and awesome and engaging and cool and we’re lucky to be able to study it.

He then shared the photograph of the Civil Rights marchers in Selma by James Karales.

One way to start with this photo, is to compare it to Washington crossing the Delaware.

But also discussed how to tie it in with the texts relating to the Civil Rights movement and the Brown v. Board of Education case. An engaging oral history piece from one of the Little Rock Nine is another nice way to grab the attention of your kids. (You’ll want to chunk this out to make it a bit smaller – highlighting perhaps just the parts of of Melba’s first day at Central HS.)

Dytell then shared President Eisenhower’s TV speech addressing the Little Rock situation. There is an especially interesting piece towards the end of the speech

Our enemies are gloating over this incident and using it everywhere to misrepresent our whole nation. We are portrayed as a violator of those standards of conduct which the peoples of the world united to proclaim in the Charter of the United Nations.

A last quick discussion on Norman Rockwell’s painting titled New Kids in the Neighborhood. Same idea as with Revere’s ride and the Little Rock stuff.

Use these information sources to focus on the social studies process standards that are embedded within the Common Core. Great teachers have always done these sorts of things. The Common Core encourages all of us to do them.