14 suggestions for integrating primary sources

The Our Documents web site has been around since 2002 but I still run into folks who haven’t seen or heard of it. If you have’t been over there, the concept is pretty simple.

The National Archives experts got together and selected what they thought were the 100 most important primary sources in American history. They posted them online, asked teachers and kids to vote on what they thought were the top ten most important docs, and started a great conversation.

Since being rolled out 12 years ago, the site has hung around and NARA has continued to add resources and tools that can help you use the 100 documents in your classroom. (Be sure to download their free 76 page Teacher Sourcebook.)

One of the most useful resource is their list of integrating primary documents into your instruction:

DocsTeach lesson plans aligned to the Common Core

Seriously. If you haven’t made it over to the National Archives Education page, you are missing out. Lesson plans. Professional development stuff. Handy graphic organizers. It’s one of those sites that is non-negotiable for social studies people. If you’re not taking advantage of all of that goodness, you’re not as good a teacher as you could be. It’s just that simple.

But NARA has lots of other goodies out there.

DocsTeach is one of the those.

I highly recommend it – The 1940 Census goes digital

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off has many quotable lines. One of my favorites

If you have the means, I highly recommend it.  It’s so choice.

applies today. As a history geek, I love museums and archives. There is absolutely nothing like opening up a document box at an archive and pulling out a folder full of old documents. The smell. The feel of the paper. The sense of the history involved.

A couple years ago I was browsing through a box at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas doing some research on Sputnik and unexpectedly ran across a White House memo with a few sentences and signature from Dwight.

10 year old volunteers to be first astronaut under President Eisenhower's leadership

Like Ferris said

It’s so choice.

Primary docs are just too cool.

And while it’s not quite the same, online digital archives are still pretty awesome. The problem, of course, is that it’s very difficult to publish stuff online because of the massive amounts of scanning that has to happen.

So I am pumped that this week the National Archives is releasing the entire 1940s census online. Yesterday was technically the first day for regular people like you and me to access the data online but some many of us hit the site that we broke the internet. At least the part of the internet that lets me access the 1940s census data.

But it’s all good today. The site is up and running after apparently buying some extra squirrels to power their servers.

And it’s worth more than just a few visits. According to NARA:

The 1940 Census came at a momentous time in our Nation’s history — as we recovered from the Great Depression and not long before our entry into World War II. It was also the first Census that looked deeper into the details of much of American life. Now, 72 years later, upon release of the 1940 Census forms by the National Archives, we look back and see just how much America changed.

We invite you to explore our site to see how America has changed since the 1940s. We use compelling links, infographics, and photos to compare the 1940 Census with corresponding information about the 2010 Census.

You’ll find millions of records and images, comparisons between then and now, and the chance to touch not just the history of the US but the history of you. How cool is that?

You might to also check out the Ancestry.com version of the data. They purchased their own digital version of the NARA census info and are publishing it in a different format. They’ll make their entire 1940 Census records free through 2013.

Use the infographic below to help with your visits.

I highly recommend it.

Tip of the Week – Interactive Presidental Timeline

Many of us spend a lot of time sharing information about the US presidents with our students. One of the best places to find useful information is the National Archives and their presidential libraries. The problem is that you often need stuff from more than one library and you end up hopping from one website to another.

The Presidential Timeline solves that.

The Timeline provides a single point of access to an ever-growing selection of digitized assets from the collections of the thirteen Presidential Libraries of the National Archives. Among these assets you’ll find documents, photographs, audio recordings, and video relating to the events of the presidents’ lives. The goal of the project is to make these resources readily and freely available to students and educators.

The interactive timeline is very cool and visual, providing an engaging hook for you students. You and your students can view a basic timeline of a president life, including a contextual timeline providing information about other events occurring at the same time. There is also a gallery of primary source documents relating to each president and a set of exhibits highlighting important events and themes from that president’s career.

But you have your own special section of the site:

Educational Activities
Educational activities for the Presidential Timeline focus on using original documents, photographs, audio and video to provide students with an in depth understanding of historical events related to the presidents.

Resources
A collection of links and resources related to teaching with primary source documents, presidential history, and technology-related issues.

Multimedia
Links to download all multimedia (audio and video) assets from the Presidential Timeline for use in educational activities.

Taken together, the resources and interactivity provide a powerful tool for your instruction.

Have fun!

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?

Tip of the Week – National Archives Prologue: Pieces of History

I’ve always been a huge fan of the National Archives and the things it does to help teachers. NARA just updated the look and feel of their Education page, they created an awesome resource at DocsTeach, host a site of great lesson plans and present wonderful summer trainings on using primary sources.

But I just ran across something new. Well . . . new for me.

For forty years, the National Archives have been publishing a quarterly newsletter called Prologue. The magazine brings readers stories based on the rich holdings and programs of the National Archives across the nation—from Washington, DC, to the regional archives and the Presidential libraries. You can now access the articles in a variety of ways: online, in print, or by downloading high-quality issues to your e-reader or iPhone from their Scribd and Zinio sites.

The current issue has a great article on the Nuremberg Laws and a preview of the upcoming release of the 1940 Census data. Past issues have focused on:

• The Civil War with James McPherson’s overview of the war, copies of resignation letters written by Southern military officers and an article on Civil War guerrillas, ex-Slaves accounts, Harry Truman’s impact on the US and enemy aliens during World War I.

NARA has also created a very fun Prologue blog called Pieces of History. It is much more tongue in cheek and lighter than the quarterly magazine but still a great resource for professional development.

Have fun!