Category: primary source
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George Washington’s Teeth- A Lesson in Looking Deeper
This week I have the honor and pleasure of attending the George Washington Teacher Institute at Mount Vernon. The hospitality and generosity of the staff here is astounding, and the scholars I’m getting to learn from just amaze me (I got to meet and listen to Lindsay Chervinsky, author of The Cabinet and an all-time…
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History in the Kitchen: The Great Depression & Frozen Fruit Salad
History in the Kitchen: The Great Depression & Frozen Fruit Salad- the causes of the depression & the human toll
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History in the Kitchen: Black Wall Street & Apple Dowdy
Black Wall Street is another name for the Greenwood section of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and in 1921 it was one of the wealthiest Black communites in the United States.
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Whose Independence?
I spent quite a lot of time thinking about independence this year. It isn’t that I hadn’t considered the Declaration of Independence through the lens of equality and inequality before, but a recent PD session at Academy for Teachers helped me think about independence in a historical way that I’d not really considered. The idea…
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Weighing the Pros & Cons of being part of the British Empire
I was bored with the usual lessons about the Causes of the American Revolution. For many years when teaching the Causes, I’ve talked about taxes, taxes, taxes with a smattering of protest and violence, and an ultimate break from the British Empire. I wanted to be more creative. I wanted my students to think about…
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Writing with Primary Sources in Middle School
Each year around this time my eighth graders and I are finishing up their research papers. The assignment asks students to write a thesis-driven paper about a topic of their choice as seen through a particular lens. (Want to find out more about lens questions? Check out this post!) One of the requirements for student…
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Reading Primary Sources: Middle School
If we truly want to make our classrooms a place where history is something to “do,” like students “do math” and “do science,” then we have to take note of what the teachers in other disciplines are doing and use those methods, such as observation and interpretation of fact. Cue primary sources.
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The Power of Place: Philadelphia
On April 21 I had the privilege of taking 24 eager young historians to Philadelphia for an historical day trip. I am a believer in the “power of place”– experiencing history in the classroom can be fun and interesting, but experiencing history where it happened is magical. By being where our founders, invisible…
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Lesson Plan: Gender Fluidity in Colonial History
In keeping with my philosophy to make sure all students feel included in American history class, I tweeted Katherine Ott (@amhistcurator)for inspiration. I wanted to know how to include my students who are part of the LGBTQA+ spectrum in the story, and since #LGBThistory as part of the story in the Colonial Era isn’t…
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The Declaration of Independence Creatively Translated
Click here to view to the lesson! Creativity holds an important place in the history classroom. Children in an early childhood education setting are encouraged to paint, collage, and use their imaginations to learn about the world around them. At what point during a student’s education does that change? I argue that it doesn’t have…