Teachers Matt Brown and Ann Pember first posted these ideas as part of the 2012 Emerging America Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Training of Trainers program.

Motivating Students to Question Sources

Early on, I provide the documents, and I set the questions. But eventually, I like students to choose their own documents for projects. I also like the documents to become part of the product itself. That gets students to ask, "Can I use this document to express a historical truth? How can it help me develop a narrative or theme in my product?"

Exploring Emerging America’s Windows on History Program

Since 2006, Emerging America’s Windows on History program has mobilized more than 30 research teams of K-12 students with their teachers and in partnership with historical societies, museums, town and college libraries, expert individuals, and other very local resources. Students learn to think historically as they track down primary sources to tell the story of their communities and their place in the world.

"What is the dog doing there? It really would run away when it heard the guns fire. So why did Paul Revere put it in the picture? Well, most people like dogs. So we think he wanted people to take the side of the Americans by thinking, 'Those mean British are shooting at a dog!'" - Fifth graders, Morgan Elementary School, Holyoke, Massachusetts

Exploring Emerging America’s Windows on History Program

Since 2006, Emerging America’s Windows on History program has mobilized more than 30 research teams of K-12 students with their teachers and in partnership with historical societies, museums, town and college libraries, expert individuals, and other very local resources. Students learn to think historically as they track down primary sources to tell the story of their communities and their place in the world. This is the third in our series of close-ups on these sites.

Teachers Karen McKay and Caroline Allison first posted these ideas as part of the Emerging America Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Training of Trainers program.

Last summer, a distressed teacher friend shared an all too common story. Throughout the school year, she had sparked students’ skills and passions with a cross-curricular exploration of slavery. It was heady, demanding, and bang-on target for both state content standards and her 4th graders’ interests in fairness, difference, and understanding where we come from. At year’s end, her principal congratulated her overall success in boosting academic skills. Yet he added, “I’m concerned about the time you spent on social studies.

Guest Post: Rusty Annis, Belchertown, Massachusetts, Teacher

In Fairbury, Nebraska–pop. 5,000–where I grew up in the 1960s, there lived literally zero black people. It was not by chance: the Klan and its allies had driven blacks out of much of the rural Midwest. (My parents' Civil Rights advocacy found scant welcome in my home town. But that's another story.) When I was in 6th grade, my older, wiser brother (a 9th grader) handed me the Autobiography of Malcolm X and set me on a journey that compels me still. More recently, two scholars in our Teaching American History (TAH) program reset my world view as powerfully as my brother did back in 1971.