Teacher Fellows

Recently some of the Encounters and Exchanges in U.S. History Teacher Fellows have posted to the Encounters and Exchanges Blog.

With an emphasis on supporting and sharing TAH Grant related content and activities, during Years Two and Three, the project intends to utilize a few select Encounters and Exchanges in U.S. History Teacher Fellows from each participating district.

Teacher Fellows' responsibilities include a commitment to Encounters and Exchanges Grant programming, informal in-house guidance and support to American history teachers in their school/district, the posting of four blog entries that highlight how they are utilizing TAH content and strategies with students or other teachers, and a presentation of a lesson plan/instructional strategy for teaching American history at the Encounters and Exchanges in U.S. History Annual Conference on April 18, 2008.

Look for Teacher Fellows' blog postings in February, March, and June.

PowerPoints with Art/Photos as Primary Sources

Happy New Year!

As teachers, we are always pressed for time. Here’s a tip with a lot of bang for the buck. It combines a great teacher created site containing excellent PowerPoints with another site that has countless ways to not only incorporate but analyze primary sources, especially photographs.

During one of the technology workshops from Year One of the Encounters and Exchanges in U.S. History grant, I was introduced to Historyteacher.net. (see link below) This site was created and is meticulously maintained by Ms. Susan M. Pojer, a High School AP History teacher at the Horace Greely High School in Chappaqua, New York. This home page offers thousands of links to newspapers, writing guides, government information, online references, and more. I have found her online collection of PowerPoints extremely useful. She has titled it PowerPoint Palooza. (see link below) She has hundreds of PowerPoints already created. I have contacted her and asked for permission to use them. She graciously emailed back and simply asked to be credited as the creator. I teach at the Middle School level, so I usually edit her PowerPoints to suit my needs.

One of my favorite PowerPoints from Ms. Pojer’s collection focuses on the Italian Renaissance. I often use art and pictures in my class as teaching tools, as they are great ways to utilize primary sources. There are many methods and templates for using and analyzing primary sources. I was introduced to a new site recently by Pat Fontaine, Professor of Education at UMass Lowell, who is working with the TAH grant. PrimarySourceLearning.org offers an online primary source handbook. (see link below) The handbook has useful links for teachers just beginning to use primary sources, while also offering new ideas and templates for teachers who are already familiar with primary sources. The handbook contains lesson ideas, best practices, teaching materials, LibraryQuests, and a host of other gems. I found the most useful teaching materials on the site to be analysis worksheets including: Photograph Analysis Worksheet, Map Analysis Worksheet and Music Analysis Worksheet.






HistoryTeacher.net http://www.historyteacher.net/
PowerPointPalooza.net http://www.pptpalooza.net/
PrimarySourceLearning Handbook http://www.primarysourcelearning.org/handbook/

Inaugural Addresses

As the President’s first formal impression to the country, what does he address? How does he comfort? How does he inspire?


In my second year teaching United States History I, I've experimented in using inaugural addresses to summarize the events and the atmosphere of the country as expressed by the President. My essential question in using these addresses, or pieces of the addresses, depending upon time, revolves around basic political, economic, foreign, and domestic issues facing America. In understanding the nature and purpose of a President’s inaugural address, students will contextualize the events mentioned in the speech and evaluate their historical importance. Beyond the content of the speech, students can probe further and assess superficial and underlying tones.


As with most primary sources, the diction, syntax, and length of the addresses demand adjustments so that students can discover the meaning within the speeches. In addition to editing the length, providing guiding questions, and encouraging dictionary use, the content in the speech should access prior knowledge, information the students would have acquired during the previous unit. This content recognition should also provide encouragement and motivation in their work.


Furthermore, teachers should encourage students to apply their intellect in analyzing inaugural addresses during the upcoming election.

The following link connects you to the Avalon Project at Yale Law School and provides the Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents.

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/presiden/inaug/inaug.htm

Plymouth in the 1600s

This year my class is using a new (to us) textbook for our study of Massachusetts history and geography. Our previous textbooks were written for fifth grade students, and were inaccessible to most third graders, so they were not terribly useful. In using this new textbook as a framework for the curriculum, we just completed a unit on life in a Wampanoag village, which established a basic concept of the daily tasks and responsibilities of members of a village, and established that people had been living in Massachusetts for thousands of years before any European settlers arrived.
In teaching this unit, several questions came to mind about how to improve it for next year. The most obvious question our class discussions kept returning to was "how was life different for the Wampanoag than it is for us in 2007?" Asking students to think about what we value in our daily lives, or what is expected from them in terms of responsibilities and chores, and comparing that to the lives of the Wampanoag elicited many interesting responses amongst my students. We had a very interesting (and somewhat unplanned) discussion about clothing, which originated with learning about how the Wampanoag people used all parts of an animal when they hunted. Students considered how easily we obtain clothing in modern life, and compared that to how much work and energy (from various members of the tribe) went into making one article of clothing, beginning with hunting an animal, curing the skin, decorating it, etc. I would like to find other ways to create these connections to areas of life that they can understand.
Another activity we did was to compare two maps of southeastern Massachusetts (found in our textbook). One was a map with Wampanoag villages marked. The other was a contemporary map of the same area, with the current names of towns given. Students realized that many of the towns found in contemporary Massachusetts had origins that began with the Wampanoags, and some even retain the same (or similar sounding) name that the Wampanoags had given the settlement.
I hope that before I return to teaching this unit next year I am able to find more resources to use in the classroom. I have some great photographs of the Wampanoag village at Plimoth Plantation, which I took last spring. These definitely helped to illustrate some of the ideas my students were learning about, especially such ideas as making a mishoon, or burnt-out canoe. I would like to be able to find more images or objects to use in class.
When we return to class in January I am excited to see if students can take the information they know about the Wampanoag and consider how these peoples' lives were affected after European settlers arrived in Massachusetts. As we begin our study of the Pilgrims and the establishment of the colony at Plymouth, I want students to understand the complexities of the relationships with the Native Americans who already lived in the area, and how their lives had been altered by previous European exploration.

Slavery in America- Primary Sources

The website listed below is a great tool when teaching about slavery in antebellum American and its legacy. Originally created as a companion to the PBS series, Slavery in America, this website has been sponsored by New York Life and remains active. I recently used some resources from this website in class to address a question that keep being asked by the students- how could the South have possibly defended slavery? The website offers a variety of primary source photographs, political cartoons, lithographs, and contemporary artwork based on slave narratives. I used 2 political cartoons from the defense of slavery section and the National Archives and Records Administration political cartoon analysis worksheet (link provided below) in my lesson.

The worksheet helps to guide the students to look closely at the political cartoon and its accompanying text for meaning. After examining what is in the cartoon with the students, also as them to look for what is not in the cartoon- which is just as important to their understanding of the Southern justification of slavery and the reality of slavery.

Website: http://www.slaveryinamerica.org/scripts/sia/gallery.cgi

Political Cartoon Analysis Worksheet: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/worksheets/cartoon_analysis_worksheet.pdf

Summer Institute

This past summer, participating teachers in Encounters and Exchanges in U.S. History took part in a week-long Summer Institute organized by Primary Source titled Exploring Conflict and Consensus Among Peoples from the American Colonies to the New Republic. The internationalism of the colonial world was emphasized throughout the Institute.

Guided by our course reader, Alan Taylor's American Colonies: The Settling of North America, the course addressed the history of colonial America and the early Republic with a view toward including the experiences and interactions of various peoples: Indians, Spanish, British, French, Dutch, Swedish, a mix of Africans, and others. We worked with many primary sources from the time period and traveled to Plimouth Plantation, visited the Wampanoag home site and the reconstructed Mayflower, tasted colonial foods, and observed craft demonstrations.

Topics and scholar presentations for the Summer Institute included:

• Internationalism in Colonial America, Cynthia Van Zandt, UNH



• Native Cultures in Early America, Marge Bruchac



• Spanish America, John Bezis-Selfa, Wheaton College



• French America, Bill Fowler, Northeastern University



• Visual History of Early America, Pat Johnston, Salem State College



• Black Founders: Africans in Colonial and Revolutionary America, Richard Newman, RIT



• Commerce, Trade, and Events Leading to the Revolution, Tad Baker, Salem State College



• Teaching the Founding Documents, Tom Conroy Stonehill College

To view a slideshow of images from the Summer Institute click on the following link:

http://picasaweb.google.com/Kagie20/EncountersAndExchangesInUSHistoryPrimarySourceSummerInstitute/photo?authkey=oyiER1VddvA#s5137174801129760098

Encounters & Exchanges First Annual Conference

On Tuesday April 3rd, the first annual conference for Encounters and Exchanges in U.S. History was held at Reading Memorial High School. Elementary, Middle and High School teachers from the Danvers, Lowell, Lynnfield, North Reading and Reading Public Schools attended the conference.

The day began with a keynote address from D. Brenton Simons, the President & CEO of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. Mr. Simons spoke on the research and content in his newest book Witches, Rakes, and Rogues: True Stories of Scam, Scandal, Murder and Mayhem in Boston, 1630 - 1775. Using the stories from his book including accused witches in Boston and the poisoning of the Whittier children, Mr. Simons tied the brief glimpses at the lives of colonial Bostonians to the greater themes of the time period and mentioned what they can tell us about 17th & 18th century Puritanism, women's roles, and social networks. Utilizing the Historical Thinking Benchmarks of the American Historical Society, which drive the Encounters and Exchanges in U.S. History program, Mr. Simons enlightened participants on how a historian conducts his/her craft.

Morning and Afternoon breakout sessions included Critical Thinking and Decision Making in U.S. History, Interdisciplinary approaches to Teaching U.S. History, Using Revolutionary War Records, Making Choices: Multiple Perspectives of Revolutionary Events, A View from the Participants at Lexington and Concord, Primary Sourcebooks, and the Continental Congress and the Signing of the Declaration of Independence. Presenters included representatives from the Boston National Historic Park, Adams National Historic Park, Bristol Community College, UMass Lowell, Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School, Minuteman National Park, and the National Archives and Records Administration. All of the breakout workshops included work with primary sources and utilized pedagogical approaches that require students to use historical thinking to think critically about the past.

Teachers were also treated to a performance by Joan Gatturna titled Petticoat Patriot: Soldier Girl of the American Revolution. In this performance teachers learned more about Deborah Sampson, a young woman who disguised herself as a boy and served as a Continental soldier in the American Revolution. In her performance, Ms. Gatturna described the different roles available for young men and women in the 18th century while also discussing the history of the American Revolution. Teachers received a teaching guide with lessons requiring analysis of primary sources including soldiers' orders and a young woman's diary.