Learning with Primary Sources - Some Support

Workshop Title: Teaching with Primary Sources from the Library of Congress - ISTE 2010
Sharon Metzger-Galloway.

This hands-on workshop gave me an opportunity to explore the vast collection of primary sources available from the Library of Congress. See Fiona Grant’s Delicious links.

I attended this workshop keen to learn more about how teachers in New Zealand could be supported to facilitate effective teaching and learning with primary sources. Digistore is New Zealand’s storehouse of digital content and contains thousands of images, audio and video files. The future focus is on the development of further New Zealand content, through partnerships with cultural and scientific insitutions such as Te Papa. Digistore also provides links to further sources of digital content relevant to teaching and learning programmes in New Zealand.


Key Messages from the Workshop:
Examining primary sources gives students a powerful sense of history and the complexity of the past. Helping students analyse primary sources can also guide them toward higher-order thinking and better critical thinking and analysis skills.

My Picks : Support Material for Teachers

Using Primary Sources Guide
Includes question prompts to:
a) engage students with primary sources.
b) promote student inquiry.
c) assess how students apply critical thinking and analysis skills to primary sources.

Analysis Tools
Provides valuable and transferable question starters aimed at encouraging students to observe, reflect and question a primary source:
For a full list of these guides and examples of how they have been applied see:
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/guides.html

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/worksheets/document.html

NZ Examples

a) Year 13 Drama

b) The learning path function in Digistore allows these rich experiences to be packaged for direct student access. See the following example:
He Reo Komanawa:Viewing Image/Discussion

Useful Links:
http://tiny.cc/ufszh
http://virtualnorth.blogspot.com/2010/07/artefacts-of-assination-tweet.html
We would love to hear how other teachers are using primary sources to facilitate teaching and learning.