Fulton County Public Schools
ER #147 Contact: Jena Sibille
Enriching Learning through Authentic Inquiry and Primary Sources: Creating Model Units for 8th Grade Georgia Studies is a model for Georgia educators and students in integrating teaching with primary sources as a core approach to teaching Social Studies. Closely aligned with Fulton County Schools’ new strategic plan, the goals of this partnership are to enhance teachers’ knowledge of Georgia history so they can develop model units to support the Georgia Standards for Excellence for 8th grade Social Studies.
Fulton County Schools personnel serve as lead instructors during the seminar to introduce digital primary sources and model strategies from the Library of Congres. Dr. Jeffrey Robert Young, Principal Senior Lecture of History at Georgia State University, serves as the lead historian, making connections between primary sources and historical content and providing expert feedback on the model units that are created. Sue VerHoef, Director of Oral History and Genealogy from the Atlanta History Center; Nicole A. Moore, Manager of Education and Museum Content from the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, and Kate McLeod, Head of School and Teacher Services with the High Museum of Art, collaborate to provide compelling primary sources from their collections to enrich the model units developed. This project assists collaborating partners in extending their reach by raising teacher awareness of the rich primary sources that are available locally.
Fulton Teachers Use Original Documents To Create History Lessons
Augusta University
ER #123 Contact: Juan Walker
Theoretical Cognitive Principles Applied in the Social Studies Classroom: Procedure of Primary and Secondary Sources in Conjunction with Critical Thinking Skills - The researcher has produced collections of Library of Congress primary and secondary sources for utilization in educational activities designed to develop critical thinking skills of pre-service social studies teachers, empowering them to pass on those skills to their students. The collections and activities are available on Desire2Learn, and a website repository is provided. Textbooks arel no longer be used as material in social studies methods course, and pre-service teachers are encouraged to use primary sources over the standard textbook materials.
Augusta University Web Resources for Teachers
ER #87 Contact: Juan Walker
Theoretical Cognitive Principles Applied in a Social Studies Classroom provides authentic materials for students to practice the skills required by the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Project leaders assemble topical groupings of digitized materials available through the Library of Congress web site, including photographs, newspapers, films, audio files, government documents, personal correspondence, and economic data. Assemblages are posted to a project website for use by pre-service teachers during methods courses and student teaching. These resources are maintained as an open source for other pre- and in-service teachers who may wish to strengthen their own critical thinking skills or develop their own activities intended to build their students' critical thinking skills.
Unlocking your Inner Sherlock: Inquiry Learning with Primary Sources
Middle Georgia State University
ER #120 Contact: Elise Langan
Increasing Pre-service Teachers' Ability to Find and Integrate Standards-based Primary Source Instruction in the Secondary Social Studies Classroom - This project is a collaborative instructional effort between a Middle Georgia State College (MGSC) education faculty member, an Instructional Technology faculty member at MGSC, and a TPS Eastern Region Program educator. The pre-service teachers were students in a Social Studies Methods class. As part of the course, the students participated as a group in five one-hour TPS Level 1 webinars facilitated by the TPS Eastern Region Program staff. They also completed the Library of Congress online professional development modules individually and incorporated primary sources into lesson plans for their required field-experience classroom.
Hickory Hill
ER #115 Contact: Michelle Zupan
The Georgia History Project provides face-to-face multi-session professional development workshops for teachers. These workshops support participants in implementing primary source-based classroom learning activities. Digitized collections of primary sources from the Library of Congress are featured, supplemented by sources from the Vanishing Georgia Collection. Inquiry-based learning is emphasized, as well as reading across the curriculum. Participants are prepared to create meaningful Georgia Performance-aligned learning experiences featuring relevant digitized primary sources from both state and national collections.
Myth versus reality – what really happened at Plymouth? - Professional development activity created by Michelle Zupan designed for lower level grades K-2 through secondary level grades 9-12.
Clayton State University
ER #112 Contact: Charles Elfer
Teaching with Primary Sources: A Summer Academy for Historical Study is guided by the rationale that deeper and more purposeful partnerships between the K-12 community, colleges and universities, and public outlets charged with the preservation and dissemination of history will serve to promote and enhance our collective understanding of the past at all levels. Hosted by Clayton State University, and a joint effort between the Departments of Humanities and Teacher Education, the aim of this project is to promote history and history education through (a) a deepening of content area expertise and (b) a renewed awareness of historical thinking as an exercise in inquiry. Related to these complimentary objectives, our goal is to enhance teacher participants' abilities to locate and navigate archival materials, through both physical and online collections, and to assist teachers in the Atlanta metropolitan area in translating those skills and habits into their classrooms.
The Summer Academy focuses on an annual theme—initially, "Revolutions in History," generally following the annual National History Day theme in support of the Clayton State University's existing NHD programming. Participants in the three-day Academy enjoy content instruction from university historians on world and U.S. topics related to the annual theme and relevant to the CCGPS. Participants also take part in pedagogy seminars to facilitate the development of inquiry-based lesson ideas which utilize the historical materials maintained by the Library of Congress, the National Archives at Atlanta, and the State Archives of Georgia.
Georgia State University
ER #98 Contact: Chantee Earl
Examining the Civil Rights Movement with a Historian's Eye: A Professional Development Series for Teachers on Using Historical Analysis of Landmarks, Primary Source Documents, and Artifacts in Classroom Instruction - This professional development series exposes English Language Arts and Social Studies teachers to instructional strategies that foster and promote critical literacy and historical thinking, increase content knowledge, and address the Common Core Georgia Performance Standards (CCGPS) for Literacy in the Social Studies and the Georgia Performance Standards (GPS) in English Language Arts and Social Studies.
The goals are to (1) impact teachers' understanding of critical literacy, historical analysis, and inquiry, and to (2) enhance student engagement, mastery of content knowledge, and critical thinking skills related to the study of the events, persons, and impact of Georgia on the national Civil Rights Movement past and present. By visiting local and regional historical landmarks and working with primary source documents from the Library of Congress website, teacher participants assume the role of "true historian." As historians, teachers interrogate a variety of primary sources to obtain multiple perspectives of the historical narrative. In addition, they examine the significance, context meaning, and relationship of artifacts and primary source documents to develop interpretations of the national Civil Rights Movement.
Columbus State University
ER #66 Contact: Victor Salazar
The Cultural Approach to History Project is designed to provide a professional development opportunity for in-service and pre-service social studies and history teachers from schools in the bi-state areas of West Georgia and East Alabama. Primary sources are integrated into this multidisciplinary approach to teaching lessons based on State of Georgia's Performance Standards. The two venues wherein the use of primary sources are a seminar include Columbus, GA and a field seminar at the historic battlefield of Gettysburg, PA.
Georgia Historical Society
ER #65 Contact: Christy Crisp
The Georgia Historical Society's (GHS) Opening America's Archives: Using Primary Sources Across Disciplines teacher-training initiative supports eight-grade Social Studies and English Language Arts pre-service and in-service teachers as they align core course content within Georgia Performance Standards to national Common Core Standards. GHS trains 125 teachers through delivery of five statewide teacher-training workshops, in each of the following Georgia Department of Education RESA Districts: North Georgia (2), Metro (4), Middle Georgia (8), First District (13), and Southwest Georgia (14). Workshops introduce teachers to the library and archival collections of the Library of Congress, the Georgia Historical Society, as well as other relevant repositories across Georgia while equipping them with tips, tools, and techniques for engaging students in exploration and study of primary sources and informational texts in the classroom. GHS created an online presence for the project that serves as an enduring educational resource and portal to workshop content, including sample curricular units, links to relevant repositories and online resources, and lesson plans created by teacher-participants to expand the reach of this important initiative.
Georgia Department of Education
ER #26 Contact: Shaun Owen
Georgia Department of Education Teaching with Primary Sources participates with four other states as part of the Social Studies Assessment, Curriculum, and Instruction collaborative under the Council of Chief State School Officers, developing a pool of teachers and resources to improve instruction in United States History through the use of primary sources. The project also aligns with the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) Literacy for History/Social Studies. Approximately 100 teachers were trained in Georgia at four different workshops. These workshops are held in four different regions in Georgia: metropolitan Atlanta, suburban Atlanta, a moderately rural area in central Georgia, and rural Southwestern Georgia.
Dalton State College
ER #23 Contact: Joshuah Pfiester
Opening Pandora's Box: Preparing Preservice Teachers to Use Primary Sources and Inquiry through a Collaborative Partnership - The phrase Pandora's Box conjures countless images based on one's experiences with Greek mythology. The Opening Pandora's Box project plays on this myth to envision a group of educators collaboratively "opening the Box" to unlock the positive power of primary sources and inquiry learning for public school students. Independent public school teachers, college professors, and media specialists complete primary sources and inquiry professional development. Next, they meet to discuss their training and build common knowledge. Then, based on shared training, the educators develop inquiry topics and create kits to promote student inquiry social studies learning. Lastly, they implement inquiry learning activities through the use of materials they have created and primary sources from the Library of Congress and other sources. Opening Pandora's Box benefits both public school students and pre-service teachers.
Sample STEM Lesson Plan by Joshuah Pfiester: Caissons and Cofferdams