Download the complete Teacher's Guide and play this KidCitizen episode with your young students! The guide includes lots of outstanding Library of Congress primary sources of community helpers, superb background information, standards, and suggestions for activities in science, visual literacy, history, and critical thinking. It's also available in Spanish!
The importance of community helpers is a building block of civics understanding. In this episode, children investigate who community helpers are, and how they have changed over time through exploration of a rich photograph (from the Library of Congress) of a man delivering ice to a schoolhouse in 1899.
Children explore the photograph by revealing it in sections, observing the details they find (See), and working with in-game character Ella to figure out what jobs the helpers are doing. Children collect elements of the photograph to their journal, and use what they have collected to help them decide what the jobs are (Think), and then to connect those jobs with community helpers today (Wonder).
Pre K - 2 3 - 5 Social Studies/History Vocational/Technical Training KidCitizen interactive game
This webinar features Tom Bober , District Library Coordinator School District of Clayton, MO, and former Teacher in Residence at the Library of Congress.
From the National Council of History Education: "A picture book that focuses on a historic event or individual can introduce students to a piece of history. Layering in primary sources allows for new engagement and understanding. This webinar will focus on how the pairing of primary sources and picture books in the elementary classroom can enhance the awareness of a historic event or individual, the research process taken by authors of historically based picture books, as well as the author’s or illustrator’s portrayal of history."
Langston Hughes' "Aunt Sue's Stories" is simplistic and resonating, because of the significance that each word and each image carry.