I took time to check out all the apps and they each could definitely be a plus for the Social Studies/Civics classroom. I took notes on each and plan to share with my SS teachers next week via email.

I can't really pinpoint any negatives about the apps as they all have positive attributes, serve different grade levels as well as share many of the same purposes. Some have more features than others, but still are useful in the classroom.

The last app, Teacher Tool Box, caught my interest as it focuses on the C3 Framework which I am familiar with and have used in the classroom.

It focuses on developing students' ability to "frame and advance an inquiry" which is bases on a question. Those questions consist of two forms: compelling and supportive. Each lesson plan uses the C3 Framework: college, career, and civic life with inquiry based learning as the driver.

The primary documents from LOC supports each inquiry based lesson plan with an analysis tool linked to LOC and available for student use. I have used the analysis tool in a lesson I created two years ago for a Social Studies class and teachers enjoyed the lesson plan.

I look forward to sharing the Teacher Tool Box app next week.

  6 - 8    Library    Social Studies/History  # 2021 Summer Course - Apps  

Yesterday I wrote a post for you called Album Tips to Move from Beginner to Expert. Today I'd like to add a little editing tip to make your albums even better.

Did you know that you don't have to be stuck with the sometimes long, convoluted titles that the album tool imports automatically from many Library of Congress sources? You can edit your item titles to make them friendlier, clearer, and more likely to get a click from an interested colleague.

Complicated, code-filled titles often import along with articles from Chronicling America, but they can also come in when we upload other types of primary sources in the Library's collections. Here's a recent example from another group to show what I mean: service-pnp-npcc-20000-20071r.jpeg. It doesn't really mean anything, so as a user, I'm less likely to open it. I'd be much more inclined to open it if it were edited to read Snow Gauge (1947), wouldn't you?

This brings me to my little tip. You can edit titles in your albums by going to any single item and clicking on the red and white gear icon above it. Choose Edit [Title of Item], edit it, and save. It's that easy.

Editing titles is entirely up to you, and there's absolutely no harm in leaving them alone. Your call!

  Tips and Tricks  

Evaluate the apps listed on your syllabus - which ones might you use in your classroom and why/how?  2021 Summer Course - Apps  

First, thank you to all the Virginia Partnership TPS participants who have been going gangbusters with creating albums this week! Now that you've mastered all the beginner skills for albums, let me lead you to a great resource for expanding those skills.

In the Help Center (always available from the ? icon in the top menu), we have a page dedicated to ALBUMS. On that page, you will find:

• A full Spark tutorial that includes several screencasts of specific skills
• Simple album questions and equally simple answers to them

At the bottom, you'll notice a couple of items about exporting your albums. I quite like the Advanced Download option that allows me to pick and choose what I want to export, as well as to change the order of items in the album. Also very handy is the COPY SHAREABLE URL link, which allows you to export your album for use outside of the TPS Teachers Network. It generates a useful, scrollable web page without the creator's name (a privacy thing), and you can use the down arrows and the + signs during presentations. You can also plug that link into newsletters, emails, lessons, PD, Twitter, Facebook, etc. 

Let me know if you have any questions! The mentors in the TPS Teachers Network are always willing to help, too.   

  Tips and Tricks  

How can primary sources enrich your student's engagement with fiction or non-fiction books? Did you find it most useful to consider the time, place, dress, individuals when looking for primary sources to support the book you may teach?

What Classic Book did you find most intriguing and why? Will you bring it into your classroom?  Summer 2021 Course  

I love the idea of the use of news articles to connect lessons to real world events.  It is a helpful resource to help drive home why we learn the material in the first place.  It helps to show students that scenarios happen outside of the classroom just like we discuss in lessons and is eye opening for them.  I also gives something to remember. 

I have some copies of old newspapers (reprints) and some printed on metal for preservation.  They are as wonderful and enlightening to dive into as a good dictionary.  They have so much to offer and they are primary sources.  I like the bingo you sent out.  What a great way to have the students dive into the lesson, and the best part it can cover any topic.

Historic Newspapers

Historic newspapers can serve a variety of purposes in a 4th grade classroom. In my county, we teacher VA Studies in 4th grade and I believe that students being able to search and analyze these articles as a primary source will allow them to make another connection to the lesson. I use a lot of IDM and DBQ and newspaper articles serve as a phenomenally rich primary source to incorporate in the lessons. 

Favorite Blogs

• What, to the American Slave, is Your 4th of July: I would use the primary sources from this blog to incorporate with an IDM that I teach in 4th grade in which the compelling question is "Did the founding fathers protect liberty or slavery when they wrote the founding documents?" - the perspective and conversation from Frederick Douglass will provide students with a different lens in terms of answering the question
• Honoring African American Contributions: The Newspaper - I would use this blog to discuss the various ways in which African Americans received their information and the different types of newspapers available to the African American Community. Students will also make connections with certain newspapers and the inspiration from which they came. I will also ask students how is this different from the way we get news today? 
• Hiram Revels: First African American Senator - I would use this to show students the changes in the Reconstruction Era and how African Americans did gain rights and liberties prior to the implementation of Jim Crow (I would incorporate this with my Newsela Lesson)

Using historical newspapers has many cross-curricular applications that will work so well in my K - 7 library lessons, including primary source accuracy, author bias, and general timelines of important historical events.

Some of my favorite teacher blogs so far (there are SO many to explore) include:

How and Why Communities Remember the World Trade Center;

Attributes: How do Attributes Affect Our Perception of a Person;

Kids in School

All three place historical events and/or people into larger social contexts.  All three sources address how historical analysis reaches beyond simple people and events.  Historical thinking involves understanding the greater context of the time, along with the common biases of the people who experienced it.

What are your initial ideas about how you might incorporate historical newspapers into your lessons?

What were your three favorite Teacher blogs and why? How will the teacher blogs be most useful in your class - as a bell ringer, a quick source of lesson ideas or...?  Summer 2021 Teacher Blog Discussion  

  Summer 2021 Historic Newspapers