Primary Sources and Montana History

Last summer, I asked a few Montana history teachers what would make their teaching life easier (especially if they were presenting some or all of their lessons virtually.) They requested two things: 

1. Easier access to primary sources (especially images) relating to the textbook chapters. We responded by creating Annotated Resource Sets. What's an Annotated Resource Set? It's just an easy way to organize links to images, videos, maps, documents, and other resources. For each resource we include a title and/or brief description, where the resource is from (collection information) the file format (jpg, pdf, etc.), the URL at which you can download the resource, and a thumbnail image of the resource.

We've created  Annotated Resource Sets for Montana: Stories of the Land chapters 6-13 and 15-18: gold rush, treaty period/Indian wars, cattle frontier, railroads, War of the Copper Kings/statehood, reservation period, timber, homesteading, Progressive Era, WWI, Great Depression. But, obviously, you can use the primary sources in the resource sets without using the textbook.

2. Primary sources read aloud, accompanied by relevant images. The teachers liked and assigned our Learning from Historical Document Units, which feature excerpts from letters, diaries and other primary sources relating to the Montana: Stories of the Land chapter theme. But they said that some students struggled to read them and lobbied for narrated PowerPoints/video clips in which the documents were read aloud, accompanied by relevant historic photos. 

In response, we put together six narrated PowerPoints, which are now available as a playlist on our YouTube channel. Included in this playlist are Emily Meredith's letter from Bannack, 1863, Cornelius Hedge's letter from Helena, 1865, Alma Coffin's reminiscence, describing traveling by stage in 1878, Albert Ronne's letter about setting up a ranch in 1892, and two contrasting letters about the IWW timber strike in 1917. For good measure, we recorded two other narrated PowerPoints, both of which focus on WWII objects as primary sources: a comic strip about Marine Private Minnie Spotted Wolf of the Blackfeet Reservation, and the chalk and wood message from the Smith Mine Disaster in Bearcreek.

Let me know if these turn out to be useful and if you want us to make more (either of the Annotated Resource Sets or the narrated PowerPoints)--and if so, for what topics/chapters/documents.  I'm happy to try to fit this in as I have time, if I know the material will actually be used.  

Want to talk more about teaching with primary sources? There's still time to sign up for tomorrow's online October 20, 4:00-5:00 p.m., online professional development, "Primary Sources for Teaching Montana History," where we'll share our best ideas for finding and incorporating primary sources into your Montana history class. 

 

 

Teaching Montana History is written by Martha Kohl, Outreach and Interpretation Historian at the Montana Historical Society.