Teaching with Primary Sources and Integrating History and ELA

Integrating History and ELA

If you are interested in using history to illuminate literature, or literature to illuminate history, I hope you'll join us for our upcoming PD, "Integrating Montana History into English Language Arts," on November 17, from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. One OPI Renewal unit will be available to attendees. And to help me prepare for the session, let me know: what novels do you teach that you'd like to relate to Montana history? 

This is the third in a series of online professional developments, which are designed to provide an opportunity for teachers to share their best ideas with one another.  

Teaching with Primary Sources

There was good conversation and useful material shared in the second of the series, "Primary Sources for Teaching Montana History," so much so that I thought I'd share some of my notes below.  

Two truths and a lie is a technique Red Lodge teacher Steven Morris (middle school social studies) sometimes uses as a bell ringer about whatever subject matter he's presenting. He presents two true statements and one lie and asks students to figure out which is which. Students love it, and we talked about how that could be used with primary sources. I immediately thought about how Phil Leonardi used to ask his students to fact check homesteading promotional brochures. (Although many of those brochures were created by the railroads, my favorite is actually the delusional booklet printed by the Ryegate Weekly Reporter, which boasted that the area's annual rainfall was 22 inches.)   

Missoula teacher Betty Bennett (high school English) uses conflicting newspaper accounts/editorials about the Marias Massacre from Montana newspapers and eastern newspapers to look at differences of reporting. You can find an excerpt of “Sheridan and the Indians,” Journal of the Anti-Slavery Society [from the New York Evening Post], March 19, 1870 (which thinks the massacre was an outrage) and an excerpt from H. N. McGuire, "The Happy Result of Col. Baker’s Piegan Campaign," The Pick and Plow (Bozeman, Montana), July 29, 1870, 2 (which supports Baker's actions) in our lesson plan "Blood on the Marias: Understanding Different Points of View Related to the Baker Massacre of 1870."

Billings elementary librarian Ruth Ferris taught us how to do a picture reveal using Google slides (with students asking yes or no questions in order to reveal a photograph). She also talked about using a dice game to have students answer questions about a source. (For example: if you roll 1, you have to write down when it was created.) You can find her instructions here.  

Everyone was very excited about Lewistown middle school teacher Noah Vallincourt's use of primary sources and role playing to teach about immigration and Ellis Island. (He assigns students characters and uses photos and other material to simulate coming arriving on Ellis Island, and trying to pass through the medical exam. 

Billings middle school librarian Kathi Hoyt shared several techniques. My favorite were playing "I Spy" in a complicated image and character annotation: 

• Find a historical photograph of a person or event and make a copy for each student
• Have students collect information about the person (or event)
• Have students annotate around and/or on the photograph to share the information they collected.

On the left is an example Kathi shared with us and uses as a model for students. It was created by Crow artist Wendy Red Star on a photo of Chief Plenty Coups in the Library of Congress Collection. (You can see and learn more of Red Star's work here.)    

I shared our new Annotated Resource Sets and narrated PowerPoints of primary sources, as well as resources available via the Montana Memory Project's Educational Resources page (did you know that in addition to online exhibits on Indian leaders and boarding schools, they also had PowerPoints of pictures from every Montana tribe)?

We all agreed that when it came to primary sources, it was important to curate the sources and that oftentimes less was more.

 If this were minutes from a turn-of-the-century woman's club meeting, I'd end with "delicious refreshments were served," but alas, it was a virtual gathering. Until we can actually meet again in person, I look forward to reconvening on Zoom on November 17. See you there?

P.S. Have you voted yet? If not, head to the polls. They are open until 8:00 p.m. Find your polling place here.