Uncovering Our History: Teaching with Primary Sources

By Susan H. Veccia

Book Overview

Using primary sources to teach history, which goes beyond rote memorization of dates and facts, has been incorporated into the educational standards of nearly every state. For overburdened K-12... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0838908624
• ISBN13: 9780838908624
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: ALA Editions
• Length: 143 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 8.4" x 11.0"

Customer Reviews

Review of Uncovering Our History

Veccia, Susan H. 2004. Uncovering Our History: Teaching with Primary Sources. Chicago, IL: American Library Association. Upon request by Susan Veccia, James R. Giese writes the forward to her book, Uncovering our History: Teaching with Primary Sources, in which he states that the book's "power lies in the fact that each contributor provides us with significant snapshots of her or his personal journey to find ever-better ways to engage students directly with history." Giese learned early that most history teachers waste time teaching and testing inert facts, with no student involvement in the learning process, developing negative attitudes towards history using this technique. Giese found that "going to the source" using primary sources to teach history was time consuming and had its obstacles. For this reason he notes the value of this book compiled from the experiences and knowledge of teachers and librarians in helping to bring history alive for students in the elementary through high school grades using primary sources. Primary sources are defined as "manuscripts, first-person diaries, oral histories, letters, interviews, photographs, maps, films, sound recordings," and other "fragments of history." The first three chapters explain primary sources and give a variety of ways to recognize, locate, and use them to develop students' critical thinking skills. Though it lists several Web sites where primary sources are located, the focus in chapter two is on the American Memory Website available from the Library of Congress which contains more than 100 primary sources and more than 7.5 million items from the Library of Congress collection. This chapter describes the development of the site and the process by which materials from the Library of Congress are selected for digitization. It also reviews the kinds of collections available under the formats of photographs, written materials, recorded sound, maps, and motion pictures providing examples of each. Chapter three describes how to explore the collection and the Learning Page, which is especially designed for teachers. The Learning Page provides lesson plans, activities, collection connections, educator discussions, and professional development offered by the Library of Congress. The text continually stresses the need for librarians and teachers to collaborate together on the use of primary sources in the curriculum. The next chapters offer specific strategies and models of instruction using primary sources that one library media specialist and three teachers have used in their personal efforts to teach students to appreciate and understand history. Gail Petri, a library media specialist, relates her experiences using primary sources in her elementary school. Using pictures and documents the students learned of the suffrage movement and created scrapbooks of their past. Laura Wakefield's middle school students analyzed photos, oral histories, and conducted living history interviews. Mic

The Extremely Useful Guide to Teaching Primary Sources

What the history textbook I read in school said about the Scopes "Monkey" Trial in 1925 was that defense attorney Clarence Darrow put prosecuting attorney and three-time Democratic nominee for president William Jennings Bryan on the witness stand and forced him to admit that the days of creation were not literal 24-hour days, thereby denying the Fundamentalist's literal interpretation of the Bible and the story of divine creation set forth in Genesis. The moment is also captured in the stage and theatrical version of "Inherit the Wind." However, when I finally read a transcript of the case of The State of Tennessee vs. John Thomas Scopes and looked at the celebrated "duel in the shade," I discovered that rather than Darrow compelling a confession, Bryan had made the admission freely, heading off Darrow from the painting him a corner. What was in the history books was not what "really" happened. Years later I discovered that the Scopes Trial was never mentioned in the grade school textbooks of America's schools until "Inherit the Wind" debuted on Broadway (and then usually associated with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan). What appeared in most of those textbooks represented what was in the play, an admitted dramatization of the events in Dayton, Tennessee that sweltering summer of 1925, and not based on the trial transcript. In graduate school I was fortunate to have a couple of professors who emphasized the importance of analyzing primary documents, so when Susan H. Veecia put together "Uncovering Our History: Teaching with Primary Sources," she is preaching to the choir and I am just here to help spread the word along. Veccia is the former manager of educational outreach for the Library of Congress and currently an independent library and education consultant. Specifically, she managed the first large-scale program designed to make the Library of Congress's digital primary-source material more accessible to K-12 teachers and school librarians. Consequently, The cover photograph is of James B. Washington, a Confederate prisoner taken by a young George Armstrong Custer. In the middle of the book the photo is presented as an example of visual literacy, explaining how she would show young students the photograph and get their reaction before explaining that Washington and Custer had been classmates at West Point (i.e., there was a personal history behind the photograph). This represents the thesis of the book's first chapter, which focuses on how primary sources provide such "magical moments of insight." Providing these for their students becomes the goal for history teachers in their own classrooms, and this book provides some suggestions for how to do so, along with the necessary resources. Chapter One, "Primary Sources: Magical Moments of Insight," defines primary sources as personal stories, ongoing investigations, and raw and unvarnished materials. Veccia then details how teachers and students can access primary source collections,