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Sender: American Memory Fellows <AMFELLOWS@RS8.LOC.GOV>
Poster: cooper middle schoool <kcms@IONET.NET>
Subject: Re: Applying New Knowledge
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What a wonderful set of lessons! I am forwarding this on to our district
social studies coordinator. Thanks for sharing, Sybil
At 12:13 PM 5/25/99 +0000, you wrote:
>I just wanted to describe a wonderful experience I had today which proved
>how well my fourth graders achieved the goals I had for them when they did
>my American Memory lesson (History Firsthand) this past January. Among
>other outcomes I wanted them to really understand something about how to
>do on-line searches.
>
>I am currently doing a unit on the Constitution. A little background: all
>year long my students work on the idea of close reading and annotating. In
>September I introduce these ideas with an E.B. White study. They learn how
>to read a chapter closely, annotating it as well. Midyear they study the
>Pilgrims and learn how to use their annotating and close reading skills
>for information texts and primary sources. Now they are putting these
>skills all together by annotating the Constitution. Thus, they go from
>doing this with a work of fiction (Charlotte's Web ) to factual narratives
>(texts about and by the Pilgrims) to a non-narrative text. I won't go
>into all I do here, but I assure you that there is a lot of work done
>learning about the Constitution before they do this. There is also more
>that they do afterwards (with the amendments and civil rights.) Also, we
>bring current events into it as well. (e.g. recent gun control
>legislation.)
>
>At the moment the children are working in groups and creating large
>posters of their annotations. For example, one poster is of Article I. I
>took a version of the Constitution off the National Archives site and then
>changed the font size to have it fit our chart paper. The kids glued these
>onto large chart paper and are putting their annotations around the
>document. Their objective is to create an annotated version for other
>fourth graders. Thus, they are writing definitions for things in language
>their peers would understand. Also, providing many examples. Many need to
>be visual. They are drawing pictures for some (e.g. someone driving
>through New Jersey holding a New York drivers license for Article IV.) So
>when they started looking on the Internet for images where do you think
>they went? American Memory! And it is wonderful to see how facile they
>are with it. Of the photograph collections they mainly know the Detroit
>Publishing Collection, but are easily moving into others such as the on on
>the Presidents. They've found pictures of the Supreme Court, the Capital,
>Nixon, Clinton, Johnson, and more . In fact, one child found a great
>drawing of Johnson's impeachment trial.
>
>I am just delighted to see them applying all that they learned a few
>months ago in a new way. No better proof for me of the success of my unit
>and also proof that this age group can indeed use this wonderful resource!
>
>Monica
>
>
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