Teaching with Primary Sources

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Teaching with Primary Sources

• Brent Modak

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Why bother?

• Instruction must be designed not to put
  knowledge into learns heads, but to put learners
  into positions that allow them to construct
  well-structured knowledge (Anderson, 102).
• This is beneficial to learning because learning
  occurs when learners actively transform incoming
  information and construct meaning in terms of
  their prior knowledge (Anderson, 1989, 101).
• During a museum walk students make observations
  and use those observations to construct critical
  inferences and analysis.

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Why bother?

• During assimilation, a person imposes his or her
  available structure on the stimuli being
  processed. That is, the stimuli are forced to
  fit the persons structure. In accommodation, the
  reverse is true. The person is forced to change
  his or her schema to fit the new stimuli
  (Wadsworth, 15).
• The process of accommodation results in a
  qualitative change in intellectual structures
  (schemata), while assimilation only adds to the
  existing structuresa quantitative change
  (Wadsworth, 17).
• Through the use of primary sources, the teacher
  can force the student to reevaluate preconceived
  notions or predictions.

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Why bother?

• Students with performance-oriented goals focus on
  doing better than other students in their class
  (Eccles, 2004, 131).
• This is beneficial because there is no stronger
  predictor of students self-confidence and
  efficacy than the grades they receive (Eccles,
  2004, 142).
• The focus is not on a grade the focus is on
  accruing the skill of being able to craft
  inferences and make observations.
• Students receive guidelines for good observations
  and inferences

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SWBAT...

• ...break down who benefitted from the advent of
  new methods of transportation and technology
  during American westward expansion of the 19th
  century.

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• What do you think the women in white represents?
• Where do you think she is leading them?
• What are the settlers bringing with them?

• http//www.loc.gov/pictures/item/97507547/resource
  /

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• This picture was taken in Montrose, Colorado.
• The men in the picture are drilling for artesian
  water.
• Why would such technology be important in
  westward expansion?

http//memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/AMALL
_at_field(NUMBER_at_band(codhawp10010461))
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• Describe the technology in this picture.
• Who do you think the technology helps or hurts?

http//memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?ammem/psbib
_at_field(DOCID_at_lit(p10235))
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• The first patent for barbed wire was issued in
  1867.
• How do you think the invention of barbed wire
  affected the West?
• Who do you think it helped?
• Who do you think it hurt?

http//www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa2000011905/PP/
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• This is an invitation for Alexander Graham Bell
  to participate in ATT's formal opening of the
  transcontinental telephone line on January 25,
  1915. The event included a telephone conversation
  between Bell in New York and his old assistant,
  Thomas Watson, in San Francisco, as well as
  speeches by President Woodrow Wilson from the
  White House and ATT President Theodore Vail from
  Georgia. When a duplicate of an 1876 telephone
  was connected to the New York line, Bell, echoing
  his famous words on the original occasion, called
  out, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you." Watson
  replied that this time it would take him a week
  to do so.

• http//memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collIdmagbel
  lfileName129/12900103/bellpage.dbrecNum0

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• This is a picture of one of Alexander Graham
  Bells first telegraphs.
• How do you think this piece of technology
  affected westward expansion?

• http//memory.loc.gov/ammem/bellhtml/belltelph.htm
  l

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• This particular telephone crew strung five
  copper wires from Omaha, Nebraska, to Denver,
  Colorado. The woman pictured is the operator.
• source American Memory Library of Congress

• http//memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?ammem/psbib
  _at_field(DOCID_at_lit(p10135))

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http//www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/PacificR
ail.html

• How do you think this affected development of the
  West?

• The Pacific Railway Act was signed into law by
  President Abraham Lincoln on July 1, 1862. This
  act provided Federal government support for the
  building of the first transcontinental railroad,
  which was completed on May 10, 1869.
• SourceVirtual Services Digital Reference Section
  of the Library of Congress

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http//www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/SciRefGuides/winches
ter-rifle.html

• In what ways do you think firearms, such as the
  Winchester rifle, were used?

• In the 1800s the idea of a repeating rifle was
  finally realized by Oliver Winchester, the
  largest stockholder of the New Haven Arms Co. of
  Connecticut. He was assigned US patent No. 5501,
  which protected improvements to the Henry rifle.
  The new technology included a spring-closed
  loading port on the right-hand side of the frame,
  directly at the rear of the magazine tube, and
  resulted in the first reliable lever-action
  repeating rifle, produced as the first
  Winchester, Model 1866.
• Famous for its rugged construction, the original
  Winchester rifle allowed the rifleman to fire a
  number of shots before having to reload hence
  the term, "repeating rifle."

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References

• Anderson, L.M. (1989a). Learners and learning.
  In M.C. Reynolds (Ed.), Knowledge base for
  the beginning teacher (pp. 85-99). Oxford
  Pergamon Press
• Eccles, J.S. (2004). Schools, academic
  motivation, and stage-environment fit. In R. M.
  Lerner, L. Steinberg (Eds.), Handbook of
  Adolescent Psychology, 2nd Ed. New York Wiley.
• Wadsworth, B.J. (1989). Chapters 1 and 2 from
  Piagets theory of cognitive and affective
  development, 4th Ed. (pp. 9-32). New York
  Longman.