Wednesday, February 9, 2022

New Lesson Plans from DocsTeach

DocsTeach is one of my favorite resources for U.S. History teachers and students. The platform makes it easy to find curated collections of primary source documents and offers great templates for creating online lessons based on those documents. And if you don't have time to make a new activity, DocsTeach offers hundreds of premade primary source lesson activities for elementary school, middle school, and high school classrooms. Recently, DocsTeach added some new ready-to-use teaching activities based on primary source documents.

New DocsTeach Activities

There are six new DocsTeach activities that were recently featured in the DocsTeach newsletter sent out to registered users. I've listed and linked to them below. And at the end of this post I've included my tutorial video about how to use DocsTeach to create your own online activities based on the primary sources hosted on DocsTeach.

Comparing Perspectives in the Dawes Act and a Hopi Petition. This activity uses the compare/contrast model and is intended for high school classes.
Fannie Lou Hamer and Voting Rights. This is an activity intended for middle school students to complete by answering some questions about specific portions of the document.
Analyzing a Document about Teaching at Indian Boarding Schools. This is another activity designed for middle school classrooms. Students compare the salaries and responsibilities of educators at Indian Boarding Schools with those of educators at public schools.
Writing to the President is an activity that introduces elementary school students to the process of analyzing a primary source. In this activity students read a letter written by third graders to President Gerald Ford asking for a "Kids Day."
Japanese American Incarceration During World War II is an in-depth primary source analysis activity for high school students. The activity requires students to analyze more than two dozen primary sources. I recommend reading NARA's statement on potentially harmful content before using this activity in your classroom.
Ten Crucial Days: From Washington Crossing the Delaware to the Battles of Trenton and Princeton is an activity for middle school students in which they'll match descriptions of events to their corresponding locations on maps.

Here's my video overview of how to create and distribute your own primary source activities via DocsTeach.

On a related note, next Tuesday (February 15th) I'm hosting a webinar all about search strategies for history students and teachers. Join Me!

40,000 People Get Their Ed Tech Tips This Way

Yesterday morning I logged into my YouTube studio dashboard and saw that my little channel of screencast videos now has 40,000 subscribers! My videos aren't anything fancy. I just write some bullet points on a notepad then record using Screencast-o-matic. I do some light editing (blurring, trimming, and occasionally adding text overlays) and then hit publish. I've never had a video go "viral" nor do I try to make them go viral. The point is just to make clear and concise videos that help teachers.