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1/8/13 Blog post by Larry Ferlazzo  The Reading Like a Historian curriculum engages students in historical inquiry. Each lesson revolves around a central historical question and features sets of primary documents designed for groups of students with diverse reading skills and abilities.

This great book should really be read by everyone. It is difficult to describe why it so great because it both teaches and inspires. You really just have to read it. We think it is so good that it demands to be as accessible as possible. Once you've finished it, we're sure you'll agree. In fact, years ago, we would offer people twenty dollars if they read the book and didn't think it was completely worth their time. Of all the people who took us up on it, no one collected.

This site is run by George Something University and has material on four key events from American history, all designed to develop 'historical thinking". They have primary sources in there which I would steal and use for other purposes, but that's just me.

Welcome to Historical Thinking Matters, a website focused on key topics in U.S. history, that is designed to teach students how to critically read primary sources and how to critique and construct historical narratives. Read how to use this site.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) electronic reading room of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) offers several primary source collections for the study of Central and Eastern Europe during and after the Cold War period. The FOIA Electronic Reading Room web site was established by the CIA "to provide the public with an overview of access to CIA information, including electronic access to previously released documents." Direct web access to the following collections is now possible: # The Soviet and Warsaw Pact Military Journals is a PDF collection of "sensitive Soviet and Warsaw Pact military journals from 1961 to 1984 providing a view into Warsaw Pact military strategy". # Preparing for Martial Law: Through the Eyes of Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski is "a captivating collection of over 75 documents concerning the planning and implementation martial law in Poland from mid-1980 to late 1981. The collection release coincided with a CIA symposium honouring Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, a member of the Polish Army General Staff and the source of the documents."

Seems to focus especially on the Cold War. Definitely one for the conspirary theorists.

HWPP is an online space for scholars to share works-in-progress with their peers. After uploading a conference paper, essay, or article manuscript to the HWPP website, authors can invite others to read their work and make comments in the margins. As more people respond, writers get more feedback. But, unlike traditional comments done on paper, HWPP allows commenters and authors to interact with each other. They can read each other's marginalia and engage in dialogue about it. In fact, entire threaded discussions can take place in the margins. Here's what it looks like:

Again - am using this for low literacy students.  Have downloaded the audio and edited to just be this transcript.  Will use the transcript so students can read along to help reading comprehension

Many of the points made here have been made in other places, but they cannot be restated enough. Every history teacher needs to read this, and then read it again after a month of teaching

Homefront America in WW II A Document Based Question by Peter Pappas This lesson improves content reading comprehension with an engaging array of source documents - including journals, maps, photos, posters, cartoons, historic data and artifacts. It is framed around essential questions that link the past and present and invite students to reflect on parallel developments in contemporary America.

A guide to reading a primary source. It would be useful in helping your students develop their source evaluation skills.

A good outlay for students of what to look for when reading/analysing/evaluating primary sources.

This narrative of the sectionalism and the growth of the Republican party is every bit as valid as the narrative canon, though its significantly different. The bullet point nature of this Twiiter thread and its natural inclusion of primary source documents makes this a strong candidate as the baseline reading assignment for US history students

"If a picture is worth a thousand words, a good animation is worth ten thousand. After reading book after book about the Pacific War and finding only complicated maps with dotted lines and dashed lines crisscrossing the pages, we decided to depict the key naval and land battles using animation technology."

Read through the US census records from 1940.  If you're in the US, and your house is old enough, you can see who lived in your house back in the day.

I LOVE HISTORY! But do your students? Chances are some of them might think it's boring - hours of reading and memorizing dates. And, let's face it; history can be a little dry sometimes.

An interesting game that helps students improve their literacy skills

This article suggests using 'wordle' to create a 'word cloud' from a selected text. It works really well in historical sources (or modern articles) for bringing out key terms. It's also a really efficient way for students to 'scan' a text to see if it might be relevant when researching - particularly for those who read slowly, or for ESL students who are daunted by large blocks of text - and it looks very nice too!