TPS:BASICS
Teaching With Primary Sources:
A Beginning Asynchronous Individualized Course of Study

Focus Activity: Click on the image above to view the enlargement. What do you see? How old are the boys in the photo? Do you see any adults? What clothes are the boys wearing? What time of day do you think it is? Why? What are the boys thinking? feeling? doing? What questions do you have about this image? Now click on the link below the image to read the information in the biographical record. What questions are still unanswered?

Overview

Young boys were used in the coal mines of Pennsylvania in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as "breakers". Their jobs were to sort through the ore found by the adult miners and separate the slate from the coal. We will use a similar mental process to sift and sort and make meaning of the primary sources we find at the Library of Congress.

The goal of this workshop session is to get documents to talk to us. We will analyze, we will criticize, we will build, we will tear down, and we will build again. We will orient ourselves backward, that is, we will work with the end in mind. The end, in this case, is to get the teacher to all but disappear and allow the student to ask the right questions of the right document. But don't disappear quite yet: there is work to be done.

Objectives: During this workshop session, participants will:

• examine primary documents (images, print, and sound files) closely and explain their meaning;
• evaluate the value of a document as the basis of instruction with students and
• locate and save primary source documents related to local and state curriculum.
• "read" and interpret a historic panoramic map for geographic, economic and cultural context;
• examine maps of regional small towns for impact of waterways and railroads; and
• compare and contrast historic maps from different historic eras using the pan and zoom features of MrSID image publisher.

Learning Activities

1. What Do You See? Look at a second photograph taken in a Pennsylvania coal mine. Use the photo analysis guide to explore the meaning of this photo. Open the biographical information file to research it further. Consider how to use this photograph in the classroom. How does this photograph relate to the image at the top of the page? How do both photographs connect to the lives of your students and to your curriculum?
2. What Do You Hear? Follow the guidelines in this Library of Congress workshop to learn how to analyze a sound file. Select one file on the page and complete the Listening Guide. onsider why you would use the sound file you explored in your classroom or why you would not use it.
3. What Do You Read? Follow the guidelines in this Library of Congress Workshop to learn how to analyze a print file (books, interviews, posters, ads, manuscripts). Select one file on the page and complete the Document Analysis Guide. Consider why you would use the print file you explored in your classroom or why you would not use it.
4. Industrialization and the Development of U.S. Cities - For this activity, you will be using the 1902 Fowler Map and an 1874 map of Pittsburgh drawn by Otto Krebs. The mapmaker of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1902, T.M. Fowler shows factories and foundries belching the smoke that made Pittsburgh one of the nation's most industrially polluted cities throughout the first half of the twentieth century. If we compare this map of Pittsburgh to an earlier map drawn by Otto Krebs, we can demonstrate the process of urban development and industrialization. Click on the 1902 Fower Map and the 1874 Krebs Map Library of Congress links. Click a second time on the map image to zoom in using the MrSID technology. Use the confluence of the three rivers (Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio) as a reference point to answer the following questions: 

• Between 1874 and 1902, how did river front buildings and shipping traffic change at the mouth of the Ohio? 
• How did the presence of railroads in Pittsburgh change over time? 
• Can you locate venues of recreation in both maps: baseball diamonds, parks, promenades, theaters? 
• Between 1874 and 1902, how did residential housing and commercial buildings change at the mouth of the Ohio?

5. Historical Analysis and Cultural Context – In this interdisciplinary activity, we will be using the Hannibal Missouri panoramic map and an selection from Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi (Chapter 4) first two paragraphs).  Read Mark Twain's description and then zoom in on the map as you did before to answer the following questions. Consider the following questions and create several that you would like answered. 

•        What details from Twain's description of Hannibal, Missouri can you also find in the map?

•        What are the similarities and differences between the description and the map?

•        What aspects or characteristics of Hannibal does each artist emphasize?

•        What overall effect do you think that each artist/author was trying to achieve?

•         Is one depiction more idealized than the other?

•        Do the two items convey the same overall sense of place?

6. Bibliographic Organizer: Find at least two additional documents in the Library of Congress related to the topic you plan to use for your final project in this course. Save the thumbnail images and URLs and add them to your Organizer Folder on your hard disc. Look for different types of documents such as audio, manuscript, video, etc.

Please download the following resources, examine them, store them for references, and complete any activites they present in order to complete this module of the workshop:

1) Thinking About Primary Sources
2) Multiple Primary Sources Organizer
3) Image Analysis
4) Text Analysis
5) News Article Analysis
6) Cartoon Analysis
7) Map Analysis
8) Potery Analysis
9) Song Analysis

Content provided by:

WAYNESBURG UNIVERSITY

Eastern Region Teaching With Primary Sources Partner
Ann B. Canning, Ed.D.
©2009