Six on History: Social Studies Resources
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Welcome back to Six on History.
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The activities below require just a few simple items you can find easily around the house and items from the Library's website. Kids are encouraged to use their creativity to enhance, adapt, or recreate anything we share. Check back often for new activities and opportunities with engage with us!
All Ages- Cooking Up History [PDF 150KB]
The Library's collections include thousands of cookbooks and recipes, including Thomas Jefferson's recipe for macaroni and cheese and for ice cream, cookbooks dating as far back as the 16th century, and even Rosa Parks's recipe for "featherlite pancakes". Recreate a recipe from 100 years ago preserved in Chronicling America, the Library's searchable database of historic newspapers.
- Make a Cartonera [PDF 125KB]
Cartoneras are hand-painted books with cardboard covers that appeared in the early 2000s as a response to an economic crisis in Argentina. Create one based on cartoneras held in the Library's Hispanic Division. For older children, use the stitching instructions from the Make a Mini-Book activity on this page as the binding for your cartonera.
- Puppet Power [PDF 347KB]
Using puppets in storytelling can help children of many ages and abilities to develop literacy skills such as decoding and building vocabulary. Use inspiration from the Library’s collections to create a puppet show at home. These two activities demonstrate how to create stick puppets and a shadow theater based on traditional Chinese shadow puppetry.
- Remembering Rosa Parks [PDF 351KB]
Shortly after the death of civil rights activist Rosa Parks, letterpress artist Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. began a print series featuring quotes by Parks. The Library's Prints and Photographs Division holds a number of Kennedy's works, which are the inspiration for this activity.
- Be a Comic Creator [PDF 188KB]
Did you know that the Library of Congress holds over 140,000 issues of comics, the largest publicly-available collection of comic books in the United States? Use the Library's comic collection as inspiration for becoming your own comic creator!
- Design Your Own Lighthouse [PDF 360KB]
Draw inspiration from images and architectural drawings from the Library's collections to design and build your own lighthouse.
- Make a Mini-Book [PDF 393KB]
There are nine books on my resume: The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox (with co-author Katie Hull Sypnieski) Navigating The Common Core With English Language Learners (with co-author Katie Hull Sypnieski); Building A Community Of Self-Motivated Learners: Strategies To Help Students Thrive In School and Beyond; Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching; Self-Driven Learning: Teaching Strategies For Student Motivation; The ESL/ELL Teacher’s Survival Guide (with co-author Katie Hull Sypnieski); Helping Students Motivate Themselves: Practical Answers To Classroom Challenges; English Language Learners: Teaching Strategies That Work; and Building Parent Engagement In Schools (with co-author Lorie Hammond).
In addition, Katie Hull Sypnieski and I have edited a series of practical classroom books for Social Studies, Science and Math teachers that were based on our The ELL/ESL Teacher’s Toolbox: The Math Teacher’s Toolbox, The Science Teacher’s Toolbox, and The Social Studies Teacher’s Toolbox (NOTE: They have now been published!).
Katie and I are also preparing a second edition of our The ESL/ELL Teacher’s Survival Guide. In addition, I am writing a fourth book on student motivation, Building Intrinsic Motivation in the Classroom: A Practical Guide.
I’ve won several awards, including the Leadership For A Changing World Award from the Ford Foundation, and was the Grand Prize Winner of the International Reading Association Award for Technology and Reading.
In the past, when I’ve had time, I’ve taught courses in the teacher credential program at California State University, Sacramento and the University of California – Davis.
In addition, I host a weekly radio show on BAM! Education Radio.
I was a community organizer for nineteen years prior to becoming a public school teacher.
I’m married and have three children and two grandchildren.
You can also read an interview with me that appeared in the Sacramento Bee.
Here are a few other articles that would tell you more about me and my work (there is a fair amount of white space among some of the embedded resources, so you want to keep on scrolling):
Education writer Alexander Russo interviewed me for Scholastic Magazine, and you can also see it online here as “Catching Up With Larry Ferlazzo.”
Two days after Ben Carson suggested that Saul Alinsky was, and Hillary Clinton is, a devil worshiper, the KQED Mindshift blog published an interview with me about how I apply his work in the classroom (regular readers might remember that I spent nineteen years as a community organizer with the group Alinsky founded eighty years ago). Check out Books Teachers Share: Larry Ferlazzo and Rules for Radicals.
Choice Equals Power: How to Motivate Students to Learn appeared in KQED Mindshift.
Here are about 130 articles I’ve written for other publications (those don’t include the regular posts I’ve written for a few other organizations that you can see on the homepage of this blog).
You can see a number of videos on a different page of this blog, and here are links to a few short radio interviews I’ve done:
I Chose to Be Comfortable Instead of Effective on BAM! Radio
A Slate podcast of Schooled: Does Class Size Matter?
I was interviewed by Val Brown about parent engagement
Justin Baeder at Principal Center Radio interviews me about student motivation
Tools for education and self-advocacy during the pandemic and beyond
"Asking questions is an essential — yet often overlooked — lifelong learning skill.
The ability to ask better questions allows young people to:
- Assess with a critical eye what they see in the news, online, and on social media.
- Make their voices heard while listening to the voices of others.
- Navigate complex situations and adapt to change.
- Frame problems and challenges in a way that leads to action.
- Feel greater power and self-efficacy at school.
- Become more confident and ready to participate in civic life.
- Contribute to a robust democracy.
Kindergartners through doctoral students become more curious, engaged, and joyful learners when they learn to formulate their own questions. This program equips all educators — at all levels — to become experts at teaching the fundamentally important skill of question formulation.
OverviewThis program provides a unique, collaborative experience that models how to support meaningful learning with the Question Formulation Technique (QFT). The QFT is a deceptively simple, practical, adaptable method that helps students become more sophisticated thinkers and problem-solvers as they learn to ask better questions. The QFT was originally developed by Luz Santana and Dan Rothstein, co-directors of the Right Question Institute and co-authors of Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions (Harvard Education Press). Their book very quickly became a classic text for strengthening inquiry in all classrooms, from kindergarten through higher education. Today, the QFT has spread to more than one million classrooms in over 150 countries.
This program expands on Santana and Rothstein’s original work by demonstrating how to adapt the QFT to a wide range of learning environments. Sarah Westbrook, the Right Question Institute’s director of professional learning, oversees this program — tapping into the wisdom of thousands of teachers who have shared creative ideas on how best to use the QFT for K-20 classrooms and drawing on extensive experience developing and facilitating professional online learning programs in the U.S. and internationally.
The mission of the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) program is to: build awareness of the Library’s educational initiatives; provide content that promotes the effective educational use of the Library’s resources; and offer access to and promote sustained use of the Library’s educational resources. Learn how to get started with primary sources, then access ready-to-use classroom materials, and further your practice through free professional development. The Library … [Read more...]
"Though Asian and Pacific Islander American (AAPI) people have faced racist violence in the United States for centuries, the endurance of this racism became more visible in the last year as an uptick in violence targeting AAPI peoples entered the national consciousness. This virulent racism and the structures that allow it to persist demand response, and education is one of our most powerful tools for raising consciousness and taking steps toward repair.
For many educators who are eager to begin exploring AAPI history and contemporary experiences with students, it can be challenging to know where to start. We invite educators to use the following curricular resources and professional development offerings to begin a journey of reflection, dialogue, and learning in the classroom.
Japanese American Incarceration
Bearing Witness to Japanese American Incarceration (Teaching Idea)
March 21, 1942, marks the date that Congress passed Public Law 503. This legislation authorized the federal courts to enforce President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, which sanctioned the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans on the West Coast in internment camps.
This Teaching Idea probes some of the complex issues arising from the history of Japanese incarceration during World War II. While not comprehensive, these resources and activities enable students to explore difficult questions about national identity, institutional racism, and the boundaries of US citizenship.
Teaching Farewell to Manzanar (Unit)
Jeanne Wakatsuki was seven years old in 1942 when the United States government authorized the forced relocation of all Japanese Americans on the West Coast to internment camps. Teaching Farewell to Manzanar interweaves a literary analysis of Jeanne’s memoir with an exploration of the relevant historical context surrounding her experience.
This guide provides engaging activities, teaching strategies, and recommended media to structure your students' reading of the memoir. Throughout their study, students will return the central questions: How do our confrontations with justice and injustice help to shape our identity? How do those confrontations influence the things we say and do?
Teaching Farewell to Manzanar: A Memoir of Japanese Internment (On-Demand Webinar)
Watch this webinar to explore teaching Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's powerful memoir of her family’s internment at Manzanar Internment Camp in California.
George Takei: Standing Up to Racism Then and Now (On-Demand Webinar)
As part of the Facing History virtual Community Conversation Series, actor and activist George Takei discusses his family’s wrongful incarceration during World War II and how we can all take action against anti-Asian racism on the rise today.
And Then They Came for Us (Documentary)
This history of Japanese American internment during World War II is retold in this documentary from Abby Ginzberg and Ken Schneider. It also follows Japanese American activists today as they speak out against the Muslim registry and travel ban.
Chinese American Experience and Chinese Political History
Becoming American: The Chinese Experience (Documentary) + accompanying study guide
The film Becoming American: The Chinese Experience describes the ways the first arrivals from China in the 1840s, their descendants, and recent immigrants have "become American." It is a story about identity and belonging that will resonate with all Americans. The goal of the study guide that accompanies the film is to explore this universal theme within this particular history. Throughout the guide, students are encouraged to relate the experiences of Chinese Americans in America to their own community’s histories and the history of the nation as a whole.
Teaching Red Scarf Girl (Unit)
Teaching Red Scarf Girl has been developed to help classrooms explore essential themes, including conformity, obedience, prejudice, and justice. This study guide accompanies Red Scarf Girl, Ji-li Jiang’s engaging memoir that provides an insightful window into the first tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution in China. Exploring the choices made by Jiang, her family, and her peers provides an opportunity for students to gain awareness of a significant moment in world history and provides them with an opportunity to reflect on their own role as members of families, schools, neighborhoods and nations.
Native Hawaiians and Indigenous Sovereignty
Indigenous Rights and the Controversy Over Hawaii’s Maunakea Telescope (Teaching Idea)
Since mid-July 2019, Native Hawaiian protesters have been blocking the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Maunakea (also spelled Mauna Kea), the highest mountain in Hawaii. Maunakea has some of the clearest views of the skies in the world, and it also is one of the most sacred places to Native Hawaiians. Many Native Hawaiians view the plan to build this telescope on Maunakea’s peak as the latest affront to their rights over their ancestral lands. The events on Maunakea raise important questions about the US government’s treatment of indigenous peoples and Native Hawaiians’ claims to sovereignty. This Teaching Idea provides historical context for the protests against the Thirty Meter Telescope and helps students explore the reasons why many Native Hawaiians oppose its construction.
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Facing History and Ourselves invites educators to use our Teaching Idea Bearing Witness to Japanese American Incarceration in the classroom.
Pictured above: A portion of the cover of Teaching Farewell to Manzanar (Facing History and Ourselves, 2018).
Topics: Japanese American Incarceration, Asian American and Pacific Islander History"
- History: Asian American history as American history
- Context: The context of violence in Asian American history.
- Today: The current state of the Asian Pacific American community.
- The Future: The intersectional vision of the next generation.
- Policy: Mentoring young organizers and activists through the political process.
- The Passport to Social Studies curriculum is available digitally on WeTeach linked here.
- The K-12 Civics for All curriculum is available digitally on WeTeach linked here.
- Our team has compiled a list of remote learning resources and student opportunities into a regularly updated Google sheet. You can find that list here.