This year-long program integrates content, sources, and pedagogy, and models an inquiry approach to the use of primary sources in the classroom as a way to connect local stories to national history. Flow of History has support for this program through a collaboration with Historical Forensics, a Teaching with Primary Sources program funded by the Library of Congress. One of the resources we will use this year is Historical Forensics’ board game, “In Their Shoes,” which allows students to step into the shoes of a nineteenth-century New Englander.

The content focuses on village life in Vermont during the 19th century. The first half of the year explores nineteenth-century daily life, work, and trade through primary sources found in Connecticut River Valley communities. In the spring sessions center around the diary of an 8-year-old girl, written in 1911. Topics will include technological innovations, schooling, the expansion of the world through trains and automobiles, and child labor. We will also read Counting on Grace which we are counting on you finding in your local library!


Each monthly session will combine background reading from Jan Albers’ Hands on the Land (provided) with picture books and primary sources geared toward the elementary student. Reading strategies and the inquiry process will be modeled throughout the year, and we will consider how these tools and approaches connect with Common Core standards. The year will culminate with a student work session when all teachers will share a primary source activity and examples of student work and assessment from their classrooms.

Fall: Villages as Places to Live, Work, and Trade

Session 1: What is History and How Do We Find it on the Land?

October 8

Reading Assignment: Hands on the Land: Introduction
Picture Book: Virginia Lee Burton, The Little House


Session 2: Where Did People Live?
October 29
Reading: Hands on the Land: Claiming the Land, pp. 65 – 125
Primary Sources: Landscape Paintings & Maps

Session 3: Daily Life on the Farm and in the Homestead
November 12
Reading: Hands on the Land: The Classic Agrarian Landscape, pp. 126 – 151
Picture Books: Charlie Needs a Cloak, A Symphony for the Sheep
Primary Sources: Landscape Paintings & Artifacts

Session 4: Work and Trade in a Village
December 10
Reading: Hands on the Land: The Classic Agrarian Landscape, pp. 151 – 195
Picture Books: Ox-Cart Man, Going to Town
Primary Sources: Landscape Painting, Maps, Walton’s VT Register, Newspapers

Spring: Through the Eyes of a Child: Vermont Life after the Civil War


Session 5: Alice Bushnell’s Diary
January 28
Reading: Hands on the Land: Creating Vermont’s Yankee Kingdom, pp. 196 – 224
Picture Book: Lucy’s Christmas
Primary Sources: Alice Bushnell’s Diary, Sears Catalog, Artifacts

Session 6: Alice Bushnell’s Expanding World
February 25
Reading: Hands on the Land: Creating Vermont’s Yankee Kingdom, pp. 225 – 267
Picture Book: Henry Ford and the Model T
Primary Sources: Maps, Photographs

Session 7: Other Children’s Lives—Child Labor in Vermont
March 11
Reading: Counting on Grace
Primary Sources: Lewis Hine Photographs

Session 8: Other Children’s Lives–Child Labor in Vermont
April 8
Reading: Counting on Grace
Primary Sources: Lewis Hine Photographs, Census Materials

Session 9: Student Work Session
May 13

LOCATION:
Norwich Public Library, Norwich, VT

DATES:
Tuesdays, 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.

2013: 10/8, 10/29, 11/12, 12/10

2014: 1/28, 2/25, 3/11, 4/8, 5/13


REGISTRATION: Free, books and digitized primary sources provided

To Register, go to: http://www.learningcollaborative.org/course_registration
Under course name, type: Flow of History, Village Life
Under location, enter Norwich Public LIbrary
TAKE NOTE: Book groups are limited to 12 participants, first come/first served.

Registration Deadline: September 4, 2013