Category Archives: NARA

Teaching the Constitution with Political Cartoons

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September 13, 2017, 7-8 p.m. ET

refer to captionAnyone Home? Cartoon by Clifford Berryman, 2/24/1920

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Join the Center for Legislative Archives to discover how to use political cartoons to teach about the United States Constitution. This webinar will draw from the collection of Clifford K. Berryman cartoons from the U.S. Senate Collection. Berryman’s career as a political cartoonist in Washington, DC, spanned five decades and his cartoons are a rich resource for history and civics lessons.

During this interactive webinar, you will practice techniques for helping students evaluate visual content and explore ideas for how to use political cartoons to illustrate the “Big Ideas” of the Constitution, such as separation of powers and representative democracy. You will also explore additional resources from the National Archives for integrating political cartoons in the classroom, such as DocsTeach.org. This webinar is designed for middle school and high school educators. Register for the webinar here.

 

Information about other upcoming webinars offered by our friends at the National Archives is available here! Check it out today.


Records of Change: NARA Civil Rights Movement Webinar is Now Available!

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So, good news everyone! The recent webinar we co-hosted with the National Archives is now available. You can access the webinar at this link. In this well-attended discussion, Kathleen Munn of NARA discusses primary source tools and resources that can be used to approach the Civil Rights within classroom discussion.

All of the resources used and referenced in the presentation are available here: recordsofchangewebinarresources-1 . Please note that the PDF contains embedded hyperlinks, so you will need to be sure to download it!

We do hope you enjoy the webinar, and we are grateful for our partners at the National Archives. They always do such great work!

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New Upcoming NARA Webinar!

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A few months ago, we were very happy to host for our friends at the National Archives a webinar around the cartoons of Clifford Berryman. Happily, we are excited to host the next one as well!

On Wednesday, February 08, 2017, the National Archives will be providing a webinar that is wonderfully timely and involves civil rights. Please check out the description below, and be sure to register!

Records of Change: Teaching the Civil Rights Movement with Primary Sources from the National Archives
Wednesday, February 8, 2017 at 4:30 PM ET

Bring the civil rights movement into your classroom with primary sources from the the National Archives! During this interactive webinar, examine the federal government’s role in advancing the civil rights movement. Explore how the Archives’ holdings reveal the voices of those who advocated for and those who resisted change in this transformative era in American history. Practice techniques for analyzing primary sources and learn about additional resources from the National Archives, including lesson plans from the Center for Legislative Archives.
This webinar will last approximately one hour. Registration required.


National Archives Berryman Webinar Coming Soon!

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Friends in Social Studies, we are excited to announce that the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship has partnered with the National Archives Center for Legislative Archives to host a webinar around the legendary Clifford Berryman political cartoons! This webinar will be led by specialists from the National Archives, and is based in part on workshops that NARA’s fantastic Dr. Charles Flanagan has done in the past. Check out the description below, and please be sure to register! You will be sent a link to access the webinar prior to November 2.

Politics in Perspective: Teaching Elections Using the Cartoons of Clifford K. Berryman
Wednesday, November 2, 2016 at 4:30 p.m.ET

In this interactive webinar, discover how political cartoons can engage students in today’s elections by introducing the process and issues at a safe historical distance. Practice techniques for analyzing political cartoons in the classroom and learn about additional resources from the Center for Legislative Archives, part of the National Archives and Records Administration.
This webinar will last approximately one hour. Registration required.

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We hope to ‘see’ you there! Questions on the webinar can be directed to me or to Ms. Val McVey, and we will be happy to answer them!


Resources for Constitution Day and Freedom Week

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Here in Florida, we are required by state statute to teach about the important documents of this country during Freedom Week at the end of September. This is in addition to what is expected for Constitution Day. Over the past year, the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship, in collaboration with teachers and leaders from some counties and with the National Archives, has been working on a new set of lessons and materials that include primary sources. We wrote about this effort here. We are happy to announce that as of this week, we have a number of new lessons that target grades 2-12 and are intended to help teach our state benchmarks that can be connected to Freedom Week and Constitution Day!   You do, of course, need to register on our main site in order to access these new free resources. You can visit each lesson directly from the links below. Each one is intended to give students some hands on experience with primary sources and everything you need for instruction is provided for you (though you do need to use your own technology!).

 

Thinking Through Timelines: Inching Toward Independence

A Short Activity for Second Grade

Question: Why do we celebrate Independence Day?

Thinking Through Timelines: Creating the Constitution

A Short Activity for Third Grade

Question: Why do we celebrate Constitution Day?

Guidance on Government: State Edition

A Short Activity for Fourth Grade

Question: How does the Florida Constitution organize the government?

Guidance on Government: Federal Edition

A Short Activity for Fifth Grade

Question: How does the U.S. Constitution organize the government?

Decoding the Declaration, Celebrate Freedom Week Part I

A Short Activity for High School and Middle School

Question: What did declaring independence say about the importance of rights?

Intentions for Independence, Celebrate Freedom Week Part II

A Short Activity for High School and Middle School

Question: Were the colonists justified in declaring independence?

Rhetoric of Revolution, Celebrate Freedom Week Part III

A Short Activity for High School and Middle School

Question: How does language intensify the message of the Declaration of Independence?

Forward to the Future, Celebrate Freedom Week Part IV

A Short Activity for High School and Middle School

Question: How are the ideas from the Declaration of Independence connected to our government today?

In addition to our original lessons, We have also created brand new lessons that feature the work of legendary cartoonist Clifford Berryman! These are intended to be used at the 6-12 level. 

Anyone Home?

A Short Activity for High School and Middle School

Question: How does this political cartoon illustrate the lawmaking process?

Picturing Separation of Powers

A Short Activity for High School and Middle School

Question: How do the political cartoons relate to the concept of separation of powers?

Suiting Up

A Short Activity for High School and Middle School

Question: How does this political cartoon illustrate the concept of checks and balances?


New Resource for History and Government!

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Students Investigating Primary Sources, or SIPS, is a brand new free resource from the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship. This new resource is a K-12 collection of brief introductory mini-lessons centered on particular topics and primary sources. These materials were created in collaboration with the National Archives, Pinellas County Public Schools, and Brevard Public Schools. We will be adding additional grade level materials as they are developed. Please note that the page has issues loading on Internet Explorer! 

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We are very excited to share this with folks, and we hope that you find this useful. Currently, we have resources for high school US History and US Government, but as stated above, we will be adding additional K-12 resources as they are developed, and you are welcome to adapt these current mini-lessons for use in your state. Most excitingly, as the logos show, these are created in direct collaboration with the National Archives, drawing on their resources in conjunction with some of their excellent personnel. As always, however, we wanted to make sure that teachers have a voice, so we brought teachers and district leaders in from Brevard and Pinellas Counties. The resources are available as a PDF and in Word; simply click on ‘Download Original’ to access the Word version if you wish to modify it!

I hope that you find these useful. Please keep an eye out for additional resources as we move forward. We are grateful for our friends at the National Archives and our county partners for their work with the FJCC team! Oh, and our own Val McVey will be presenting on SIPS at NCSS in December! You can access the free SIPS resources on our website.

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