Man’s shirt collar inscribed with letter from James Graves Jones to Mr. and Mrs. Wayland Edgar Jones, 1906. Artifacts Fine Arts Collection; California Historical Society. We’ve included this source in one of our Teaching California lessons, called “Inquiry Sets,” for the second grade.
On March 15th, California Historical Society (CHS) Reference Librarian Frances Kaplan and I traveled to the annual California Council for the Social Studies (CCSS) conference to promote CHS’s new curriculum project, Teaching California. Each year, the CCSS conference aims to deliver professional development for educators focused on new scholarship, research-based strategies, and networking — all designed to improve the teaching and learning of history/social studies across the state. Held this year in San Jose, CCSS 2019 was filled to the brim with presentations, workshops, and exhibitors, and was well-attended by educators from across the state.
Frances and I presented at two separate sessions (one aimed at the elementary school-level and one at the high school-level), each together with members of our Teaching California curriculum partners at the California History-Social Science Project. In these sessions, titled “Teaching CA: Bringing Archives into the Classroom,” we introduced teachers and administrators to our project, a joint collaboration between archivists, librarians, educators, and subject specialists.
Our goal is to empower teachers to engage in inquiry instruction that is aligned to California’s History-Social Science Framework. In both sessions, teachers practiced the historical investigation process and, excitingly, previewed some of the inquiry-based lessons (and primary sources!) that we are creating for the project. Here are more scenes from our sessions:
To view the slides for one of our CCSS sessions on Teaching California, visit this link.
This post comes from Kerri Young, Teaching California Project Manager. You can reach out to her at kyoung@calhist.org