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Library of Congress
Pros: There's a useful resource for nearly any subject you look up, and some include lesson plans.
Cons: Curation is good but not great. Some students who need extra support might find even the teacher-curated resources on the site challenging.
Bottom Line: The Library of Congress delivers the best of America's past and present, and with teacher support it could be a reliable research resource for students.
To get started, bypass the Library Catalog and even the Digital Collections tab and go straight to the Teachers tab. There, you'll find the Classroom Materials link, which has great resources for getting students oriented, including Primary Sources Sets and the accompanying dense but thorough lesson plans. As an intro for younger students, you may want to focus on using the Primary Sources Analysis Tool: a graphic organizer that will help structure students' thinking. For cross-curricular opportunities, check out the Everyday Mysteries link, where there's a deep dive into science facts, or consider integrating one of the many primary sources of great American authors' work into a history unit.
Once students have a good handle on what the site offers, and have built up the skills necessary for primary source analysis, the Library of Congress can be a go-to bookmark for students to kick off any future research project.
Library of Congress is an online version of the real thing: the world's largest library and all of its resources. There's no login or way to save information; it's just a place to visit and find information in all formats, including text, audio, and video. The homepage features a carousel of collection highlights (some timely) as well as links to the library catalog, digital collections, trending topics, the LOC blog, current exhibitions, and LOC news. Click on any of these, and you'll be taken to engaging content.
The Teachers tab unlocks the real treasure, though: Primary Source Sets, Classroom Materials, Professional Development links (including a blog just for teachers), Family Engagement Resources (perfect to support distance learning and family involvement), Library of Congress: Engage! (multimedia sets organized by themes), and Free to Use and Reuse Sets (thematic, image-rich sets).
Also notable is the GRAB THE MIC: Tell Your Story! weekly video series with Jason Reynolds, who is the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Every week, Reynolds leads his viewers through a Write. Right. Rite. activity, especially suitable for upper elementary and middle school students.
It's the Library of Congress. It's amazing, but allow yourself time to explore the site and pick out some highlights for yourself and your students before introducing it -- even to older students. While it has improved over the years, the site is still not as well curated as some others, and could feel stale or dry to students without appropriate scaffolding. But even so, the vast, digitized collection -- and all of the supporting resources -- are so extraordinary that the sky's the limit. You can see actual manuscripts of unperformed Yiddish plays from the early part of the century, look at a map of the Governorates of Bahrain, watch the National Book Festival webcast, or listen to concerts held at the library. So while the Library of Congress site requires some deft teaching to make sure students see the potential, once they do, they'll have access to resources that can anchor just about any research project or topic.
Learning Rating
Ready, Set, Learn
Although the sheer amount of information on the Library of Congress website can be overwhelming, there are tools to make it easier for users. Showing students how to access the Primary Source Sets, Online Exhibitions, or America's Story (which has much more kid-friendly text), will offset the vastness of the collection and make it manageable. The Library's staff and affiliate groups within the Teaching with Primary Sources program create lesson plans for teachers at every grade level which provide entry into the collection for those who are new to the website. The Library also offers links to digital content from partner institutions around the world and their staff works constantly to update and improve the site as well as digitizing and adding more content. I'm not sure how I would teach social studies without this site.
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