Hello colleagues, A great way to bring complex texts into a social studies lesson is through primary documents such as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, The Bill of Rights, and excerpts from slave narratives and various other essential writers and thinkers. Discovery Education recently posted an article by Joe Sangillo which highlights, "Five Strategies for Using Primary Source Documents in the Social Studies Classroom."
Prior to the availability of so many resources on the internet, teachers mostly relied on textbooks when teaching --for example-- slave history and the Reconstruction period in the US. Rarely, if ever, did textbooks include the voices of the African Americans who were a quintessential part of this history. As Joe Sangillo points out, using primary documents lets the "people in history speak for themselves!" Today teachers can more easily access primary documents to include these essential voices. One source for slave narratives, for instance, can be found at this Library of Congress link.
I wonder if adult education teachers are accessing materials from this site or other similar ones. If you are using these or other primary documents in your social studies lessons, please tell us what you are using and how students are responding.
Cheers, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, College and Career Standards CoP