The 2011 competition theme for National History Day is Debate and Diplomacy in History: Successes, Failures, Consequences. There is a page for Tennessee libraries, also. I’m fortunate to have an excellent collection of titles from Enslow Publications on controversial issues including Issues in Focus, Headline Court Cases, Famous Court Cases that Became Movies, Landmark Supreme Court Cases, The Constitution of the United States, and Debating Supreme Court Cases.
There are databases full of materials for my students. We co-taught lessons on primary sources last year, so this is an exciting project to anticipate.
Teaching with Primary Sources Across Tennessee is a program of the Library of Congress and is administered by the Center for Historic Preservation at Middle Tennessee State University. Several of the faculty members involved came to our district inservice and shared excellent packets of teaching materials on primary and secondary sources.
Librarians with the Tennessee State Library & Archives program have been sending out brochures featuring their primary source material available for study. The Educational Outreach program is “focused specifically on linking educators with primary sources for educational use in classrooms. Students can also easily access the digitized primary sources on their website. ”
ABC-CLIO is promoting trial access to databases of primary sources.
I have “click through and think through” pages on the school website for students to jumpstart their brains into considering the question “Why should we use primary sources when researching US History?”
What sources will you be using to support National History Day projects? I cannot wait to begin. Please share.