Impact to My Classroom

# of Students Impacted: 412

This book, Integrating Primary and Secondary Sources Into Teaching, has been so influential for our civics department. Our students take a state end of course exam worth 30% of their final grade. Our students are 12 and 13 years old. This puts a lot of pressure on them and us as the teachers. We felt as a team that we needed to make sure our students have every advantage possible going into this exam including improving our instruction using primary sources more effectively and consistently. We decided we needed to focus more on primary sources in our content area in every unit.

By using this book, we have successfully incorporated the use of primary sources into every unit. We are using at least one political cartoon, quote, or the Constitution itself in every unit. Two of us even went to Orlando on a Saturday to attend a seminar hosted by the author and the Library of Congress. We have committed to using more primary sources in our instruction and this book has helped greatly. We are eager to see our state scores this spring and see if this has empowered our students to be more successful.