history

Educators: Here’s a Fun Way to Encourage Critical Thinking and Research Skills!

Posted on 9/28/15

By Traci J. Cothran

Looking for a great way to engage students, where they can research a topic of their choice and present their findings in a format (including digital!) that fits their skillset?  The National History Day competition does just that, by providing students with a broad annual theme within which they’ll select their own subject; encouraging them to research, use, and document primary sources related to their chosen subject; then presenting their findings by creating an exhibit, paper, performance, website or documentary.

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Back to School Britannica Savings

Save 30% on nonfiction eBooks for your pre-k, elementary, middle, and high school learners. Britannica Digital Learning offers online PreK-16 resources and instructional solutions that align to Common Core and state curriculum standards and are built upon Britannica’s reputation for trustworthy, up-to-date information, innovative development, and state-of-the-art delivery.

GVRL supports differentiated learning for learners of all ages with cover-to-cover PDF format delivers a colorful, visual experience to engage younger readers. Plus, ReadSpeaker text-to-speech technology is ideal for struggling readers, ELL/ESL students.

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Tracing Native American Genealogy in Federal Records of  Five Civilized Tribes  

Native American Genealogy By Rachal Mills Lennon

Excerpted from the book, Tracing Ancestors Among the Five Civilized Tribes

The history and culture of the American South are unique, owing chiefly to the intermingling of the races and the diverse ethnic

backgrounds of countless families. Modern Southerners proudly boast traditions–real or not–of Native American ancestry. Odds are, these traditions lead directly back to the so-called Five Civilized Tribes. The Chickasaw, Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole Indians dominated a broad swath of territory from North Carolina to Mississippi before their forced removal westward. Long hailed for their adaptability to “white” ways (hence the designation “civilized”), these nations have gained near honorific status among Southeastern genealogists.

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Historical Fiction Recommendations from Joyce Saricks: New and Popular in Large Print

Forget the “Columbus sailed the ocean blue” mnemonic devices and dusty history books.  If you want to experience history with dimension and humanity, turn to historical fiction.

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Celebrating Many Women with Many Resources

By Robert Lisiecki

March marks the time for us to celebrate Women’s History Month. During this month, we’ll remember and celebrate the various women throughout history who have made lasting impacts on the world as we know it today. And boy, there are a lot of women to celebrate.

The women we recognize come from different eras and backgrounds—each presenting her own unique story. When thinking about the uniqueness that each story presents, I began thinking about some of our resources. Each resource is crafted and created to provide a unique functionality and utility to tell its own story.

Today, I’d like to reflect on five different women from five different resources, highlighting some high-level information. Some women are more well-known while others, to me at least, are less. I hope this post can serve as an example on how different resources can impact research. Let’s go.

Five Impactful Women from Five Different Resources

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Take a Deeper Dive into Langston Hughes’ Impact with LRC and LCO

Literature Resource Center (LRC) is a massive resource that includes reviews, news, topic and work overviews, biographies, multimedia, and literature criticism. While it’s a great addition to any library, and many libraries already enjoy the treasures in its content, it only contains approximately 30 percent of the most popular content in the Literature Criticism series. That means, while you’re getting a ton of great content, you’re missing the other 70 percent of Literature Criticism content.

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Archives Unbound and African-American History and Life

The past few years have seen many anniversaries related to African American history and the Civil Rights Movement – 2013, the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream Speech,” stamped the Civil Rights Movement firmly in the minds of Americans and the worldwide community; 2014, the anniversary of the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction; and, this year is the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which provided additional safeguards for African Americans to exercise their right to the ballot box.

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New from Gale! Indigenous Peoples: North America

More than 70 tribes represented in over 1.2 million pages!

Enabling exploration of the political, social, and cultural history of Native Peoples from the seventeenth century well into the twentieth century, Indigenous Peoples: North America illustrates the fabric of North American history with unprecedented depth and breadth. The value that Gale brings with the inclusion of so many diverse manuscript and book collections is absolutely unparalleled.

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