Internet Field Trip: Families: The Roots of History
Often we think that great history is in the halls of Congress, in the White House, or on battlefields. Actually it may be sitting just across the table or coming to visit on Sunday afternoons. In honor of Grandparents' Day, learn how to explore family history, using the best of the Internet to enrich your study and see what others have done.
The National Genealogical Society offers an online primer on researching your family tree. You can also find tips from genealogists and a state-by-state list of resources on genealogical research at the "Ancestors" site, which grew out of a TV series about family history. Joanne Todd Rabun completed a history of her grandmother, Winnie Lackore, using excellent oral history questions, which your students can draw on.
Oral histories as well as the photographs and papers handed down through families — some available on the Internet — can be a prism through which to examine the key events of history. You can understand the hardship endured by Japanese Americans sent to detention camps during World War II when you read the interview of Harry Ueno. Or, look at the letters of the Slagg family to trace one family's experience during the Civil War. The letters are part of the Revealing Family Ancestry project. Jon Berndt, the project creator, was inspired in part by his own grandfather to trace his family generation to generation, from their life in England and emigration to the United States during the mid-19th century into the 20th century. As he discovered, the great sweep of events often is best revealed close to home.
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My Name Is America: The Journal of Scott Pendleton Collins
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My Name Is America: The Journal of Scott Pendleton Collins
Seventeen-year-old Scott Pendleton Collins expects each day to be his last. His moving journal from the battlefield of Normandy immerses the sights, sounds, and smells of war -- where a young man almost forgets what he's fighting for. Penned by a Newbery Award-winning author, this book depicts a boy coming-of-age in one of the world's most tumultuous times.
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Hardcover Book | Grades 4-8
Grades 4-8 $8.76
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Eleanor's Story
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Eleanor's Story
When the author was nine, her parents elected to return to their native Germany, where her father had been offered an attractive job. Though it was 1939 and Hitler had already invaded Czechoslovakia, her family saw only opportunity in their decision. While they were crossing the Atlantic, war was declared and their emigration became irrevocable. Garner was not to see America again until she was 16. The family members spent much of the war in Berlin, and suffered hardships and privations, and li
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Paperback Book | Grades 6-9
Grades 6-9 $4.95
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