clair057

I discovered early on in my teaching career that I couldn’t get my point across to students without a map.    I had pull-down maps in my classroom, but I rarely used them because they were mounted over my white boards, and they would cover up other information students needed access to    The mounted maps rarely had the information I needed to show students at the time as well, so I would just draw a quick outline of the United States on the board, fill the map in with whatever I was teaching at the time, and then move on. Recently, I ran across a map source I was unaware of – a resource used by historical researchers, city planners, preservationist, genealogists, and even sociologists. I’m speaking of Sanborn Maps – maps that were created from 1867 to 1970 detailing town and building information for approximately 12,000 towns and cities in the United States. The Sanborn Company was founded by Daniel A. Sanborn in 1867.   The original purpose of the maps was fo...

I have several things I want to share this morning, so……….hang on. First is The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era …….it’s published quarterly and the website advises each issue is packed with original essays, including on-line projects and reviews of scholarly books. The focus, of course, is all aspects of U.S. History from 1865-1920. I have a few articles here at History Is Elementary regarding the Gilded Age. You can access all of them here …..Just scroll through to find them all.   Then there’s the website, Mission U.S. This is a site for for older elementary and middle school students and provides an innovative way for sharing social studies content. The first game, “For Crown or Colony?” has already launched. The setting for the game is Boston in 1770 and students actually role-play taking on the identity of a publisher’s apprentice. Students will interact with such real figures in history as Phillis Wheatley and Paul Revere. I've included an image from the game b...