Naomi Herman-Aplet, a School of Information work-study student in the Manuscripts Division, won the best graduate student poster at the Midwest Archives Conference (MAC) last weekend.
She says, “My MAC poster was entitled, “Constructing K-12 Learning Activities in Archives,” and focused on the Family Day I planned for the Proclaiming Emancipation Exhibit.”
“The core of my presentation focused on the new National Common Core Standards, which call for the use of primary documents in the classroom. The new standards emphasize skill-building over fact learning, so students will have the opportunity to interpret documents and make new arguments, in effect to learn history by learning how to be a historian. As a former social studies teacher, it’s something I’m very excited about.”
“In Proclaiming Emancipation, I created five learning stations based around the five stages of historical inquiry: connecting to background knowledge, seeking new information, interpreting documents, evaluating sources, and creating new content. Students (roughly age 5-12) showed a tremendous amount of interest and enthusiasm for the activities.”