The Power of Primary Sources, Student Created Annotated Resource Sets, and Adobe Spark

Teachers spend so much time creating lessons and resources for students.  What if students created their own resources? What if we put research and inquiry in the hands of our students and let them design a case statement for how they make a claim, provide evidence, and reason through their conclusions?

We believe that putting the power of student created Annotated Resource Sets to work in your classroom helps your students think critically and own their learning.  They understand where the resources come from, critically evaluate if they can be trusted, and learn how to curate them in a way that makes creating a story about the research completed easy. 

We are proud to be part of the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources teacher team and this Primary Sources Webinar demonstrates how to utilize this powerful ARS tool and put it in the hands of students. Through the presentation below explore how you can: 

• Create an Annotated Resource Set (ARS) for research and inquiry
• Scaffold an ARS for remote learning using a powerful template created by a middle school teacher-leader instructional team at Century Middle School in the Adams 12 School District, and the Teaching with Primary Sources Western Region Team from the Library of Congress.
• Explore ways to differentiate your teaching for special populations (ELL, Special ED, and GT)   using a scaffolded graphic organizer with visual and audio supports to provide multiple ways to learn. We will even provide you with a reference document to align it with ELL best practices and new state ELL PD requirements in Colorado.
• Create a variety of outcomes including presentations, writing, and interactive social media using one of our favorites- Adobe Spark.

So join us! Here's the recording of the webinar (It will be up 4/23), our presentation is below, and here is a great template to get you started along with a week long scaffold for daily work. It's so easy to upload information from an ARS set into an Adobe Spark creation and then share it with an authentic audience.  Talk out engaging your students! #LetsDoThis

A big thanks to Alicia Ross, Keith Jones, Ian Mallary, from the geeks for the the collaboration and remote learning scaffold we have been using, and to all of our community partners from the region who have created wonderful resources for use by teachers and students!