Those of you who were inspired to learn more about the Freedom Rides after last summer's Summer Institute, those who remember the round table with a few of the Freedom Riders a few years back, and those who are interested in this fascinating aspect of the Civil Rights movement will be exited to hear that PBS is releasing a new documentary "Freedom Riders" this spring. The program will air on WILL-TV on May 16th
To celebrate the release of the documentary, WILL is hosting a preview event on Thursday April 28th at 7pm at the NCSA Auditorium. This event will feature a screening of the film, and a panel discussion which will feature many distinguished speakers, including AHTC teacher Chris Adrian!
To learn more about this event, click here.
To learn more about the PBS documentary, click here.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
FREE Civil War Stories Webinar
Hello, AHTC Teachers!
Thinkfinity has joined with the National Museum of American History to produce a 30 minute webinar on the "museum’s interactives, videos, artifacts and lesson plans on the Civil War, available through Thinkfinity and Smithsonian’s History Explorer." Intended for teachers of grades 5-8, this webinar takes place on April 20th and again on the 23rd. Anyone interested in registering should head here:
Thinkfinity Community
Thinkfinity has joined with the National Museum of American History to produce a 30 minute webinar on the "museum’s interactives, videos, artifacts and lesson plans on the Civil War, available through Thinkfinity and Smithsonian’s History Explorer." Intended for teachers of grades 5-8, this webinar takes place on April 20th and again on the 23rd. Anyone interested in registering should head here:
Thinkfinity Community
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Global Studies Forum: Exploring International Humanitarian Law
Hello AHTC teachers,
The American Red Cross will be hosting another workshop in town building off the Humanitarian Law workshop that we hosted last October. This workshop, on April 16th, will look at teaching humanitarian issues in a way to motivate students to think about themselves as part of a global community. If you are interested, the link to register is at the bottom of the page.
Saturday, 16 April 2011
I-Hotel Conference Center at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
This forum will introduce American Red Cross modules used to explore humanitarian issues in the classroom and is applicable to teachers of World Literature, Current Events, World History, and US History.
Educators will examine "Responsibility to Protect" by using real examples from historical and present-day conflicts. Through hands-on exercises, participants will learn to motivate students to think like global citizens. The workshop also includes a keynote speaker and guided review of online resources.
This training is provided free of charge and teachers can earn CDPUs.
Organized by the Center for Global Studies at the University of Illinois with the Central Illinois American Red Cross.
Register today at: http://go.cgs.illinois.edu/GSForum2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Remembering the Triangle Factory Fire
Those of you who attended the Children and Teenagers focus workshop may remember our keynote speaker recommending the Cornell University resources on the Triangle Factory Fire. The 100th anniversary of the tragedy is March 25th, 2011, and the website put together by Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations is a great place to start looking for ideas and resources.
The website is designed specifically to answer the questions of middle and high school students who are learning about the fire for the first time. It is designed to support students who are writing papers on the subject, but the easily accessible primary sources and the neatly packaged information provides excellent support for any students. The website also features a timeline of the fire and the laws that resulted from it, a model of the 9th floor and an explanation of how its features contributed to the fire, oral history transcripts, many primary source document and an excellent bibliography that contains both fiction and non-fiction sources. I strongly encourage any of you who teach about this incident or about labor reform to spend some time exploring this website.
The Cornell resources can be found here : http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/index.html
The website is designed specifically to answer the questions of middle and high school students who are learning about the fire for the first time. It is designed to support students who are writing papers on the subject, but the easily accessible primary sources and the neatly packaged information provides excellent support for any students. The website also features a timeline of the fire and the laws that resulted from it, a model of the 9th floor and an explanation of how its features contributed to the fire, oral history transcripts, many primary source document and an excellent bibliography that contains both fiction and non-fiction sources. I strongly encourage any of you who teach about this incident or about labor reform to spend some time exploring this website.
The Cornell resources can be found here : http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/index.html
Thursday, February 17, 2011
1787: The Musical
The world premiere musical 1787: We the People will be produced for performances in Champaign, IL in July of 2011. Music Director is Aaron Kaplan, Stage Director Leonard Rumery and Producer Jeff Goldberg will be holding open auditions on Saturday, February 19, 2011 at the Virginia Theater in downtown Champaign.
Based on the events of the Constitutional Convention, this musical brings to life both the famous and under-recognized forgers of our Constitution. It highlights the personal convictions of the delegates, and the sacrifices and compromises that went into the crafting of a new government for the newly founded nation. Please visit the web site announcement for additional information and details, entire cast list (40+ players), scene-by-scene synopsis, vocal ranges, and more!
http://www.creativedramaticsworkshop.org/auditions/index.html
Rehearsals for this production will start in early May. For more information about this historical musical, please email: info@creativedramaticsworkshops.org. Consider auditioning, pass this information on to your more theatrically minded friends, and keep this production in mind for some great summer entertainment!
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
City of Urbana and Museum of the Grand Prairie Attempt to Set New Guinness World Record
City of Urbana and Museum of the Grand Prairie to Participate In Attempt to Set New Guinness World Record with Reading of Historic Lincoln Speech
Champaign, IL – On Friday, February 11th at 11 a.m. CST, the City of Urbana and the Museum of the Grand Prairie will hold public speaking engagements in effort to set a new Guinness World Record for most simultaneous readings from the same document. As part of the national kickoff of the Civil War Sesquicentennial, readings of Abraham Lincoln’s 1861 “Farewell Address” from the Great Western Depot in Springfield, Illinois, will be staged nationwide in attempt to beat the record of 223,363 participants.
The City of Urbana will host a reading in the lobby of the City Building located at 400 S. Vine Street and Mayor Laurel Prussing will participate in the event. The lobby will be decorated with a Lincoln/Civil War display including a large photo of Lincoln, a copy of the speech printed in the newspaper of the time and photos of soldiers. Attendees will also get a sneak peak of the Historic Past Casts that the city is producing – an audio visual look back at our Lincoln heritage. The Museum of the Grand Prairie (formerly the Early American Museum), located on Route 47 in Mahomet, will host a reading at the entrance to the “Champaign County’s Lincoln” exhibit within the museum. Following the museum reading there will be a showing of the video “Champaign County During the Civil War.” Both events are free and open to the public.
Lincoln’s “Farewell Address,” delivered when the president-elect departed for Washington, D.C., will be re-enacted on its 150th anniversary at the Great Western Depot in Springfield and a live webcast has been set up to allow anyone in the nation to participate in the reading. Guinness World Records requires that the readings last at least five minutes so participants will read the “Farewell Address” several times to meet the threshold for the record.
Champaign County has the rare opportunity to celebrate its Lincoln heritage while playing part in this nationwide commemoration and event. The Champaign County Convention and Visitors Bureau has been and will continue to work with local organizers to increase the county’s impact in the world record attempt and to gain maximum exposure for our participants. To arrange your own reading or for more information, contact Libby Kacich at (217)351-4133.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Black History Month Resources on the AHTC
February is Black History Month. As you plan your activities, please keep the AHTC website in mind.
In the past year , the AHTC has put on workshops about The Civil Rights Movement, African-American Education, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. There are website lists online that contain dozens of websites with information, student activities and lesson plans. There are also website lists from our Middle Passage workshop in 2008, the Brown vs the Board of Education workshop in 2006, Resistance to Slavery in 2007 as well as many more!
If you're looking for something more specific than the web resources, head over to the lesson plans section. Our teachers have put together some really amazing lesson plans over the years, and many of them have been posted the website. The lesson plans are sorted by topic and many have the suggested grade level under the title. There is also a separate page highlighting the elementary level lesson plans.
For example, take a look at Kyle Sondgeroth's lesson "What was Martin Luther King Jr doing in Memphis on April 4, 1968" intended for grades 3-5 for a great introductory lesson to Martin Luther King Js's life and work. Todd Searing's Fellowship lesson plan on the Crosswhite Fugitive Slave case is intended to introduce middle schoolers the the effects of the Fugitive Slave Act passed in 1793. Mary Ann Jusko's lesson on The Barbershop Project on the University of Illinois Campus helps her upper elementary kids tie the civil rights movement to local issues. In order to teach his students in grades 7-12 that Jim Crow and segregation was not just a problem in the South, Amos Lee has an excellent lesson plan entitled "Discrimination against African Americans in Illinois." These are only a few examples of the great lesson plans on African-American history that are available on the website.
If you already have an activity in mind, but you are looking for primary sources to ground your activities in local history, head over to the Local Primary Sources section of the website. This section contains scans of local documents. The sources are organized into spreadsheet by topic, and the spreadsheets can be sorted by name or date. The sources about World Wars I and II are especially rich.
In the past year , the AHTC has put on workshops about The Civil Rights Movement, African-American Education, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. There are website lists online that contain dozens of websites with information, student activities and lesson plans. There are also website lists from our Middle Passage workshop in 2008, the Brown vs the Board of Education workshop in 2006, Resistance to Slavery in 2007 as well as many more!
If you're looking for something more specific than the web resources, head over to the lesson plans section. Our teachers have put together some really amazing lesson plans over the years, and many of them have been posted the website. The lesson plans are sorted by topic and many have the suggested grade level under the title. There is also a separate page highlighting the elementary level lesson plans.
For example, take a look at Kyle Sondgeroth's lesson "What was Martin Luther King Jr doing in Memphis on April 4, 1968" intended for grades 3-5 for a great introductory lesson to Martin Luther King Js's life and work. Todd Searing's Fellowship lesson plan on the Crosswhite Fugitive Slave case is intended to introduce middle schoolers the the effects of the Fugitive Slave Act passed in 1793. Mary Ann Jusko's lesson on The Barbershop Project on the University of Illinois Campus helps her upper elementary kids tie the civil rights movement to local issues. In order to teach his students in grades 7-12 that Jim Crow and segregation was not just a problem in the South, Amos Lee has an excellent lesson plan entitled "Discrimination against African Americans in Illinois." These are only a few examples of the great lesson plans on African-American history that are available on the website.
If you already have an activity in mind, but you are looking for primary sources to ground your activities in local history, head over to the Local Primary Sources section of the website. This section contains scans of local documents. The sources are organized into spreadsheet by topic, and the spreadsheets can be sorted by name or date. The sources about World Wars I and II are especially rich.
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