“Mapping Boundaries: Writing to Read Primary Sources in Middle School Classrooms.”

The Bard MAT/IWT project makes use of the vast archival resources of the Library of Congress in professional development workshops that model how to apply writing-to-read and writing-to-learn strategies to primary sources in ELA, Social Studies, and STEM classrooms. In a workshop series for teachers, teachers-in-training, and middle school and high school students, focusing on an interdisciplinary collection of sources (historical surveys, maps, and representations of the American landscape), the project’s primary goal is to offer writing-based strategies to help students delve into texts that might feel daunting and inaccessible and to give them tools to slow down their reading and uncover surprising connections and meaning. Some workshops will be held in person on Bard College’s campus in New York’s Hudson Valley; some will be held online.

The focus of the project is to revise and expand their current program of TPS-centered training workshops and pre-service education courses and more fully circulate the materials created in these workshops for educators. IWT’s current LOC-focused workshops will be revised specifically for middle school classrooms, with skills-building exercises in reading and writing critically, and the resources made widely available to middle school educators. Modeling classroom activities that stimulate middle school students’ engagement with language, ideas, and archival sources, these workshops will be held on the Bard campus, online, and in middle schools partnered with Bard MAT. Bard will use its established networks, promotional forums, and targeted advertising to attract middle school teachers as workshop participants. Newly-developed middle school lesson plans and LOC source sets will be posted on a new section of the IWT website, as will videos from 6-9th grade teachers demonstrating writing-based teaching with primary sources inspired by the Bard workshops they’ve attended. In required laboratory classes, MAT will train education degree candidates in archival literacy instruction for middle school ELA and Social Studies classes. MAT history students will revise the chapter of a textbook, supplemented by a curated set of primary sources and archival materials. These primary source sets will be integral to Capstone Projects by MAT degree candidates, and archived in the Bard Library Digital Commons as searchable Open Educational Resources and cross-posted to the TPS Consortium Created Materials site.