Welcome To The Education Resource!

January 12 - 18, 2012

This Week We Feature a Shortcut to Aligning HistoryLink.org with Washington State History Textbooks

Today HistoryLink.org unveils a new resource for Pacific Northwest History teachers. The Education Team has identified specific themes and topics that are currently being covered in required elementary and middle school Washington State History classes, using the most commonly used textbooks for 2011-2012:  Washington: Our Home (for 4th grade) and Washington: A State of Contrasts (7th and 8th grade). A supplement for each textbook has been designed to align important historical facts, events, themes, or persons addressed in these textbooks with selected complementary HistoryLink.org essays.

HistoryLink.org's Education Team gets it -- most teachers are overscheduled, super-busy, and may not have the time to adequately research materials for every class that they teach during the day. The HistoryLink.org website currently features more than 6,000 essays pertaining to Washington history, and there are many essays, as well as unique stories and reminiscences, that can highlight specific topics and offer different perspectives on local history. The Education Team has developed a time-saving shortcut to finding the most pertinent HistoryLink.org resources in order for this encyclopedia to be an even more valuable and convenient educational tool for Social Studies teachers.

These new textbook supplements follow the textbooks page-by-page and identify essays that can provide relevant details to expand or augment classroom discussion or activities for topics being covered in that section of each chapter. Each textbook document lists the name of appropriate essays, their abstracts and essay numbers, and links to the full essays. Because HistoryLink.org adds new essays each week, the textbook supplements will be updated prior to each semester. These pdf documents will be posted under For Educators in the right-hand navigational column of this page and can easily be downloaded.

Creating these supplements has also assisted HistoryLink.org in identifying general or specific topics for which more essays are needed or would be helpful in the Washington State History classroom. In addition, as a part of this exercise, HistoryLink.org staff assigned appropriate key words to selected essays to match those used in the two textbooks. Please contact education@historylink.org with questions and comments.

Image: Postal workers tossing mail inside the post office, Seattle, June 10, 1955 Courtesy Museum of History and Industry