Discovering the Person and not the Persona in George Washington through Primary Sources

This past fall I was fortunate to be selected as a Missouri educator who was able to attend a Weekend with George Washington hosted at Mount Vernon. It was an incredible opportunity to rediscover George Washington and the amazing impact he had on not only the early country, but on us today. Several discussions made an impact on me and helped me start to see George Washington more as a person and less as a list of character traits that one might list off for the Father of our Country. I wanted to try to bring some of that to my fifth grade students during their visits to the library as they learned about the formation of the US in the classroom. I also wanted to see how they could use primary sources to help them come to their own discoveries about George Washington.

Finding a starting point was especially challenging. The fifth grade curriculum was a moving target as I looked for resources while students moved forward in their studies. I also needed to select primary sources that were both approachable as well as engaging. Students had to have enough background knowledge to interact with the resource and it had to accomplish that task of understanding the man who was George Washington.

After much searching, I selected the moment George Washington was appointed to lead the Continental Army. In multiple accounts, it states that George Washington, after being selected, refuses a salary and asks for only his expenses to be paid. His gesture at this moment seemed to fit the noble character of George Washington, sacrificing for the betterment of the country. It is also a small moment that is told in multiple books in our library so I consider it part of the lore of George Washington.

But there had to be more to the story. I searched for primary sources that would help me understand this moment and understand the man. What I found surprised me, made me wonder, and expanded my idea of who George Washington was. I couldn't wait to share them with my students to see how they would interpret them.

The lesson started with a blank SmartBoard. I knew students had been talking about the American Revolution. Part of that involved George Washington's role in the war. I asked students to think about George Washington, not only during the Revolutionary War, but throughout his life. "You know a bit about George Washington. I know you've talked about him in class. If you had to use one word or even a short phrase, how would you describe George Washington?"

"Brave" "Courageous" "Strong" "Modest" "Honest" "Leader" "Kind" "Hardworking"

Next, students, in pairs, analyzed the Journals of the Continental Congress for either June 15th, June 16th, or June 17th, 1775 where Washington is appointed to lead the army. It is reported that Washington accepts and states "I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with," and asks to only be paid for his expenses. On June 17th, the Congress officially appoints Washington. This reinforces what can be found in many other books, but there was more information. Prior to Washington accepting the position, the Congress allowed $500 per month for pay and expenses for Washington. Here we have another piece of information. After sharing their analysis with the rest of the class, I again asked students to share a word or phrase that could describe Washington related to this event.

"Noble" "Put others first" "Humble" "Modest" "Trusted" "Patriot" "Commander in Chief"
All of these continue to fit with the persona of George Washington.

On their next visit to the library, we reviewed what students had discovered about George Washington. Then we looked at several pages of his Revolutionary War Expense Account as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army that was submitted to the Continental Board of Treasury. This is all in his own handwriting and is difficult to understand. To assist students in the analysis of the pages, they paired the page with a corresponding page from a secondary source, a 1917 book by John C. Fitzpatrick where he explains some of Washington's expense account in annotations.

As students analyzed the expense account, many had a noticeable reaction to what they read. I encouraged them to write these reactions down as reflections or questions on the Primary Source Analysis Sheet.

"Why would you need to buy curtains during a war?" "So unnecessary. 217 bottles of wine." "What are 'loaves of sugar'?" "He spent a lot of money." "Why did he get slippers? He's in war right now!"

There was a lot of conversation as students were investing themselves in trying to understand George Washington. Many students looked for justification. Students talked about how life was different and the possibility that drinking wine was more common. One student spoke about how Washington was leading his army for years and would need things other than military supplies. Another pointed out an amount of money that was given to a soldier's wife and reported in the expense account. Students were finding that George Washington was not one dimensional and were trying to make sense of that discovery.

After students finished their analysis, I shared a final secondary source from the National Archives showing the amount that George Washington incurred during the American Revolution, $160, 074. To more fully understand the number, I shared with students that there were large expenses for spies as well as supplies and materials for other soldiers, something not likely taken into account by the Continental Congress initially. Many students recalled the initial $500 monthly allocation suggested by the Continental Congress and that it was far exceeded by the amount George Washington spent over approximately 8 years.

I believe there was much more we could have uncovered about Washington with this activity, but our time was limited. I asked students, one final time, to share a word that could describe George Washington based on what we had analyzed that day.

"Smart" "Wise" Clever" "Not Wise" "Rich"

Given what students had analyzed, I think all of these traits are fair. More importantly, I think they are not all traits that typically fall under the persona of George Washington. Students had begun to look beyond that persona to understand and describe the person. In the meantime, students had investigated and analyzed papers dealing with the Continental Congress and the Revolutionary War. Overall, I think this first investigation into George Washington was a success and I look forward to students building on it in future activities.

Taking Chistopher Columbus' Journal One Step Further

Years ago, when I was still in the classroom, we used translations of Christopher Columbus' journal in class. I read it to students or they read it on their own. They took on the role of a shipmate and wrote their own journal entry. It all felt "okay" but was missing something. I think a recent activity with two fifth grade classrooms got closer to meaningful learning.

During collaboration, two of our fifth grade teachers were studying the time period encompassing European exploration. They wanted to push their own teaching forward and had collected many resources on the typical explorers that students study. Since I have been doing several activities with primary sources, they asked if I would do an analysis of Columbus' journal entries with the students. They handed me a packet of journal entries. I agreed that we could do something with the entries.

 I knew we were under time limitations, less than two hours. They were coming to the library during one of their social studies periods. If I needed more time, I could take their weekly library visit as well. That time limitation always shapes our encounters with primary sources. Here, I knew I had to put specific journal entries in front of them. I chose three that I thought revealed Columbus' intentions better than the others. In one entry from October 12, 1492, he writes about meeting natives and taking possession of the island. In another from that same day, he writes about his desire to convert the natives to his religion. In the final shared entry from October 13, 1492, Columbus writes about his search for gold.

I had three entries that highlighted intentions that would impact Columbus' and other European explorer's encounters with Americans, but I was left with a feeling of "so what?" Students could analyze these writings and come to some understandings about Columbus and possibly those that he encountered, but what would allow them to solidify their thinking in action? This is another understanding that I've come to when using primary sources with students. While analyzing using the LOC Primary Source Analysis Tool is a powerful activity, there is a piece at the bottom that reads "Further Investigation". It challenges us to take that next step with students and not to let the analysis be the end of the learning.

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3a10998/

Again, I turned to primary sources. I thought about a piece of artwork depicting Columbus' landing that was used in a summer institute at the LOC that I attended in 2013. It was created in 1893, hundreds of years after Columbus' landing. We originally used it in a discussion where we began to form our definition of a primary source.

The interesting thing about the piece is that it seems to be influenced by the time period of when it was created and its creator. (I encourage you to read Rebecca Newland's ideas on sourcing and contextualizing.) Critiquing a interpretation of Columbus' landing based on his own words would provide an opportunity for students to show an understanding of the journal entries and apply that understanding to their critique.

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3g04806/

I chose three different artist renditions of Columbus' landing. I felt they had three distinct perspectives and would allow the students to focus on different perspectives of the journal entries. My resources were ready.

http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/pga.01974/

Students, overall, did an incredible job on the analysis of the primary sources. I like to keep my directions simple, telling students to identify anything they think is important, interesting, or unusual. There is also a warning of not thinking everything is important, interesting, and unusual. Many reflections and questions spoke to the perspective of the natives, letting me know that they were identifying Columbus' perspective, but not solely identifying with that perspective. With some delays, we completed analyses of two of the journal entries in our first sitting. As students left, one said, "Thanks, that was fun," while I overheard another telling a fellow classmate, "I did the third analysis already even though we weren't supposed to." These were two small signs that we were on the right track.

During the students' next visit, we jumped back into the activity with them analyzing the third journal entry. After they finished this, I paired them up and gave them their final challenge. I told them I had three depictions of Columbus' first landing in the new world. They were all made after this journey and I wanted them to choose one that, based on what they knew, Columbus would say was the most accurate.

Students were up for the challenge and the conversations were interesting to overhear. Students argued over elements in each picture, not only identifying connections between the images and the journal entries, but giving them weight about what was most important to see in the interpretation. One image showed men in armor which was in the journal, but is also showed natives there when they shouldn't be (according to this student's interpretation). Faith was written about, but not crosses which were shown in two of the images. One image truly had natives without clothing but was missing other elements a student felt was important. Ideas were swirling, not only in heads, but also in the air.

I stopped the conversation. I wanted students to make an individual decision and defend it. I asked all students to make a "claim" and "evidence" statement. I see these used more in science, but thought that this would work well here, not only because they were familiar with the format, but because it
would allow them some structure to their choice. I gave them some guidance on what they may want to write about, not only what they felt made their choice the best according to Columbus, but also what made the other options not as good. With less than ten minutes, they quickly shared their thoughts.

While I am still reading the student responses, I am seeing much of the opinion that I heard in the discussion and evidence that they took their analysis of the journal entries and were able to apply it to critique the artistic depictions.

Heliocentric, Geocentric, and Primary Sources

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to use one of Library of Congress' new eBooks with students. I posted some pictures on Twitter, but wanted to share a little more about the process.

I had been looking for some integration of research skills for our one fifth grade class that is currently studying space and motion. While students had mostly been studying observational aspects to space such as moon phases, their classroom teacher shared that they had been introduced to the terms 'heliocentric' and 'geocentric'.

The new Understanding the Cosmos eBook primary source set gave a great selection of primary sources that could help support that topic. Originally, I thought that I would encourage students to explore the differences within several geocentric models, but upon asking the students a few questions, it became clear that they were still hazy on what these models were and how to define them. Many students thought that it might be the solar system drawn from a different point of view, not necessarily different models of the solar system. Even though this helps explain why these models are different, they hadn't grasped the inherent differences in the models themselves. I hoped that analyzing pieces from this primary source set would help them come to an understanding of the difference.

To prepare, I first downloaded the eBook on a class set of iPads through the iBooks store. There is no charge for the eBooks. (The eBooks are currently only available on iPads, but a recent Tweet implies they are looking at other options.) This only took about 20 minutes for almost 30 iPads. I didn't have the books sync because I didn't know how the sync feature would impact a class of students using the books at once. After downloading, I found the primary sources that had heliocentric and geocentric models of the solar system. (If you're wondering, they are images 5, 6, 8, 11, 12, and 15.) Finally, I had copies of LOC's Primary Source Analysis Tool for the students.

Each student was given a primary source to analyze with no two students analyzing the same source at a table. I projected the eBook on the SmartBoard and showed students how to access the eBook, their primary source, and how to draw on the primary source, modeling some reasons they may annotate on the image. I told students we would work on defining our words, but for now, they were just to analyze their image, taking notes on the paper provided. (I did not use the included analysis scribing in the eBook because I wanted to give students a chance to have all of their writing in front of them at once and because I wanted to see their writing.)

I found that students, for the most part, had a great deal of focus on their analysis. They loved to pinch and zoom feature and used it to see details that couldn't be seen otherwise. They used the draw feature purposefully, circling things that they found interesting, unusual, or important. They used their finger to write "Why?" about some of the writings around the models. While there was sharing with others, it was purposeful. They were engaged. I did have to direct the students to write out reflections and questions on their analysis sheet. They wanted to continue to interact with the primary source and each other. While that engagement is incredible, writing out observations, reflections, and questions on the Primary Source Analysis Tool, in my opinion, helps to focus their attention and allow later conversations with each other to be elevated because they have concrete evidence of their own thinking.

After students analyzed their primary source, I asked them to confer with others at their table. There were two groups that all of these models could be grouped in, heliocentric and geocentric. I suggested they use their analysis and focus on the differences and similarities to try to help them define the words that they could not correctly define earlier.

Students talked with each other about what they noticed in their primary source. Some pointed out that the moon is drawn as a planet. Others noticed that not all of the planets were shown or that the scale was off. They explored the language and how they translated some words to figure out where a planet or the sun was in the model. What I did not expect was for them to talk as much about the language. Sol, Terra, Earthe, Sonne, Solis, Geo- and Helio- were all words that students focused on, talked about, and highlighted.

When the class shared out at the end of the session, all of the groups but one had a correct definition of 'heliocentric' and 'geocentric'. What was interesting to me was that the one group that did not have a correct definition for the terms still used a very logical explanation for their thinking. They believed that one word had to do with models that had gods or other spirits living on the planets of the solar system and the other word defined those models where the planets were barren. As they shared their focus on the images they analyzed, their thinking made great sense. That being said, by the time two groups after them had shared, they asked to change their idea based on what others had said.

This embodies why I appreciate the use of primary sources in learning. Analyzing primary sources as part of an activity encourage the struggle that leads to learning. Students had to observe, interpret, and apply their understanding of these primary sources to create a definition for a pair of words. They brought in their own understanding of the solar system and of language to help construct that understanding. They worked individually and then collaborated together to come to agreed upon meanings that weren't confirmed by the teacher until all had an opportunity to make their own learning journey. Overall, I would consider this a good first experience with using primary sources to explore this topic and a promising first use of Library of Congress' new eBooks.