Discover Tennessee History will offer a six-part webinar series for the 2023-2024 school year. Each month one of our partner organizations will offer a one-hour session exploring topics in Tennessee history with related primary sources and educational resources that can be used with your students. Recordings of this series and last year's are available and PD credit can be earned for each session. If you wish to receive PD credit, please complete this survey after each watched session. Certificates are sent out weekly.
To register for the 2023-2024 webinars, please complete this form.
Past webinars are available via the TPS-MTSU YouTube channel.
Session 1 - October 10, 2023
Authentic Assessment and Tennessee History Day
Presenting Organization: Tennessee History Day/Tennessee Historical Society
In this session, participants will discuss authentic assessment through project-based learning, specifically when using the National History Day framework. This session will include: consideration of authentic assessment, introduction to the National History Day framework, analysis of resources, available modifications, large group discussion, and questions. NHD is a year-long curriculum enhancement program that engages learners in grades 6-12 in the process of discovery and interpretation of historical topics.
Session 2 - November 14, 2023
The Indian Removal Act and Treaty of New Echota: Historical Thinking with Primary Sources
Presenting organization: Tennessee State Museum
What are some of the ways you can help your students think like a historian? Historical thinking can use skills from several subject areas such as forming a hypothesis, primary source research, reading critically, and analyzing a narrative. When these skills are focused on historical topics, such as Cherokee removal, students can gain a deeper understanding of the past and an appreciation for history as a living, changing thing.
Session 3 - December 12, 2023
Tennessee’s Constitution: Continuity and Change
Presenting Organization: Tennessee State Library and Archives
Join the Tennessee State Library & Archives as we provide engaging material that will help educators teach the Tennessee Constitution and examine the changes it has experienced throughout the state's history. In this session, teachers will also discover several resources that are made available for the classroom from the Tennessee State Library & Archives.
Session 4 - January 9, 2024
Augmented and Virtual Reality Programs in State Parks
Presenting Organization: Tennessee State Parks
Session 5 - February 13, 2024
Place-based Learning Using Sanborn Maps
Presenting Organization: Teaching with Primary Sources-MTSU
Using place as a primary source is a great strategy for engaging our students and helping them to connect historical events with the world around them. But how can you do this when you cannot physically visit a place? In this session, we will explore how you can use the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps to teach with place. This will include a brief history on these maps, how to access them from the Library of Congress, and how to interpret these maps. We will conclude with an example activity to show you how these maps can be used with students.
Session 6 - March 12, 2024
A Local Look at the the Founding of the Nation
Presenting Organization: East Tennessee Historical Society.
When we think about the nation's founding from the American Revolution to the ratification of the Constitution, we do not often think about the impact of early Tennesseans. In this session, learn about new lesson plans created by a group of 8th grade Knox County Schools teachers who have been immersed in an in-depth study of the founding period and early Tennessee history.