The story of the first Thanksgiving has resonated with Americans since the holiday was first celebrated. But how much do you — and your students — really know about the Pilgrims who were present, or about the Wampanoag Indians? And what was the food really like?

The guide Teaching About Thanksgiving, by historian Kathy Walbert, compiles a wide variety of sources to ensure that your conversations about this American holiday are historically accurate, culturally sensitive, and situated in a broader historical context.

Find detailed descriptions of 17th-century clothing worn by Pilgrims and Wampanoag (hint: feather headdresses don’t appear at all), learn concrete strategies for identifying and avoiding biases in curriculum materials, and get recipes to make your classroom Thanksgiving feast both tasty and historically accurate.

Other resources offer ways to connect American Thanksgiving with similar celebrations from other world cultures — whether they’re harvest festivals, special holidays set aside to give thanks for prosperity, or holidays that center on feasting and family togetherness.

No matter what grade level you teach, the Teaching About Thanksgiving guide is a rich resource for making the holiday relevant, historically correct, and fun.

The North Carolina Civic Education Consortium, a program of the School of Government at UNC-Chapel Hill, works with schools, governments, and community organizations to prepare North Carolina’s young people to be active, responsible citizens. Each month the Consortium delivers an email newsletter with news and opportunities for civic engagement.

The November edition of the NC CEC newsletter provides links to civic education lesson plans for both middle and high school classrooms.

The newsletter also highlights current professional development opportunities for educators including workshops seminars, and awards in civic education. There is also an article from Education Week titled “Scholars Put Civics in Same Category as Literacy, Math: Research papers lay out obstacles, opportunities” by Jaclyn Zubrzycki.

To read the newsletter, visit the Consortium’s website. To receive the newsletter via email, contact Anita Buie.

Our sincerest thanks go out to everyone who made the 2011 LEARN NC fall conference such a successful event: The conference presenters who generously shared their time and expertise, the educators who logged in and contributed to lively discussions, and the tech support people who ensured that everything ran smoothly.

All participants who completed the conference survey will be entered into a drawing for a free professional development course. We’ll notify the winner within the next week.

Also within the week, all of the recorded conference sessions will be made available on the LEARN NC website. We’ll publicize the URL for the archived sessions via this blog and our newsletter.

Thanks again for your participation and support. We hope you’ll join us for future events!

We’re tying up the loose ends for the LEARN NC annual fall conference, and we hope you’re planning on joining us! The conference will take place entirely online, and you’ll be able to listen to the presenters, pose questions, and interact with other participants from any internet-connected computer. And, as always, the conference is entirely free!

This year’s impressive roster of presenters will cover a wide variety of topics relevant to educators at all levels and in all subject areas.

For more details and to access the conference URL, please see the conference website. We look forward to seeing you there!

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve updated the curriculum guide “Teaching About North Carolina American Indians.” The guide, which was made possible by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, now includes a chapter about each of the eight state-recognized Indian tribes in North Carolina.

The curriculum guide consists of culturally appropriate, tribally-approved information on the Coharie Indian Tribe, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Haliwa-Saponi Indian Tribe, Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, Meherrin Indian Tribe, Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, Sappony, and Waccamaw Siouan Tribe.

Resources include best practices for teaching about American Indians, suggestions for curriculum integration, historic and contemporary visual resources, and lesson plans.

Learn more at the LEARN NC fall conference

In conjunction with the publication of this unprecedented collection of instructional materials, we’ll host a related session at the LEARN NC 2011 Fall Interactive Conference on November 7.

At 1:40 pm, Randi R. Byrd and Claire Morrow will discuss the curriculum guide on teaching about American Indians in North Carolina. Randi Byrd (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians) is the Program Assistant at UNC’s American Indian Center and Claire Morrow (Meherrin Tribe) is a Curriculum Project Advisory Committee Member and Educator. Conference participants will have an opportunity to ask questions and share insights during a question-and-answer period.

For more details on this session, see the conference agenda page.

The Kenan Fellows Program will accept applications for fellowships December 1, 2011 through January 31, 2012. Classroom teachers selected as Kenan Fellows represent the most outstanding and committed educators across North Carolina. As Fellows, they engage in partnerships with distinguished scientists, university faculty and professional educators to develop innovative curricula for use in classrooms throughout our state.

K-12 public school teachers from all disciplines are encouraged to apply. School administrators, community leaders, parents of students and former Kenan Fellows may nominate candidates, although a nomination is not required in order to apply. Application and nomination links will become available December 1. For more information about the program, visit the Kenan Fellows Program website.

Public school teachers from all school districts in North Carolina are eligible to apply.

Kenan Fellows at the LEARN NC Fall Interactive Conference

You can also learn more about the Kenan Fellows Program by joining us for the LEARN NC 2011 Fall Interactive Conference. The conference will include a presentation by Matt Misuraca, Kenan Fellows Program Regional Coordinator and Kenan Fellow Ronda Bullock. Ms. Bullock will discuss how she’s grown as a professional as a result of her participation in the program.

For more details on this 3:00 session, see the conference agenda page.

What were Union and Confederate soldiers writing about 150 years ago? Thanks to a project of Wilson Library’s Special Collections at UNC, students and teachers have access to a remarkable subset of the historical record from the Civil War.

The library is observing the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War with a unique blog, Civil War Day by Day. The blog shares one primary source from the war each day, exactly 150 years after the source was created. Documents include letters, newspapers, diaries and more, and each post consists of the scanned source as well as a transcription.

The first post was published on April 12, and daily posts will continue for four years, paralleling the four years of the Civil War. Opportunities abound for curious students to interact with historical primary sources and to develop a sense of the time span over which the war unfolded.

If you have questions about Civil War Day by Day, please contact Wilson Library.

A Paideia Seminar can be one of the most effective and engaging ways to help students develop critical thinking skills. If you’re not sure exactly what a Paideia Seminar is or how to lead one, we hope you’ll join us for Dr. Terry Robert’s session at the LEARN NC 2011 Interactive Fall Conference.

The description of Dr. Roberts’s session, “Teaching Critical Thinking Via Seminar Dialogue,” follows:

One of the most important 21st-century survival skills is critical thinking, and yet we pay almost no attention to teaching thinking in our classrooms. Under the pressure of the new Common Core state standards, this is about to change as teachers will be asked to teach sophisticated reading, writing, speaking, listening — and thinking — skills across the curriculum. Join Terry Roberts as he discusses how to use the Paideia seminar to teach these skills regardless of subject area.

To register for the conference, visit the conference registration page.

Paideia teacher training manual

For more on the Paideia approach, you can also take a look at “The Paideia Seminar: Active Thinking Through Dialogue,” the National Paideia Center’s teacher training manual, which is published on the LEARN NC website. The manual includes an explanation of what Paideia is, how it works, and why it’s relevant; a thorough discussion of the Paideia Seminar; a step-by-step guide to planning a Seminar; lists of responsibilities for facilitators and participants; planning tools, including questions and rubrics; assessment tools; and sample texts and plans.

Bill McDiarmid, Dean of the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Education, has written an article about the school’s efforts to support educators working with Latino students and their families. You can find the article, “Gearing Up to Help Latino Students Succeed,” on the School of Education website.

Begin earning renewal credit with eLearning for Educators professional development courses! There are many courses to choose from and there is still time to enroll in courses starting in November. The following are selected examples of course offerings:

Accessibility, Usability and Visual Design – Carolina Online Teacher Program

This course will introduce you to basic web design, accessibility, and usability principles. By applying these simple principles, you’ll make your online course easier for students to navigate and access.

Collaboration and Teaching in a Virtual World – Carolina Online Teacher Program

This course is designed for educators who want to familiarize themselves with multi-user virtual environments, or MUVE’s. In this course we’ll explore one such “world” known as Second Life. The focus of this course will be the use of virtual worlds as a tool to enhance collaboration and their potential as an educational tool. Participants in this course will explore some of the innovative ways Second Life is being used in education while learning the basics of life in a virtual world.

Facilitating Online Collaboration — Carolina Online Teacher Program

This course examines online communication, guidelines for creating discussion questions, techniques for promoting critical thinking, and group interaction and collaboration.

Reading First: Supporting Early Reading Instruction with Technology

Participants in this workshop will discover the many ways in which new technologies can support classroom reading instruction in kindergarten through third grade. As they examine existing research on literacy technologies, participants will also review or familiarize themselves with the five areas of instruction discussed in the National Reading Panel’s 2000 report on early reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension.