This collection is a digital companion to Using Primary Sources for Teaching, Learning, and Understanding, a Cultivating Learning professional development session with Anne Helmreich of the Archives of American Art.

The session explores how to use primary sources to engage your students in journeys of discovery, critical thinking, and subject-based active learning. She shares approaches, resources, and learning activities developed through the Archives’ Teaching with Primary Sources program and grounds the presentation in the national Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy. Anne demonstrates how to elicit transformational experiences while advancing students’ skills in close reading, close listening, and assessing evidence. You will leave with a better understanding of how to access and use the resources of the Archives of American Art, how primary source literacy is applicable to a wide range of subjects, and why engaging students with primary sources in the age of artificial intelligence is so important. This session is designed for teachers of middle-school, high-school, and post-secondary students.

This interactive webinar is part of “Cultivating Learning,” a professional development webinar series focusing on techniques to use digital museum resources for learning. Check out “Cultivating Learning” and other Smithsonian Learning Lab webinars.