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Teacher Professional Development
Reckoning, Inc. is pleased to offer professional development sessions to support the enactment of our inquiry collection. This collection was developed by Drs. Kathy Swan and Carly Muetterties with a team of expert social studies teachers. These inquiry units were designed using Reckoning, Inc.’s rich source collections and in alignment with Kentucky’s social studies standards.
For more information or to schedule a Professional Development Workshop, please contact us at education@reckoninginc.org
Teaching With Inquiry
Teaching with inquiry is an effective and engaging way for students to explore enduring questions of the past and present.
Reckoning’s inquiry materials use the Inquiry Design Model (IDM). The IDM is a distinctive approach to creating instructional materials. It presents a one-page blueprint of the inquiry, from which teachers can create lessons for their classroom.
Go to the Inquiry collection
Reckoning, Inc.'s Inquiry Sources
Kentucky U.S. Colored Troops
In this collection of sources and inquiry-based learning materials, students grapple with the complexities woven into this part of state history, as well as the intricacies of source work. The robust collection of source material for each soldier provides clues about the past, but only if the reader is equipped with the questions and skills to uncover what they have to reveal.
Oral Histories of Formerly Enslaved Kentuckians
These resources and inquiry-based learning materials allow students to learn about the history of slavery through a collection of oral histories with formerly enslaved people. Using the Works Progress Administrations’ interviews, this source collection includes a searchable database with over 100 oral histories organized by themes/concepts and topics. Each source text page includes a description, excerpt, informational matrix, and links to access the full documents.
Go to the Kentucky Oral History Curricula
Learning Exercise
What hidden stories do primary sources tell?
In this lesson, students analyze a primary source by generating questions that surface clues about the experiences of people in the past. Specifically, this task allows students to reflect upon the ways in which education was transformed after the Civil War—specifically through the expansion of education to the Black community. The primary source is a Freedmen’s Bureau record that documents information about the students and teachers of a Kentucky school. The second source is an excerpt from a biography about the report’s recordkeeper, written for Reckoning, Inc.
*Created for Reckoning, Inc.