Learning Lab Training Collection on the Theme "The Search for an American Identity"

This collection is designed to help educators bridge the classroom experience to a museum visit. It is intended to demonstrate various ways to use the Learning Lab and its tools, while offering specific, replicable, pre-engagement activities that can simply be copied to a new collection and used to help students engage with museum resources. 

Included here: 

• Section 1: a set of flashcards, a template document so that teachers can create and print their own specific sets, and strategies for their use in their classrooms. 
• Section 2: a variety of student activities and resources to explore artist Luis Cruz Azaceta's "Shifting States: Iraq," a metaphorical representation of the unrest taking place in Iraq, and more broadly, an exploration of the human condition during times of crisis.  This section includes an image of the work from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, an explanatory video with curator E. Carmen Ramos, two  Thinking Routines - "See, Think, Wonder" and "The 3 Y's" - from Harvard's Project Zero Visible Thinking and Global Thinking materials, and  an array of prompts and Learning Lab tools to help students think critically and globally.  
• Section 3: a short assignment to get participants started using the Learning Lab.
• Section 4: spacer tile template to serve as chapter headings in longer collections.

This collection is adapted from a teaching collection on the same theme (Luis Cruz Azaceta's "Shifting States: Iraq" ( http://learninglab.si.edu/q/ll...), that includes extension activities. It was created for the 2019 cohort of the Smithsonian-Montgomery College Faculty Fellowship Program on the theme, "The Search for American Identity: Building a Nation Together," - the subject of the Montgomery College - Smithsonian 2019 Fellowship program. 

Keywords: #MCteach