GAPS Libraries Resource Update

The American Exchange Project (AEP) offers a free domestic youth exchange program for graduating seniors. Students experience life in a different part of America through week-long exchanges, staying with host families and participating in cultural immersion, community events, and service projects. Oregon currently has three partner schools, with expansion underway. This is an excellent opportunity to help students build bridges across geographic and cultural differences while developing civic engagement skills. Learn more about the American Exchange Project.

🎉Wow! Great job Sunrise Elementary and everyone else logging reading minutes this week! Great progress toward our districtwide goal -- keep reading, everyone!

A sixth-grade language arts teacher in California is using AI to enhance reading comprehension among her students. Using Adobe Express, students generate images based on prompts related to what they've read, which is especially helpful for English language learners and students of varying reading levels. Read more from EdWeek.

Media Literacy Now, the Yarg Foundation, and 24th Century Education are partnering to establish the Oregon Media Literacy Coalition. The Coalition will bring together national and Oregon-based organizations who support or advocate for youth media literacy and digital literacy education in K-16 schools.

This will create a space where organizations can coordinate and collaborate around resource development, public engagement, and advocacy, amplifying existing efforts and creating new opportunities for shared work across the state. You can learn more about the Coalition here.

This finding is worth sharing with students: ChatGPT "gets citations wrong or invents them outright more than half the time."

An Australian study of mental health literature reviews found that "ChatGPT (GPT-4o) fabricated roughly one in five academic citations, with more than half of all citations (56%) being either fake or containing errors.... The fabricated citations weren’t obviously fake. When GPT-4o provided the supposed DOI (a unique link known as a “digital object identifier”) for a fabricated citation (33 of 35 fabricated sources included DOIs), 64% linked to actual published papers on completely unrelated topics. Someone clicking the link would land on a real article, making the fabrication harder to spot without careful verification." Read more from StudyFinds.

Teaching Through Rather than About: Analyzing Black Histories and Geographies with Primary Sources is a free resource developed through C-GEO in collaboration with Oregon educators and local and national history organizations. This open-access book includes 11 secondary lesson chapters that model teaching through Black histories rather than about Black histories, utilizing a Black Historical Consciousness framework. Each chapter features:

• Complete lesson plans with essential and supporting questions
• Primary source analysis activities
• Performance tasks
• Adaptation and extension suggestions

The lessons emphasize centering Black voices and experiences as active agents in history rather than treating Black history as a separate topic. Access the free book

In this 20-minute activity, students explore the meaning of community and the nature of politically diverse communities. Communities are typically distinguished from groups by the fact that they share a common interest, background, or purpose that gives them a sense of cohesion. And yet, differences of opinion and political perspective are a natural element of most communities. Students will reflect on what challenges they think may arise in a community that includes people who have different political perspectives, as well as what opportunities may exist in such a context. They will consider what it takes to build and sustain a healthy community that sees value in each member.

Use this unit to teach your students about the fundamentals of democracy, its multifaceted nature, how we can assess its strength, and the importance of civic engagement to its maintenance. The lessons in this unit explore a wide range of themes related to democracy, including free and fair elections, the rule of law, the role of a free press, pluralism, civic engagement, and more.

This inquiry resource provides evidence to help teachers and students dispel misconceptions and misunderstandings of the “First Thanksgiving.” For a more complete history, examine details, circumstances, choices, and events through sources that include Wampanoag perspectives, which have been largely absent from this national story.

Step into a time-traveling podcast and character chat where students meet AI thinkers from past and future like Ada Lovelace and Sam Altman to debate how innovation meets responsibility and explore timeless questions of AI ethics.

Explore More Hour of AI Activities

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GAPS staff and students have access to the following Spanish-language research resources:

• Informe Académico - Una coleccion de revistas hispanicas con textos completos.
• aulaPlaneta Banco de contenidos

Libro.fm offers FREE audiobooks to educators, and this month's selections are here.

ELEMENTARY RESOURCES | SECONDARY RESOURCES