I recently posted the following in our Facebook Trainers & Consultants page:

“Last week I taught a one-hour class on newspaper research at our local family history center. I was filling in for an instructor who couldn’t make it. I had a few days to prepare, but rather than put together a slide deck I decided to teach the class directly from The Family History Guide. (I had done this type of thing previously with other topics, but not with newspaper research.)

The class went very well, I thought. We covered the basics, had a few brief activities, one of which was using the Chronicling America site, and the attendees came away with some good research resources to use. Total prep time for the class was less than two hours from scratch. That was very helpful, considering my very busy schedule lately.

One of the attendees told me that she had also been asked to fill in for an instructor cancellation, but she had only 5 minutes notice. The one-hour class was on adding sources for records in FamilySearch, and she taught it using – you guessed it – The Family History Guide.”

I am including the link below to the Sample Outline I made for the class. You can modify it as needed. (I did not introduce any videos or Vault material in the class, which are definitely alternatives you could use.) Be sure to read and follow the conditions on the Terms of Use page and the guidelines on the FAQs page as you work with Sample Outlines.

Sample Newspaper Class

Next Steps: More Sample Outlines

Currently we have quite a few Instructor Guides available on the site, but going forward the plan is to move instead to flexible Sample Outlines. The Outlines are easier to customize and provide more guidance for instructors who may be less experienced in teaching the topic. These would be integrated into the Course Catalog and possibly made available as links inside the Goals themselves.