What do you do when you find an amazing letter or article that is too long or too dense for your students? Learn how to modify and excerpt documents, allowing students to access the important ideas within them without losing the voice or intention of the original composition. See examples of modified documents and discuss strategies for introducing them to your students.

Session Recording

Session Materials and Handouts

• PowerPoint presentation
• Original document and longer excerpt of Ray Frank’s 1890 Yom Kippur Sermon
• A modified version of Ray Frank’s speech for younger readers
• Chat Log with participant questions, discussions, and time stamps

Featured Lesson Plan and Resources

• Go & Learn lessons about Ray Frank’s sermon for youth, family, and adult education
• Ray Frank exhibit in JWA's Women of Valor collection

Additional Resources about Using Primary Sources

• JWA has compiled a list of tips and tools for working with primary sources and tackling text
• Read Sam Wineburg and Daisy Martin's article Tampering with History: Adapting Primary Sources For Struggling Readers

Apply Your Learning

The following Go & Learn guides include three lesson plans each—one for youth, one for family education, and one for adult learning groups. Each lesson plan uses a text that you can adapt and excerpt for your students’ specific needs.

• “We Have Found You Wanting:” Labor Activism and Communal Responsibility
• A Young American Jew in Israel, 1947-1948
• The American Jewess on Liberation and Freedom