Explorer students have just completed a unit on reading and interpreting primary documents.  In order to make this a more meaningful lessons, the students were given access to US Census records, birth/death records, military draft registration (WWI and WWII), Civil War Pension records and immigration records to explore their own family trees.  This was accomplished through a free trial session of Ancestry.Com.  Students involved their families by discussing known relatives/ancestors at home and creating a basic family tree as a starting point for their research.  They were shown how to cross reference facts for accuracy.  Students created their own family tree using the Inspiration software with their information.  Finally, students researched events both locally and worldly that occurred during an ancestor’s life time and added it to the Social Studies Timeline of Events displayed in our hallway.