Robert Morris, Boston, MA
|
Borden Residence,Fall River
|
Artifacts
|
Lydia Maria Child, Wayland, MA
|
Introduction
Every community has people well informed about its history who are willing to share their stories with students. Since it is difficult to get field trip monies, second best is to invite the local history expert into the classroom. In this lesson, the students consider "neighborhood" in terms of the larger historical community. The teacher contacts the historian and lays the groundwork for the lesson, indicating that students will participate in a question and answer format. The historian is asked to bring in several artifacts (reproductions) of past material cultures to pass around and pictures/slides showing areas of the town/city during different periods of time. An historian can even come dressed as an earlier citizen and encourage role play. This can lead to additional contacts with community cultural resources and hopefully a field trip to the local historical society or museum.
The purpose of this lesson is to assist students in thinking like a historian. In this lesson, students will:
-
To encourage critical thinking questions about the neighborhood/community’s past;
-
To be able to listen carefully to historian’s answers and describe for others;
-
To learn how artifacts tell stories about everyday life in the past.
This lesson is geared toward students in grades 3-5.
History and Social Sciences
-
Gr 3, CS #3 3. Observe and describe local or regional historic artifacts and sites and generate questions about their function, construction, and significance. (H)
-
Gr 3, LS #11 3.11 Identify when the students' own town or city was founded, and describe the different groups of people who have settled in the community since its founding. (H, G)
-
Gr 3, LS #8 3.8 On a map of Massachusetts, locate the class's home town or city and its local geographic features and landmarks. (G)
-
Gr 3, LS #9 3.9 Identify historic buildings, monuments, or sites in the area and explain their purpose and significance. (H, C)
-
Gr 3, LS #12 3.12 Explain how objects or artifacts of everyday life in the past tell us how ordinary people lived and how everyday life has changed. Draw on the services of the local historical society and local museums as needed. (H, G, E)
-
Gr 4 CS #7: Visit museum or listen to a museum educator in school (about China, but transferable experience)
-
Gr 5, CS #2: interpret timelines of events.
Language Arts
-
Topic 2: Questioning, Listening, and Contributing
Students will pose questions, listen to the ideas of others, and contribute their own information or ideas in group discussions or interviews in order to acquire new knowledge.
-
Grades 3-4: 2.2. Contribute knowledge to class discussion in order to develop ideas for a class project and generate interview questions to be used as part of the project.
-
Students are given a few minutes to write down a question about their neighborhood in the past they would like to know about. Examples might include: What would it have been like to live in my neighborhood 100 years ago? What kind of buildings would have existed then? What kind of jobs? Where did the people come from? Which parts of town were settled first?
-
The historian is introduced and tells what it means to be an historian.
-
Each student is asked to read his/her question which the guest historian answers. Some questions may be repetitious but an imaginative historian will be able to add new stories and cover different aspects of community history. Where possible he/she will refer to the photos and other images to connect to a question.
-
The historian passes out sample artifacts and students guess their purpose.
-
After the Q & A is finished, there is time left for the students to write out their interpretation of the historian’s answer to their question. They also describe one artifact and its use in history.
Rubric (spreadsheet or PDF format) |
Adapting for other grade levels |
Younger students would enjoy a visit from a costumed interpreter from the historical society or museum who might tell stories about what it was like growing up in a different time.
Older students are ready for a serious study of artifacts from the local historical society. They can also do research on other community resources such as community census records from over 100 years to compare what ethnic groups made up the population.
Introduce the Historical Atlas of Massachusetts on a computer display screen. This rich resource on the people and places of Massachusetts can provide an exciting lesson about who came to Massachusetts and where they settled. Through the use of Settlement and population maps, local comparisons can be made.
|
