Objectives
Students will:
- Construct their own understanding of primary source materials.
- Enrich their understanding of U.S. history.
- Develop a research vocabulary.
- Develop research skills using offline and online collections.
- Become critically aware of the complexities of archival collections.
- Create a poster which organizes primary source materials to tell a story.
Procedure
This learning experience will combine three small units together to provide students with an understanding of primary source collections:
-
Unit I - Personal: What is a Collection?
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Unit II - Local: How are Collections Organized?
- Unit III - National: Searching an Online Collection
Description
This lesson from the Library of Congress has been designed to provide elementary children with experiences which enable them to begin understanding primary sources. Students move from personal artifacts to the vast American Memory collections and learn how archival collections are organized, how to interpret artifacts and documents, how to use primary sources to tell a real story and how to do online research.
Duration
12-15 teaching periods of approximately one hour each.
Unit I - Personal: What is a Collection?
Lesson 1 - Artifact Attributes
Have the children bring in personal mementos from a previous school
year. At the Dalton School, one of the first activities of the year for
fourth graders is the creation of a Museum of the Old Country. The "old
country" is their K-3 Lower School several blocks away. Each child
brings in a memento from a previous school year and writes a caption about
it. These mementos and captions are displayed in a museum (hallway, classroom,
etc.). Mementos include photographs, stories, awards, and sculptures.
Use these artifacts and documents in a lesson on artifact attributes.
- Ask the children to identify attributes that all the items share such
as color, shape, size and format (written document, photograph, etc.).
You can also refer to articles of clothing or shoes the children are wearing.
- As children identify artifact attributes that are shared by the items,
write them on a blackboard or large piece of paper.
- Relate the categories students identified to the way information is
organized in a library. Ask about the attributes that books have. Which
of these attributes is used when placing materials on the library shelf?
Lesson 2 - Primary Sources
- Have students sit in a line or circle.
- Write a one sentence message on a piece of paper Give it to a student
and ask the class to play the "telephone game". The first student
reads the message and returns it to the teacher. Then the student quietly
tells another child what the message says. This student in turn passes
the message along until everyone has heard the message. Ask the last student
to stand and recite the message out loud.
- Write the original message and the final version of the message on
the blackboard for comparison.
- Inform students that the original message is a "primary source"
and the final version is a "secondary source".
Use the telephone game to suggest ways in which the retelling of stories
over time can change our understanding of history. Primary sources can
be much more reliable than secondary sources for studying past events.
Ask students how they think information might change over time? Ask students
to give examples of things that are primary sources. Why do people save
primary sources for personal use? Why do we save primary sources as a society?
It may be helpful to record student comments on a blackboard or large piece
of paper. Guide the discussion keeping in mind the overarching objectives
of the unit.
Assessment
Students can be assessed based upon their level of engagement in group
discussions.
Unit II - Local: How are Collections Organized?
Lesson 3 - Archives and Appraisal
By working with materials which are no longer personal, but are still
locally relevant, students will begin to understand what archives are
and the role
of the archivist. The Dalton School has extensive archives which are
used
in this lesson and the next. Other possible sources for archives might
be local historical societies, archives, and museums.
Part 1:
-
Ask if any students have ever heard of appraisal. If they have not, explain
that appraisal often means determining how much money something is worth.
-
Ask students why people might want to know how much something is worth.
Refer back to the children's personal mementos. Do they have monetary value?
Do they have other kinds of value?
-
Explain that, as primary sources, the mementos tell us about something
that has happened in the past. This is called historical value. In archives,
primary sources are appraised for historical value. Archivists cannot save
everything because there is just too much stuff in the world. They only
save the things that they think will have some kind of historical value.
-
Ask students to come up with a list of things an archivist might think
about when deciding what to save and what to throw away. This can be done
as a group activity.
Part 2:
-
Photocopy 15-20 documents of different types (correspondence, diary entry,
photograph, etc.) from a manuscript collection in your local archives.
-
Divide the class into groups of three students and give each group a set
of documents.
-
Explain that [name of collection] has just passed away and his/her family
donated an important collection of documents to the local archives. Unfortunately,
there is not enough room in the archives' storage area to keep the entire
collection.
-
Students are told that each group will have to get rid of approximately
half of the documents in their collection. They will have to appraise the
documents for historical value and decide which items are worth keeping.
-
Hand out an Appraisal Worksheet to each
group with two categories, "Reasons to Keep" and "Reasons Not to Keep."
-
Ask each group to review the documents one at a time and make a pile of
the items they think should be kept and the ones they think should be thrown
away. Remind the children that historians will only be able to use the
items they decide to keep when they write about this person in the future.
-
One student in each group acts as the "recorder" and writes down important
reasons why they decided to keep items and reasons why they decided not
to keep other items.
-
Collect the items which were kept by each group and save them for the next
lesson. Colored folders can be used to help students (and the teacher)
keep documents organized.
Part 3:
-
Bring the students together as a class and have each group read a few of
the items from their Appraisal Worksheet.
-
Ask students if the documents kept by each group would tell a different
story about the person's life. Would some of the groups be able to tell
a more accurate story? Why? Could you tell who created the records in your
collection? When were they created?
-
Ask students how they would compare working with primary sources and reading
books or magazines. What was surprising about the documents? What seemed
familiar?
Lesson 4 - Arrangement and Description
-
Hand out the saved items from the last unit to each group of children.
Ask them to look at the documents and write down some of the attributes
the items share.
-
After about ten minutes reconvene class and compile a master list of the
attributes students identified. This list should include the fact that
somebody created each item, they were created at a specific time, and each
item is "about" something or has a subject.
-
Explain that primary sources can be organized in many different ways. In
archives this is called "arrangement and description." Why do they need
to be organized at all?
-
Explain to students that they can organize their collections by using some
of the attributes that have been identified as a guide. Ask each group
to put their collection in the order that will be most useful for a historian
who will be using the collection in the future. Each group will have to
discuss this before organizing the documents.
-
When they are done organizing, have the students report to the class on
how they arranged their collection and why. Foster discussion about the
various strategies. Explain that there is no right way. Archivists arrange
collections in many different ways depending on what the documents are
about and how they might be used in the future.
-
Ask students if they think someone could find things easily in their collection.
Do you think an index or table of contents for the collection would help
people find things? Since you can only put the items in order one way at
a time archivists use something like a table of contents called a "finding
aid" to help people do research with primary sources. Computers have also
made it easier to find things when collections are available on computer.
Most primary source collections are only on paper, but some have been computerized.
In the next few lessons we will be working with archival collections on
the computer.
Assessment
Students can be assessed based upon their
completion of the Appraisal Worksheet, their collaborative efforts, and their
ability to justify appraisal decisions.
Unit III - National: Searching an Online Collection
Note: These lessons were designed for use after students
had already been immersed in the topic of Immigration for some time. At
the Dalton School fourth graders study Immigration for the fall semester
and this portion of History Firsthand was taught in December and January.
The children by then had a very solid foundation in historic and contemporary
immigration issues.
Lesson 5 - Introduction to Online Searching and the American
Memory Collection: Early Motion Pictures, 1897-1916
The American Memory Collection is introduced via the collection entitled,
Early Motion Pictures, 1897-1916. The teacher demonstrates a search using
the keyword
immigration. Three titles should come up in the search
(preload these three films beforehand since it is too time consuming to
download them during class). The class views them and discusses why or
why not they would be useful in learning more about immigration. Two films
are about Ellis Island and provide information on the topic of immigration.
The third film shows an arrest in San Francisco's Chinatown. It appears
to have little which will advance knowledge about immigration. The teacher
should lead the discussion and record the children's statements on chart
paper or on the computer.
- Place the children in groups of three or four to a computer.
- Give some background on the WPA Life History Collection. The children should
know something about why the collection was made, how it was made and when
it was made. They should be prepared to encounter difficult vocabulary,
dialect and a range of beliefs, some of which are racist. There should
be ample discussion of this before the children work with the Collection.
It is assumed that the teacher will have thoroughly familiarized himself
or herself with the documents before the children use them.
- Depending on students' prior experience and grade level it might be worthwhile
to demonstrate how to read one of the WPA documents before the children
begin their group work.
- Guide children in searching the WPA Life History Collection using the keyword
immigration.
- The groups should select as many titles as possible and skim them to determine
which will advance their understanding of immigration and which will not.
- They should keep notes on their process. For example, some of the titles
will have nothing to do with the immigrant experience. The title will come
up because an interviewee simply referred to immigrants.
- Each group should select a number of documents to save. These should be
documents they view as having advanced their understanding of immigration.
- At the end of the session the whole class should discuss why they saved
certain documents and not others. The teacher should record their discussion
on chart paper or on the computer.
- Place the children in groups of three or four per computer (ideally the
same groups as the previous session).
- Review the collection. Explain what it was, why it was made and when it
was made. Again, it might be worthwhile to demonstrate how to examine a
photograph from the collection before the children work on their own.
- The children should do two searches in the collection. For the first, they
will use the keyword immigration. For the second search they will
try a synonym.
- Each group should save several photographs which advance their understanding
of immigration.
- They can keep a record of their search process in order to discuss what
worked and what didn't.
- At the end of the session the class should come together and discuss their
experiences. Their comments can be recorded on a large piece of paper.
Lessons 8 & 9 - Assessment
For the next two sessions each group should review the documents and photos
collected and organize them into a poster. These posters can be done off-
or online depending on the resources available. The posters should tell
a story about immigration. The children will utilize their prior knowledge
of immigration along with their new knowledge gained through the previous
lessons to create these posters.
Lesson 10 - Celebration
The final session should be one where the children can present their posters.
Each group should present their poster to the class and explain why they
did the poster as they did. Administrators and parents can be invited to
this session. The posters should then be exhibited.
Extension
The Library of Congress Learning Page contains a unit which introduces students to primary sources -- what they are, their great variety and how they can be analyzed. The lesson begins with an activity that helps students understand the historical record. Students then learn techniques for analyzing primary sources. Finally, students apply these techniques to analyze documents about slavery in the United States.
Students can also find primary source material about immigrant life at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum web site.
Resources/Materials
1. Offline
- Student mementos - baby pictures, artwork, stories, toys, awards.
- Textual and graphical materials from local archives - school archives or those from a local historical society .
- Colored folders for student organization of archival materials.
- Poster construction materials (poster board, glue, scissors, etc.)
2. Online
3. Technology Resources
- Classroom Internet access
- Demonstration computer
- A minimum of one computer for every three students
- Networked printer
Source
Reproduced from the Library of Congress web site for teachers. Original lesson plan created as part of the Library of Congress American Memory Fellows Program.
