Assessment
Student teams are asked the following assessment questions:
What is the American Dream?
How has the American Dream changed over time?
How do diverse cultures view the American Dream?
How have significant historical events affected the American Dream?
How will new opportunities of the 21st century challenge the American Dream?
What makes your area of interest (e.g., photography) an effective medium for sharing the American Dream?
What is your American Dream?
The team products, and their presentation, should provide evidence of understanding from each member. Be sure to require that each student contribute to the important tasks of presenting and defending their viewpoint.
Evaluative criteria was established before beginning the project. You may use the Analytic Rubric (requires Adobe Reader ), or you may design a tool that better meets the needs of your learners. A Confidential Self-Evaluation (requires Adobe Reader) from each student can provide the teacher with further valuable input, and will help the student reflect upon their own learning and performance.
Project extension ideas
Who are the dreamers that inspire us today? Ask students to read about or interview others who have a dream. Enrich this project with your own web resources, books, movie clips, interviews, or guest speakers.
Project design
America Dreams ...through the decades, is an interdisciplinary Internet project designed to utilize digitized primary source documents from the American Memory collections. Its conception and design is a collaborative effort by Kathleen Ferenz and Leni Donlan, American Memory Fellows to the National Digital Library in 1997. The instructional model is a WebQuest , a type of Internet-based inquiry lesson model first designed by Professor Bernie Dodge, San Diego State University.
Learning Context/ Introduction
This project invites you and your students to search and sift through rare print documents, early motion pictures, photographs, and recorded sounds from The Library of Congress - right from your classroom! Experience the depth and breadth of the digital resources in the American Memory collections and tell the story of a decade as you help define the American Dream.
Objectives
By completing this WebQuest, your students will demonstrate their understanding of the American Dream. They will:
- analyze, interpret, and conduct research with digitized primary source documents
- interpret 19th and 20th century social life in the United States using digitized documents from the American Memory collections
- define, present and defend their ideas about what the American Dream has been, through the decades
- relate what they have uncovered from inquiry and research to their own American Dream
Knowledge demonstrated through performance:
- competence in the use of electronic research tools (e.g., Library of Congress)
- ability to assess the authenticity, reliability and bias of data gathered using electronic research tools
- ability to create a product to present and defend their understanding of the American Dream
Curriculum Standards
You can link this project to your local or state teaching standards. The National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) may prove useful to teachers implementing this project, as well.
In addition to a body of content, this project teaches "thinking" and helps students make the connections needed to build deeper understanding of the content they are studying. As you develop your implementation strategy, what thinking and communications skills will you encourage? Inference-making? Critical thinking? Creative production? Creative problem-solving? Observation and categorization? Comparison? Teamwork? Compromise?
Entry Level Skills and Knowledge
A basic understanding of Internet research, knowledge of search terms to navigate in the American Memory collections, and reasonable facility with multimedia tools are needed.
Advice:
Working with archival collections, like American Memory , requires one to think like a historian or an archivist. Resources from the Learning Page can help students to become familiar with these collections. You might begin by reading Finding Primary Sources.
If using primary source documents is new, read Using Primary Sources. Develop a few practice lessons with students before you launch this WebQuest. You will find student lessons and teaching suggestions for your use.
Procedure
Getting Started
Devise a learning standard:
What do you expect your students to know and be able to do when they have completed this project? Create an assessment rubric for students based on your expectations. This Analytic Rubric (requires Adobe Reader ) may serve as a model for your own.
Decide on the learning product:
It could be a Web page, a multimedia product, a video, or the transformation of your classroom into a Decades Museum. Whatever format the product may take, students will present and defend their ideas.
Create the "hooks" to engage your students:
Meet your students "where they are" by inviting them to begin their inquiry by considering the dreams of today, the dreamers of the present. Next, use the American Memory collections to learn about our cultural heritage and find evidence of the dreamers in our collective history. Finally, ask your students to compare their own dreams to the dreams of those who lived before them. Students should understand that history is the continuing story of human experience, the stories of people like themselves. Help them to understand that as they define and pursue their own dreams, they create the future of our nation and the world.
Organize:
Introduce students to the student pages. Divide your class into learning teams and assign roles and responsibilities. Introduce the team management check list (requires Adobe Reader).
Each team will select (or be assigned) a research role (photographer, lawyer, poet, politician, producer, comedian, musician). Each student will choose (or be assigned) a group task and will work as part of their team to bring the project to completion. Remind students, that while they each have specific group tasks, all team members pitch in and help one another.
As a class, define the scope of the historical research conducted in this project. Will teams gather material from a specific decade? Will they work with a single American Memory collection? Will research be guided by a theme, such as immigration? Will research be linked to literature the class is reading?
Provide time for students to explore the student and resource pages of the project.
Elements for Success:
- Student-centered teaching environment
- Adequate time spent teaching students to analyze primary source documents
- Rich array of additional materials from your content area to support the project
- Student choice and accountability
- Access to the library media center
- Adequate collaborative planning time with the school librarian
- Time for students to complete tasks
- Computer access in the media center or classroom for students and teachers
The procedure for this learning experience is composed of the following parts:
Phase One of Procedure -- Building Background Knowledge and Skills
Phase Two of Procedure -- Researching Online and gathering primary resources
Phase Three of Procedure -- Creating the Learning Product
Phase One -- Building Background Knowledge and Skills
Anticipatory Set:
Link to students' prior knowledge and work with them to
develop a concept of the traditional "American Dream." Use the "What Is the American Dream?"
essay to initiate a discussion (either as a whole class or in team groups).
You may wish to have your students conduct interviews,
explore other readings, engage in further class discussions, or hear guest speakers.
Use the Activity 1 worksheet (or create your own introductory activity)
to engage your students.
Using the American Memory collections:
Introduce the American Memory collections through the Introduction to the Library of Congress.
Document Analysis:
Before students begin their research, review strategies for analyzing
primary source materials. Each student team
will work with a set of preselected materials. The document analysis worksheet provides a model to guide students
through the analysis. Students may find the self-directed workshops Analyzing Primary Sources: Photographs and Prints or Analyzing Primary Sources: Maps more manageable. Each team will analyze their assigned document. An engaging
and effective way to introduce students to their resource (if appropriate
for the media involved) is to create a Primary Source Set for each team.
Photographer
- Mr. & Mrs. David Vincent and daughter,
Martha, by their sod house
Poet
- "Dedication," Robert Frost's presidential
inaugural poem, 20 January 1961
Politician
- "Americanism", Harding, Warren G. (Warren Gamaliel),
1865-1923
Producer
- Arrival of immigrants, Ellis Island
Lawyer
- Petition for change of venue, 1886 June
10, Evidence from the Haymarket Affair, 1886-1887
Comedian
- Katzenjammer Kids: "Policy and pie"
Musician
- The old cabin home. H. De Marsan, Publisher,
54 Chatham Street, New York.
Reporter
- The Independent gazetteer, or, The chronicle of freedom, 1788
Phase Two -- Researching Online and gathering primary resources
Team organization and accountability:
Guide students in developing an action plan (e.g. photographer).
The team management check list can provide a model for this
task.
The project requires your students to apply their research
skills, as well as team planning skills to ensure completion of
their product by the set deadline. Keeping a "research log" of work
accomplished during each work session can help students stay focused (and can
help in the evaluative process).
Review the assessment
questions:
Choose just the questions (e.g. photographer)
that will provide a focus for the project. Students can use these
questions to guide their research.
Gathering primary sources:
As a class, create and continually add to,
a list of "tried and true" search terms. Remind students
that American Memory is a collection of collections. It is not encyclopedic
and it simply does not have "everything." If an initial
search does not yield desired results, guide students in how they
can narrow or refocus the search.
Your schedule may limit students to visiting only
the suggested collections and provided links for each team. As possible,
however, encourage them to develop their own, additional links in
the American Memory collections and to expand their resources with
other Internet sources.
Begin independent team exploration. Supply
students with document analysis worksheets to
use to record their growing set of evidence. Allow
at least two (more preferred) days/class periods for exploration
and research.
Phase Three -- Creating the Learning Product
Students can produce a variety of products to
demonstrate their interpretation of the material, including web pages,
multimedia products, video documentaries, oral presentations, creating
booklets or newspapers, or even photos of your classroom turned into a
museum comprised of print documents, multimedia, and realia.
Creating and refining a final learning product
that allows students to represent, present and defend their ideas
about the American Dream is the tangible outcome of this project.
Allow plenty of time for this vital phase. (Having students add
what transpires during this phase of the project to their research
log can provide useful insight in the evaluation process.)
Require that proper citation and/or bibliographical entry be used for all collected print material,
photos, sound, video, etc.
Website(s)
America Dreams
America Dreams: Project Resources
