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Subject

Math, Science & Technology

Duration

3-4 weeks - 90 minute language arts/social studies block

Objectives

Upon completion of this interdisciplinary performance task, students will:

Language Arts

• Read and discuss literary and nonliterary texts in order to understand human experience.
• Read to acquire information from a variety of sources.
• Orally communicate information, opinions, and ideas effectively to an audience for a particular purpose.

Technology

• Use computers to acquire, organize, analyze, and communicate information.
• Conduct research and inquiry on self-selected topics, issues, or problems with technology and use an appropriate media form to communicate their findings.

Social Studies

• Interpret history using a variety of sources, such as biographies, diaries, journals, artifacts, eyewitness interviews, and other primary source materials.
• Explain how and why events may be interpreted differently depending on the perspectives of participants, witnesses, reporters, and historians.

Guidance

• Analyze how environment and personal well-being are interrelated.
• Describe assets valuable for building and maintaining personal, family, and community well-being.

Description

In this lesson from the Library of Congress, students will try to understand the natural world in which they live. In early times people created myths to explain their experiences with fire, flood and other violent forces. Over the centuries, new scientific discoveries added to their knowledge. Yet, nature continues to affect human lives and people still seek to record their feelings about these uncontrollable forces.

Procedure

Review the student page with the class.

Activity 1

Students learn the concept of primary source documents as ways of recording an historical event.
Introduction (one class period)

These activities introduce students to the concept of primary source documents as ways of recording an historical event.

1. On the board or overhead, brainstorm ways in which nature affects people's lives.
2. Play a song about a natural disaster such as "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot, based on the sinking of an ore boat on Lake Superior because of a November storm.
3. While listening to the song, students write five words or phrases from the song that interest them on a note card. On the back of the card, they should write their reactions to those words or phrases.
4. Discuss the following questions:
   • Why would the songwriter compose this song?
   • What event may have sparked the idea for this song?
   • What words or phrases help you to understand the songwriter's perspective of the event?
   • How does listening to this song change your understanding of the people's emotions who experienced the event?
5. Next, show students a photo related to the event.  Repeat the 5 word reflection activity and group discussion.
6. Finally, present a newspaper story with a personal account of the event.  Repeat the 5 word reflection activity and group discussion.
7. Pass out an encyclopedia or history book description of the disaster.
8. Using a Venn diagram, have students compare and contrast the kinds of information about the event each medium provided.
9. Reflection Journal: have students explain how these sources differ from encyclopedia accounts of the event.

Activity 2

Students are introduced to primary source analysis.
Modeling Analysis Sheet Use (two class periods)

1. Discuss students' Reflection Journal entries from previous lesson. Clarify how primary sources differ from secondary sources. Note that informational articles often do not contain people's feelings about the experience.
2. Explain the lesson's goal of learning critical thinking strategies to examine primary sources.
3. Together, complete the Image Analysis Guide to examine a photo of the disaster. Discuss objective and subjective information learned from the photo.
4. Next, use the Personal Account Analysis Guide to examine an account from a witness to the event. Continue to model how students may find objective and subjective information. (Note that oral histories are written in the narrator's own words and may reveal biases and prejudices which may seem inappropriate. They may also contain spelling errors or non-standard English.)
5. Using a handout of the song lyrics, have students study the song using the Song Analysis Guide.
6. On the board or overhead, compile information about the event using different colored markers for each source. Discuss which sources are objective and which are subjective; which provide more insights into the effects the event had on people's lives; and which students found to be most memorable.

Activity 3

A guidance counselor leads students in a discussion and activity on the impact natural disasters.
Guidance Counselor (two class periods)

Note: The topic of disasters and resiliency is a sensitive one for many students - some of whom have experienced extremely difficult times in their lives. We have chosen to team teach several days of this unit with our guidance counselor to allow students to discuss issues which affect them and to address coping strategies.

Class period one

1. Divide the class into small groups. Hand out examples of recent natural disaster from the newspaper to each group. Have each group read the account and report back to the class answering the following questions:
   • What happened?
   • How did people respond?
   • What was the outcome?
   • How did people cope?
2. Next, the counselor asks students to write down what "disasters" they have experienced in their lives and answer the same questions about them.  Students are given the chance to share their experiences. The counselor introduces the concept of "resiliency" and asks students to explain who helped them through their difficult times and what helped them to recover.
3. Make a list of the factors which help people cope with uncontrollable events in their lives.
4. End with a journal entry on the advice students would give other people when they face a difficult event in their lives.

Class period two

1. Begin with a survey on developmental assets from the Search Institute. Students complete the survey. The counselor leads a discussion on the research that points to the importance of the assets in coping with hardships.
2. Students are then asked to go back to their list from the previous day and identify the number of the asset relating to each item.
3. The students are asked to survey their parents about a disaster in their lives and answer the same questions they did in class. Send a handout home explaining the unit, the 40 developmental assets, and resources for families for building resiliency in their lives.

Activity 4

Guided Reading (two weeks)

1. From the list of historical fiction novels on the Resource Page, have students select a book based on a natural disaster.
2. Help students to establish a schedule to complete the reading of the book.
3. Preview the Book Guide questions.
4. Set up a schedule for meeting with groups of students to monitor reading and discuss Book Guide questions.
5. Additional strategies, such as story mapping, vocabulary, and literary elements may be taught in mini-lessons during the unit.

Activity 5

Coaching Independent Research (four or five class periods)

1. Using the reference materials available, such as those listed on the Resource Page, have students compile information about the event from their novel using the Research Note Sheet.
2. Direct students to the appropriate natural disaster from the Gallery of Artifacts.
3. As students examine the corresponding primary sources, have them complete the Image Analysis Guide, Personal Account Analysis Guide, and Song Analysis Guide for the natural disaster.
4. Provide time for students to search additional Internet resources about the event and complete the summary section of the Research Notes Sheet.

Activity 6

Preparing the Wax Museum Presentation (four class periods)

1. Review the elements of the wax museum presentations from the Wax Museum Guide.
2. With the class, create a grading rubric using elements from the Presentation Checklist and levels of expectations.
   Tip: Gather examples as you conduct the unit for the first time to use as anchors in successive years.
3. Explain the use of introductions, conclusions, and organization of the body of the presentation providing examples for students.
4. Demonstrate the appropriate development and use of a visual aid.
5. Provide drafting, editing, and revision time for the oral presentation.
6. Discuss costume options which suggest relevant eras.
7. Assist students in creating posters which display photos and other artifacts related to the event.
8. Rehearse oral presentations with partners.
9. Send out invitations to parents, other classes, and community members.

Activity 7

Class Oral Presentations (three class periods)

1. Students present their eyewitness accounts to the class, in costume, as a dress rehearsal for the wax museum.
2. Use the grading rubric created in Activity Six to evaluate student presentations and posters.

Activity 8

Wax Museum (one class period or evening time period)

1. Have students present their accounts to visitors using their costumes and posters to explain the facts surrounding the event and people's reactions to it.

Activity 9

Evaluation and guidance summary (one class period)

1. Discuss with students their participation in the lesson and reactions to the wax museum experience.
2. Have students complete a self evaluation of their experience with the unit.
3. The counselor returns to discuss what students have learned about resiliency and ways in which they can help others in their family, school and community.

Resources/Materials

Resources;

American Memory

• Taking the Long View, 1851-1991
• American Life Histories, 1936-1940 
• Historic American Sheet Music, 1850-1920;
• Music for the Nation, 1870-1885
• Great Earthquake and Fire: San Francisco, 1897-1916
• California As I Saw It: First Person Narratives, 1849-1900
• American Treasures of the Library of Congress
• FSA/OWI Black and White Photographs, 1935-1945
• Voices from the Dust Bowl, 1940-1941
• Alexander Graham Bell Family Papers
• Southern Mosaic, 1939
• Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920
• Inventing Entertainment: The Edison Companies
• Map Collections
• The Nineteenth Century in Print: Books
• An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera

Resources Page

• Internet, print, and multi-media resources about American natural disasters.

Gallery of Artifacts

Materials;

The following guides are used in the unit:

• Image Analysis Guide - questions to assist students in analyzing images such as photographs and films.
• Personal Account Analysis Guide - questions to help students examine accounts.
• Song Analysis Guide - questions to aid students in interpreting the lyrics of songs written about the events.
• SQ3R Research Notes Sheet - a worksheet with questions to guide further research of the circumstances surrounding a natural disaster.
• Book Guide - questions for reader responses.
• Wax Museum Guide - an explanation of the format to be used to create the exhibition of the disaster.
• Presentation Checklist - element sheet for student/teacher preparation for the presentation.

Evaluation and Extension

This lesson combines language arts, social studies, guidance and technology skills. Students interpret and construct meaning from the photographs, song lyrics and life histories and apply the information by creating an original oral composition. They compare fictional and factual accounts of an event and learn independently as they research a natural disaster and its effects. Finally, students create a quality product synthesizing information and meaning from several sources.

Student products include:

1. A personal interpretation of photographs.
2. An interpretation of song lyrics.
3. An evaluation/analysis of an oral history.
4. A journal with reactions to an historical fiction novel.
5. A presentation including an original fictional eyewitness account of the event which demonstrates the ability to apply information gathered through research to a new composition.
6. A poster with photographs, maps, diagrams, drawings or other information about the natural disaster.

Rubrics for these products should be designed in a teacher-student collaboration. Students should also complete a self evaluation of their participation in the lesson.

Students may extend their experience by examining a recent natural disaster, locating and analyzing primary source documents related to it, and noting similarities and differences to those of earlier times. Students may also examine how the events are presented in children's books using the bibliography.

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.

Related Academic Standards

New York State

ARTS.M.I.3.1.A Students through listening, analyze and evaluate their own and others’ performances, improvisations, and compositions by identifying and comparing them with similar works and events.

ARTS.VA.I.3.1.A Students discuss and write their analyses and interpretations of their own works of art and the art of others, using appropriate critical language.

MST2.I.IS.1.3 Students systematically obtain accurate and relevant information pertaining to a particular topic from a range of sources, including local and national media, libraries, museums, governmental agencies, industries, and individuals.

SS.I.2.4C Students view history through the eyes of those who witnessed key events and developments in world history by analyzing their literature, diary accounts, letters, artifacts, art, music, architectural, drawings, and other documents.