Lesson Plan For Teachers
engraving by Winslow Homer from
"The Song of the Sower" by William Cullen Bryant
photo courtesy of Lowell National Historic Park
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Bringing
History Home -
This culminating activity was designed by the
Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities with funding
from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the
Wellspring Foundation. Through the use of this outstanding
website, students go back in history as a character of the
times. They are asked to make choices based on the
information presented. Students can look at primary source
documents and artifacts, tour a mill and hear the sounds of
the looms, read persuasive letters, and consult a glossary
of terms to help them make decisions.
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Introduction
This is the lesson plan for teachers to be used in conjunction
with the student web-guided
exploration. It is important to read
through these lesson plans in order to understand how to use the
activities in the student
web-guided
exploration.
In order to begin to understand the importance of the mills and
their role in the history of Massachusetts, students will engage in
multiple activities which bring the reality of mill life to students
in grades three through seven.
In order to achieve this goal, we will be focusing on information
literacy standards. Three important concepts relating to these
standards and their definitions are listed below.
- visual literacy
A group of competencies that allows humans to discriminate and
interpret the visible action, objects and/or symbols, natural or
constructed, that they encounter in the environment.
Definition taken from ERIC
- visual perception
Ability to interpret what is seen.
Definition taken from ERIC
- point of view
appreciating the variety of perspectives offered by individual
viewpoints, disciplines, and cultural understandings
Definition taken from the AASL,
Learning through the Library
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Student Web-Guided
Exploration
Essential/Key
Questions
Essential Question: Why
this choice at this time?
Key Questions to consider:
- What was life like for women living on a farm at this time?
- What opportunities did they have?
- What difficulties did they face?
- Why go to Lowell?
- How would their life change?
- How would their social, economic and educational
opportunities be affected?
- How did women change during this time?
- How do the use of pictures help you to understand the lives of
people who lived long ago?
- How does an author, illustrator or photographer help to show
how a character feels (point of view)?
- What is a primary source?
- How can it be used to help us interpret history?
- What is a secondary source?
- How accurately does it represent history?
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Student Web-Guided
Exploration
Goals/Objectives
Upon completing this unit students will be able to:
- view a photo or a drawing and interpret and analyze what is
happening.
- work constructively in small groups.
- understand how the role of women changed during this time
period.
- verbalize the conditions that existed in the factories in
Lowell.
- understand the difference between a primary and secondary
source.
- share the information they acquire after reading or observing
primary sources.
- begin to interpret bias or point of view as reflected in the
primary source readings and photographs.
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Student Web-Guided
Exploration