Presenting the Student Lesson

Day 1:  Introducing the Artifact Road Show

Conduct a personal "mind walk" using personal primary source documents and personal artifacts that reflect something important in your own life. Display the artifact and guide and instruct the students to use the Artifact Analysis Matrix to record their observations of the artifact. Then share "the real story" of your relationship to the artifact.

To connect to the creative concept of "Artifact Road Show," students can place a value on the artifact from a reviewer and owner perspective. This leads to a discussion of what brings value, as well as meaning, to an artifact.

Some suggestions for personal artifacts are:

• published documents-an official document about you, i.e., driver's license, birth certificate, teaching credential, passport;
• unpublished documents-a letter written to you, diary, journal;
• oral traditions/histories-a family story, and
• visual documents/artifacts-a photograph, drawing, caricature, trophy, locket, or medal.

Day 2:  Student Activity

Ask students to bring their own personal artifacts and display them for their group of three students. Teams of three review each artifact supplied by team members and interpret them to determine information about the owners' personalities and lifestyles. Each team works together to complete the Artifact Analysis Matrix.

Day 3:  Sharing the Results

When the groups' Artifact Analysis Matrix charts are complete, the reviewers share their charts with the class. The artifact owner "constructs the context" that reveals "the whole story." In order to connect to the creative concept of "Artifact Road Show," students may place a value on the artifact from a reviewer and owner perspective. This leads to a discussion of what brings value to an artifact.

Day 4:  Introducing the Library of Congress and American Memory

Introduce students to a selection of primary sources that are "Rare Finds" from American Memory. As a whole class, students complete a large version of the Artifact Analysis Matrix, using 18" x 12" paper with plenty of room to write notes. The students analyze the content of the primary sources to gather as much information as possible about the context of the story they are about to read.

Reading Activity

• Rare Finds (Grade 4);
• Coast to Coast (Grade 5); and
• Hidden Treasures (Grade 6).

Fourth Grade:

Students read aloud and discuss The River Ran Wild by Lynne Cherry, with a silent re-reading assigned as a follow-up. In addition to reading the story together as an entire class, include a discussion of the illustration borders and how they tie into the story.  Students can also be assigned a portion of the illustrations to research/report to the class.

Fifth Grade:

Students read aloud and discuss The American Family Farm by Joan Anderson, illustrated with photographs by George Ancona. This beautifully illustrated photo-essay shows the positive and negative aspects of family farms in Georgia, Iowa, and Massachusetts. Students should be prepared to compare the positives/negatives with the positives/negatives they find in the photographs from American Memory.

Sixth Grade:

Day 5:  Writing a 5-W Poem--Rough Draft

• who;
• what;
• where;
• when;
• why, and sometimes
• how.

Students attempt to match these "answers" to both the literary work and the artifact. You may want to write a beginning verse together, and then have them work in teams of three to add one or two more verses. Be sure to instruct them in the skills of capitalization and punctuation for poetry.

• Students may write individual poems.
• Students may write individual verses selected from assigned pages, and put their verses together with the rest of the class to form one longer poem that encapsulates the entire story.
• Students may work in groups of two or three to write a group poem.
• Students may work in groups of two or three to create a verse selected from assigned pages and put their verses together with the rest of the class to form one longer poem that encapsulates the entire story.

Day 6:  Writing a 5-W Poem--Final Draft

The final creative activity involves arranging the quoted phrases and individual words into a verse or series of verses that link the artifacts to the literary work.

Day 7:  Publishing

Post the artifacts, literary titles, or book covers/illustrations, and poetry on a bulletin board.

Use the 5-W Poetry Rubric for Fourth/Fifth Grade or Sixth Grade to evaluate student work. Add brief descriptions for each of the sections, if desired. Students should have the rubric before them as they begin to work so they know how they will be evaluated. Students may also help in developing the descriptions as part of the clarification process after hearing the assignment described.

• Use software to create slide shows or Web pages illustrating the literary work, artifacts, and 5-W poetry. Add soundtracks of students reading their poetry or music to the slide shows or Web pages.
• Other literary works may be used, such as the suggested titles that follow. These title may be enriched by the American Memory primary sources listed with each title.