I. Introduction (30 minutes)

The goal of this short activity is to use a role play to tease out the elements of lesson planning, and for participants to discover that they have these planning skills and awarenesses in other parts of their lives already.

Imagine you and the others in the group have just opened a travel agency. I am your first customer. I enter and tell you that I would like you to plan my vacation. Then I tell you that I'm very hungry and I want to go across the street for a snack and I'll return in ten minutes. In that time, you should generate a list of relevant questions to ask me so that you can plan a vacation I will enjoy so much I will become a repeat client of yours.

How do your questions relate to the elements of planning a lesson? Arrange your questions and reword, if necessary, in the six elements below.

1. Target Audience
   • The teacher knows that there will be a good fit between content and student.
   • The teacher takes into account the qualities of the content (e.g, is it graphic, text, factual, abstract, etc.) and the needs of the students.
   • The teacher plans to make the material accessible to children with different skills levels and learning styles.

2. Duration
   • The teacher decides how much time is available for the completion of the activity, taking into consideration the needs and work styles of the children and the relative importance of this content in the curriculum.

3. Content
   • The teacher looks at the material and plans to take into account what skills the children will need to encounter it and interpret it.
   • The teacher knows what body of information she/he will want children to learn.
   • The teacher recognizes the opportunities the material presents to discuss and learn social studies concepts.

4. Resources
   • The teacher chooses a variety of appropriate materials such that children can encounter and consider the same or related material in a variety of ways.
   • The teacher takes into account availability and accessibility of resources such as books, computers (and websites), field trip sites, videos, movies, people, and money.

5. Methodology
   • The teacher decides on which way(s) to present the material.
   • Will the material be studied independently, in small groups, as a whole class?
   • Which modes will be involved (speaking, listening, reading, writing, searching, etc.).
   • Will the material be presented in the context of a game, a debate, a role play, etc.?
   • What will the role of the teacher be?

6. Assessment
   • How will the teacher know what has been learned and how well?
   • How will progress be measured over the course of the activity?

How would these questions and elements relate to using primary source documents in a lesson? (See Curricular Considerations and Primary Source Documents

II. Working with primary source documents (35 minutes).

In pairs, you'll choose one of the pre-selected documents and images. Brainstorm and discuss possible uses and issues for your students and how to address them. (See Curricular Considerations and Primary Source Documents Chart and Assessing a Document for Use in Your Class)

The primary sources used are from Inventing Entertainment, Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920, American Life Histories, 1936 - 1940, and America From the Great Depression to World War II.

• Free Ice in New York from Touring Turn-of-the-Century America, 1880-1920, American Memory

   

• Out of rear window tenement dwelling of Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Solomon, 133 Avenue D, New York City. from America From the Great Depression to World War II, 1935-1945, American Memory

• One of the rear windows, tenement dwelling of Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Solomon from America From the Great Depression to World War II, 1935-1945, American Memory

• A Street Arab, American Memory

• Emigrants landing at Ellis Island, American Memory

• New York City ghetto fish market, American Memory

• Move On, American Memory

• Nobody boddas you, American Memory

• Mary Van Kleek, "Child Labor in New York City Tenements," from On the Lower East Side: Observations of Life in Lower Manhattan at the Turn of the Century

• Elizabeth Watson, "Home Work in the Tenements," from On the Lower East Side: Observations of Life in Lower Manhattan at the Turn of the Century

• "The Problem of the Children," from How the Other Half Lives: the full hypertext edition, Jacob Riis.

• "The Street Arab," from How the Other Half Lives: the full hypertext edition, Jacob Riis.

• "List of Illustrations," from How the Other Half Lives: the full hypertext edition, Jacob Riis.

1. Media Analysis Tools
2. The Historian's Sources
3. Lesson Framework

After that, from what you already knew about your students, and from what you observe as they have initial encounters with the materials, adjust your expectations in a number of ways:

With text:

• If the amount of text or the syntax (or both) make understanding or interpretation difficult, select smaller portions of the text which illuminate the understandings you want children to get.
• Lead children through sample sessions in which sentences are broken down into segments, or chunks of meaning. Demonstrate how a good reader makes meaning of each of the chunks and then strings them together to understand the whole idea.
• Provide background material so that the text the children encounter is related to a context with which they are already familiar.

With images:

• Begin with what children see. Ask them to list all the things they see.
• Discuss with them the difference between what they see and interpretations of what they see. For example, often children looking at the photograph Free Ice in New York say that one of the boys is poor because he is barefoot. While it may be true the boy is poor, we can't see that he is; that's an interpretation based on other beliefs or information we have.
• Discuss the role of the photographer. Talk about whether the photograph looks posed or candid. Talk about why the photographer might have decided to fame that particular view, whether he/she was expressing an opinion or point-of-view.
• Look at and discuss the level of the material culture: How were things made? Of what materials? Is there evidence of the level of technology?
• Relate the information children see and interpret with other material you have studied about the same topic. Does the image modify what you already knew or imagined? In what way(s)?

III. Browse the collections and the Immigration Resources list (35 minutes).

Discuss the pros and cons of providing hard copies of documents, a list of online documents from American Memory and other sites, or a more open-ended search of the Internet.

• Is is worthwhile to have your students do an Internet search on a topic, and American Memory search?
• Is it a better idea to provide a long or short list of online resources or bookmarks and have students spend their time working on documents instead of learning to locate them?
• What's the difference, for your students, between looking at a computer screen or looking at the same document on a sheet of paper? Which works better? Why?
• What's the difference, for your students, between working alone with documents, working in a small group, working as a whole class, working at home? Should there be a combination of these configurations? What combination? Why?

Materials

• American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 - 1940
• Inventing Entertainment: the Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Company
• The Northern Great Plains, 1880-1920: Photographs from the Fred Hultstrand and F.A. Pazandak Photograph Collections
• Panoramic Maps
• Taking the Long View: Panoramic Photographs, 1851-1991
• Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920
• Words and Deeds in American History
• Immigration Links for Your Research

IV. Follow-up discussion/view student work (20 minutes).

Continue to consider the issues raised by using primary source documents. Begin to reflect on your experience in the session and look at some student projects developed by students at the Bank Street School in New York City.