Historical Thinking Activity Lesson Plan

Julia Douglas

Historical Thinking Activity Lesson Plan

Activity: Photo analysis of school classrooms from the early 20th century compared to modern day classrooms. Second part of activity would be a hypothesis activity about old writing utensils and other classroom components. Follow up class would be the students researching with assistance what the historical items from the schoolhouses were used for.

Grade:k/1

Time: 20-30 minutes, depending on children.

“Big 6” idea explored: Evidence, and Continuity and change to a degree.

Curricular connections: Ask questions, make inferences, and draw conclusions about the content and features of different types of sources (evidence).

Method: Part 1

Teacher would display a picture of a 20th century classroom. Have a class discussion around what do they notice? Where do they think this is? What types of things do they see in the photo? Teacher to record all observations on a chart or white board.

Then show students a picture of their own classroom. Have a similar discussion, where is this? What do they notice?

Put up a side by side split of two photos, what looks similar? What is different? Has anything stayed the same? Is anything completely missing from the class room? What do they notice about the students? The teachers?

Teacher makes a T chart on board and records student’s answers of similarities and differences.

Part 2

Teacher will then hand out pictures of old classroom and schoolhouse supplies. In pairs, children will come up with ideas about what they are, what they were used for, and who they were used by. (All students will have the same pictures). If possible, teacher can bring in examples of these items if possible to locate.

Teacher will then facilitate a large class discussion while examining each photo on the Elmo with the class. Teacher makesa “What is it!?” chart where all hypotheses are recorded from students discussion.

Either in the next day’s lesson , or if it is possible to “double block” this activity, teacher would provide books to the children where they could flip through and notice the historical classroom items being used to come to the conclusions about the items. If books cannot be found, teacher can show the following three pictures and have students discuss what they think the items are used for now.

Alternatively, teacher could show a video of the historical items being used from archival footage/re enacted?

Video on youtube: One room school house- Manitoba – mute audio and facilitate a discussion with the class: What do they notice? Do they see anything they recognize? What do they wonder?

Once the children have identified their uses, the teacher could then provide a cut and paste matchgame worksheet that would link to ELA word work. The students would cut out the words provided, match the correct descriptor word (very simple, ie: “pen”, “chalkboard”) to the pictures, and glue the word underneath. Further, the students can then write the word underneath the pasted word to practice their printing.

Images for evaluation:

A rare double school desk, slate board to work on, and an inkwell.

A pencil case. A steel point pen, teacher’s bell, and a teacher’s desk (note the bell on the desk. Show desk last to see if the students can see the connection with the bell being on that desk),

Current classroom (Teachers should use a picture of their own classroom if possible)

Historical classroom

______

______

______

______

______

pencil

ruler

desk

bell

chalkboard