Library Lesson Plan For Digging Into History

For a chunk of my Christmas break, I've been working on lesson plans to take us through the next couple of months in the library.

One of the things I've noticed about my own child, as well her cousins out in Arizona, her friends at school and around our neighborhood and even some of the older kids at school, is that American history is a tough thing for them to put into any meaningful context.  The way the social studies curriculum is provided in the textbooks has always been a bit on the dry side -- it was when I was growing up, too.

For me, history began to come alive when I could put a real face or place to an event we were studying.

History is so important:  how can you know what not to do if you have no idea what a spectacular failure it was the last time it was attempted?  Or, worse, how can you know to look out for an enormous pothole if you have no idea it even exists in front of you?

For kids, the now is the only thing that really exists.  History can be a tough thing to understand.

And after trying to explain family history last summer when we buried my father-in-law in a full military service, the lack of a larger grasp on history with kids hit home:  none of them had any idea that grandpa served in both WWII and Korea, nor did anyone really have any context for what surviving the Battle of Tarawa or the Chosin Reservoir really meant.

I want to help to change that if I can.  Because our history is so much of who we are as a nation today.


Which is why I've put together a two-month research unit for 2nd through 6th graders that includes picking a particular American about whom to find out some biographical and historical information.  People like Harriet Beecher Stowe, Andrew Carnegie, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Jefferson, Amelia Earhart, Mark Twain, Jackie Robinson, and John Muir, just to name a scant few.

I've put together around 80 names, and I'll let the kids choose one -- and that will be their research focus for the month of January.  Then in February, we'll try to put these individual Americans in a broader historical context in terms of what was going on in the world around them:  WWII, civil rights, abolishing slavery, founding the United States, etc., etc.

It won't be a huge report by the end -- just a list of a discreet number of facts (5 for the 2nd graders, 7 for 3 and 4th, 10 for 5th and 6th) about the person printed on regular paper, placed on a larger poster board, on which images and facts about what was going on in history while this person was alive are put together.

My hope is that this will give everyone a glimpse into how one person can make a huge ripple in the context of history.  But also how a person's history can shape how they use their own, individual lives as well.

And in the process?  We'll work on proper bibliography format; distinguishing between fact and opinion sourcing; how you tell if your source is credible, biased or otherwise flawed; what almanacs can do for you; and all sorts of other research-oriented questions and answers.  I think it will be a great learning process for the kids.

But I'm also hoping they enjoy what they learn from this, and that it will prove very useful to them as they go forward in school.

I'm calling this our "I Have A Dream" project.  Am still fine tuning this, and I need to talk to school administration about the whole of this before I go forward, but am hoping we can start this week and work through January and February on this. 

At least for some of the upper grades, anyway.  My little ones will be getting story times that are themed around some history where I can find a good historical context story that works for their age group, or something that is just plain fun to read aloud.  Otherwise, I lose the smaller peanuts and that's no fun for anyone.

As I build up our story collection, I'll have more choices.  But for now?  I'm working with what I have and we'll build from there in the years to come.

If anyone has worked on similar units with their classes, please let me know how things went, and what you learned to do better -- or not to do at all.  Experience is a wonderful teacher, and I'd love to learn from your experiences if you will share it.

PS -- If you've been wondering why posting was so scanty of late, now you know.  Trying to craft this into a lesson plan with real heft took way more of my time than I realized it would at first, and between the holidays and immersing myself in step-by-step research process 101, the blog has been neglected.  Apologies to all, but it couldn't be helped.


(Photo of my school library decor by Christy Hardin Smith.  You have to love these dinosaurs, don't you?  Especially since I got them for less than $1 each as little wooden puzzle kits on sale at a local Michaels craft store.  Love it!)