My lesson plan is an introduction to a unit project for the Beauty & Esthetics theme of the AP Spanish curriculum. Students will be completing this mural project in three parts:

1. Choosing the theme of their mural & creating a hand drawn or digital work.
2. Choosing the location of their mural & completing a digital rendering. 
3. Presenting their mural to the class.

The images below will be used throughout the sessions of this lesson as examples and as an introduction to using the LOC as an optional resource. 

For my high school Video Production classes, I will ask them to create a short film (1-5 minutes in length) that is about an event or issue that both the 1920s and the 2020s have in common. Their videos will need to be created using at least two filmmaking techniques or limitations from 1920s cinema. We'll kick off the project by watching clips from the 1920s films from LOC (seen in this gallery) and analyzing them using the Analyzing Motion Pictures Tool.

Here is the hand-out I will provide students showing the requirements, lists of potential topics, techniques to choose from, and the rubric:

I was inspired to create this project as we learned about the 1920s this week and I kept noticing similarities in political, social, and historical events from then and now.

Here is a sample video showing what students could possibly make for the project. This combines the 1921 avant garde film Rhytmus 21 with video clips showing the income inequality America is facing in the 2020s:

https://youtu.be/3SNMoFq82Vc

My lesson plan is intended to be an introduction to primary source analysis.  Students take a close analytical look at the mosaic from the Great Hall of the Liberty of Congress, and discover what it can tell them about the mission of the Library's founders.

Students will be able to

• perform a basic primary source analysis of a visual object.
• Interpret the symbolism of the artistic elements of the Minerva mosaic.

Students will study the visual details of the Minerva mosaic using a three-step process: “Observe, Reflect, Question.” Students will use the Primary Source Analysis Tool(PDF, 79 KB) to record their observations.

Exploring Child Labor-Primary Source Analysis as Background Knowledge for A Family Apart

This lesson includes activities that will be used for the purpose of building prior knowledge prior to reading the novel, A Family Apart.  The text is about a poor Irish family living in the tenements of New York City. The children in the novel are required to work and have young friends who are living on the streets and required to fend for themselves.  This lesson will serve as a pre-reading tool in order to help students understand the circumstances that the poor children faced until Child Labor Laws were passed in 1938, as well as gain an understanding of how society viewed the use of child labor. Within the lesson, students will work on generating meaningful “open” questions that will carry their interest throughout the text. Students will complete a “Primary Source Analysis Tool” in order to analyze a primary source image related to child labor and the societal commentary at the time. 

To view primary source images that will be used within the lesson, click here!

Mini Museum Exhibit Project/Lesson Plan

Biographies provide inspiration. As students learn about the struggles that others have overcome, they can make connections to their own lives. They may recognize the hardships that they feel alone and struggle with, are shared with other historical or present prominent figures in our world.  Through reviewing historical resources, students will research two prominent figures or events of their choosing. Then, they will create a mini museum exhibit on the person or event of their choosing. 

This my photo album link of resources: 

https://tpsteachersnetwork.org/album/100500-resources-for-biography-research-mini-museum-exhibits

Additional Information: 

Student Objectives

1. Students will conduct biography research on two prominent figures, historical figures, or events of their choosing. 
2. Students will create a mini museum exhibit on the person of their choosing, or a mini museum exhibit of their own life. 
3. Students will grow their speaking and listening skills, building  advanced writing, public speaking and presentation skills, especially with advanced media components. 
4. Students will improve organization of ideas and teaching concepts to their peers or audiences. 
5. Students will grow and improve their methods of questioning in their learning. 
6. Students will become strong leaders in areas of their interests and passions.

Big Ideas 

• Storytelling
• Self-discovery 
• Community building 
• Exploring topics that students value and are directly interested in creating contest products of applications for entrance..
• Research and grow prior knowledge.

Essential Questions 

• What am I curious about and want to research more about outside of school learning? 
• What is a pressing issue in history that needs to be highlighted? Who is a person connected to this event? 
• What is most important for my peers to know about right now? 
• What are the best questions to ask to drive discussion deeper into this topic? 
• How can we use this information in school and in life? 
• What are the implications on the world from the information presented?

Throughout each school year, my U.S. history students build skills specific to the field. Towards the end of the year we examine the narrative arc of the nation focusing on specific multiple disciplines: political geography, technology, social history; law & politics. This lesson incorporates a similar method but examines the trajectory of different lives experiencing a major catalyst of historical change.

Using the passage of the 19th Amendment and it's ratification, we will examine the lives of different individuals (mostly women) their backgrounds, and the ways in which their lives were effected by women's suffrage (or not).

I will break the class up into groups.  The historical individuals to be researched will be selected by lottery.  Students will search the LOC for images relating to their person to be collected in a shared Google folder with thumbnails inserted into a modified graphic organizer.  

As teacher, I will preselect two secondary sources for each historical individual.  Each group will find one more secondary source to complete a modest pallet of sources that shed light on the lives of these historical individuals.  Each group will choose the images from their graphic organizer that help tell the story of how the 19th Amendment may or may not have effected the trajectory of their subject's life.  Drawing from all of their sources, they will create text boxes that outline the story.

Each individual will be "assembled" in a vertical display across the front of the classroom to create a "big picture" of how a catalyst becomes part of the "process" of history.

My lesson plan will introduce 5th grade students to the Harlem Renaissance and the collage art of African-American artist Romare Bearden. Students will create abstract paintings while listening to jazz music, then cut up these paintings to create collages.  They will also incorporate found/recycled papers like discarded sheet music and wallpaper samples into their collages.