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Overview:
In this lesson, students will prepare an oral presentation to describe the changes in a neighborhood over a period of years. They will learn how their own experiences influence their views of places and regions. Talking with adults in their communities can help students understand that regions change as time passes and cultures shift.
Connections to the Curriculum:
Geography, social science, language skills
Connections to the National Geography Standards:
Standard 6: "How culture and experience influence people's perceptions of places and regions"
Time:
Five or six hours
Materials Required:
- Archived photographs or other records of the neighborhood
- Camera (still or video)
Objectives:
Students will
- demonstrate an understanding of cultural symbols by compiling a series of photographs that show buildings, structures, or statues that represent a city, place, or region.
Geographic Skills:
Asking Geographic Questions
S u g g e s t e d P r o c e d u r e
Opening:
Share with the class archived photos of the school neighborhood that you have gathered from old newspapers, long time residents, or local flea markets. Have groups of students compare the neighborhood in the pictures with the present-day neighborhood, using a Venn diagram: two overlapping circles that show the similarities in the overlapped area and the differences in the rest of each circle. Allow time for each group to share its Venn diagram.
Development:
Walk to the locations shown in the photographs. Ask students to identify similarities and differences among the places, past and present.
Interview local businesspeople, neighbors, postal delivery people, and police. Videotape these interviews; if that is not possible, take still pictures. (Get permission first!) Students can start using the questions below:
- How long have you lived or worked in the community?
- What was this neighborhood like when you first moved here?
- Did you move here with your family?
- Were there many people here?
- Where did the children go to school?
- Where did the children play?
- What stories can you tell me about this neighborhood?
- Do you have old photos of the neighborhood that you can share with me?
- What were your neighbors like?
- How many businesses were here when you cane to this neighborhood?
- What businesses are no longer here?
- Why are there more (or fewer) businesses here now?
Remind students to be sure to record the name of the person they are interviewing, and his or her place in the community (e.g., retailer or police officer).
Ask older neighbors to discuss with students their perceptions of the neighborhood over a range of years—5, 10, 20, 50—and have them share old pictures of the neighborhood. What does an older neighbor think of the community today? Does a 70-year-old person's view differ from that of a 30-year-old? Compare the childhood experiences of a student today with those of a 30-year-old and those of a 70-year-old who grew up in the neighborhood.
Videotape or photograph the neighborhood as it looks today. Have the student groups compile the collected information and then create two maps, one of how the neighborhood looks today and one of how it looked 25 years ago (or some other number of years, depending on the data). Include the maps in a multimedia presentation, along with pictures, video clips, and the students' written notes. Each group will decide how to display its information.
Closing:
Have each group make a presentation to the class and report on their neighborhood's changes over the years. Presentations can be in the form of news reports on the changes over time in a neighborhood.
Suggested Student Assessment:
Students should be able to give an oral presentation to their class, describing how certain features of their neighborhoods have changed over a period of years and how the perceptions of the people they interviewed differed. In addition, students will show a map, a poster, or a videotape that complements the oral report.
Extending the Lesson:
In schools with computers, digital cameras, and scanners, students can create multimedia presentations to share on the World Wide Web.
Students can create a historical "newsletter" for their neighborhood, inserting some of the pictures and quotations gathered during interviews.
Gwen Faulkner of Harriet Tubman Elementary School in Washington, D.C., contributed classroom ideas for Standard 6.
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