Lesson 2: Your Special Place Has a History

Students investigate the past of their special places as a way of connecting themselves and their special places to the community/world.

(Adapted from Teaching Landmarks)

Subjects: Social Studies, Language Arts, Art

Grade Levels: 2-9

Time Frame: 2 class periods

Materials Needed:

• Your Special Place Has a History Worksheet

• Tell Your Place's History Worksheet

Learning Objectives: Students will:

1. Investigate the past of their special place

2. Explore who was at the site before them, how it was used, how it has changed, and who or what changed it

3. Use tools such as interviews, close examination, and investigation using various clues

4. Note the changes their special place has undergone and offer explanations for these changes

5. Seek stories that are told about their place

6. Locate photographs or draw pictures of their special place

Procedure:

1. Have students choose a special place and assign them to find out as much as they can about the place they have chosen. Have students use the Your Special Place has a History worksheet.

2. Have students find someone who can tell them a story about how their place was used before it became special to them. Have students record the story in their own words.

3. Students are now asked to be objective, to stand back from the place and compare it to other places nearby using the Tell Your Place's History Worksheet:

• how it is similar and how it is different

• the extent to which the special place has been preserved

• how and why it has or has not been preserved

• what they would want others to know, now and in the future, about this place

• consider whether and in what ways the place should be preserved for the future

Extension

• Imagine that your place could tell its own story. What might it say about you and the other people who inhabit or use it now? The people who were there or used it before? The local community? The larger world we are living in today? What might happen to it in the future? Write a paragraph describing what your place would say.

OR

• Write a letter that your place might have written (assuming places could write!). This should be a letter to someone in your family, or perhaps to someone in your community--the mayor, for instance. Have your place tell about its own history, including how it has been kept during the time it has been around. Your place should also tell whether and why it should be preserved for the future. Make suggestions about how to keep it special in the years to come.

Your Special Place Has a History

1. Find out as much as you can about the place you have chosen. 

• Does anyone else in your family know of this place? Who?

•  Do any of your neighbors know of this place? Who?

•  Is your place special to any of your friends? Who?

•  Write down a memory someone else has about your place:

2. Did your place look different in the past? 

•  How did it look?

•  How long ago?

• Why does it look different now?

• List some places you went for answers.

Tell Your Places History

1. Think of a place that is similar, but also different from the place you have chosen. List two ways it is similar and two ways it is different.

2. Through your thinking and researching about your special place, you have probably learned some things that most people don't know about it. Write a paragraph in which you complete this sentence: "Someone looking quickly at my special place would never know...."

3. Think beyond your home and neighborhood to the larger world. Are there places like yours anywhere else in the world? Where? What do you know about them? Are they used in the same ways? Do you think they are special to the people who use them? Are places like yours good for people in the world?

References

Built Environment Lesson 2:

Your Special Place Has a History

Students investigate the past of their special place as a way of connecting themselves and their special places to the community and wider world.

City of Edmonton Archives

Over 250,000 historical photographs, dating from the 1880's, more than 100,000 slides currently housed are of a more contemporary nature. Much of the collection consist of negatives, slides, moving images and prints. An extensive collection of aerial photographs of the city dating from 1924 to 1988

Books

Edmonton's lost heritage / prepared by the Heritage Sites Selection Committee of the Edmonton Historical Board. Published: 1982

Edmonton : the life of a city / Bob Hesketh and Frances Swyripa, editors.
Published: c1995. Articles: What Kind of a City is Edmonton?
Edmontonians and the Legislature

Edmonton, gateway to the North : an illustrated history / by John F. Gilpin ; picture research by John E. McIsaac ; "Partners in progress" by Stanley Arthur Williams.
Published: c1984.

A Guide to Researching Building History Brochure
http://www.calgary.ca

[Top]

Lesson 1: Choosing Your Special Place

Lesson 2: Your Special Place Has a History

Lesson 3: What are Landmarks?

Lesson 4: Local Buildings and Landmarks

Lesson 5: Documenting Landmarks

Lesson 6: Creating a Local Historical Resources Inventory 

Lesson 7: Buildings in Time

Lesson 8: Remembering Local Structures

Download Built Environment Lesson 2 in Word Document format.