School Then and Now
Activity #2: A Day in a One-Room School
Materials
- Access to a computer or Internet OR
- Print out of select one-room school photographs
- Pencils
- Paper
Curriculum Objectives
4th grade and 5th grade – Kansas Writing Standard 1, Benchmark 1, Indicator 1: The student writes narrative text using the writing process. The student chooses and writes about a narrowed focused idea and occasionally writes about a given prompt.
4th grade and 5th grade– Kansas Writing Standard 1, Benchmark 1, Indicator 2: The student writes narrative text using the writing process. The student writes using personal experience, observations and prior knowledge.
4th grade – National Standards for History, Standard 3B: The student is able to use a variety of sources to construct a historical narrative about daily life in the early settlements of the student’s state or region. (Source: National Center for History in the Schools)
Note: For an introduction to one-room schools, have the children read the background information, or read it to the class.
Instructions:
- Refer to the Primary and Secondary Sources page and review the types of primary and secondary sources with the students.
- Have the students choose one of the pre-selected one-room school photographs on www.jocohistory.net or have them do a search for one-room school photographs on www.jocohistory.net. Refer to the Search Instruction page for help conducting a photograph search. If the students do not have computer access, print out the photographs for them and allow them to choose a photograph to use. Another option is to use an LCD projector and show the images, or a select image, on a slide screen.
- Once a photograph has been selected, give the students a few minutes to look at their photographs and ask questions.
- Instruct the students to write a paragraph about what a day of school was like at the time their photograph was taken. Have them write in first-person, as if they were attending that one-room school.
