Who Am I? A digital camera infused elementary lesson

For an actual lesson plan, I would first determine my students needs and tailor the lesson to those specific requirements. Since this core lesson can be used to address so many different needs and content areas, it is written in a much less concrete form than a more focused lesson plan.

Objectives:

Introduce students to their ancestry to:

 Provide a context for history

 Provide a context for geography

 Provide a context for cultural awareness

 Provide an opportunity to examine personal and cultural differences

 Provide an opportunity for research

 Provide an opportunity for writing

 Provide an opportunity for timelining

 Provide an opportunity to integrate technology (digital cameras, scanners, computers, photo and timelining software)


Prerequisite:

The teacher will need to arrange to borrow the school’s digital cameras through the media center, the building principal, or whoever controls those resources. He or she will also need to develop a rotation schedule for the students to take those cameras home for parent and grandparent photos, and possibly to re-photograph existing family history photos.


Process:

Genealogy and the student’s personal ancestry is the core of this lesson. The teacher will provide an overview of genealogy, common threads students can expect to find, lesson goals and processes. Students will then work with their parents to develop their family history through the identification of their grandparents, great grandparents, and so on. It is important to have birthdates, if possible, and being able to trace the family back to the countries from which they came would be optimal if using this lesson as a starting point for cultural studies.

Next, the teacher will explain digital camera use, camera care, transferring the photos to a computer, editing and printing the photos. Students will use a digital camera, either borrowed from the school or one owned by his or her family, to take photos of their friends, parents, and grandparents (if available). For any ancestors no longer living, students can scan existing photos or use a digital camera to re-photograph the originals. Note: Students should use the school’s camera to take pictures of their classmate friends to avoid the necessity of bringing personal cameras to school.

Students will then create a standard family tree on a large posterboard, with photographs of themselves, parents, grandparents, and so on and their birthdates. Beneath their own photo, they will place the photos they have taken of their friends.

From this core lesson, there are numerous possible options that can be selected by the teacher based on his or her curricular goals.

 Teachers can use this student’s personal history to create a timeline that puts historical events into a personal context. For instance, if a student has a great-great grandparent born in 1867, the timeline will show that this was right after the Civil War and put the war in a historical context related to his or her own family. An ancestor born on June 6, 1944? That was the date of the “D-Day” invasion in World War II. Having photos of those ancestors further personalizes the student’s ties to historical events.

 Teachers seeking to enhance student understanding of cultural differences may compare and contrast the ancestries of those who are descendents of African, Asian, European, and Native American ancestors. What culture did they bring with them? How were their lives and perceptions the same or different from yours? Are the friends pictured in the photos the student has taken representative of the friends your ancestors would have had 50 years ago? 75 years ago? Why or why not?

 If most students are able to trace their ancestry to specific countries, research on their home countries can support library, electronic research, geography, and world history and culture state standards. If students are unable to get back that far, most will be able to identify ancestors from other states, so can address geography and history standards in the US.

 The use of computers, digital cameras, scanners, genealogy software, photo editing software, timelining software, and other technologies will address the state technology standards through integration of these technologies to support the central lessons.



Assessment:

Students will be assessed on the family tree information gathered and their posterboard presentation presentation of that data, as well as their participation in classroom discussions.



Follow-up Activities:

Students can use the information they gathered on their own family, plus information gathered from class discussions about history, timelines, geography, and cultures to create a portfolio-worthy technology-based project such as a family book, a PowerPoint, a slideshow, or a video.

Students can pair with a student with a dissimilar history to create a blended story of two families that compares and contrasts their family experiences.

Students can write a nonfiction story about an ancestor who lived through an important historical time or event, such as participating in the D-Day invasion in WWII or remembering the assassination of President Kennedy, of a fictional account of a historical event through the eyes of an ancestor who lived during that period.


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