Making Connections
children's exposure & involvement --- today's vital social issues --- your interests
past --- literature --- present
Objective: To develop a themed social studies investigation anchored in an intermediate level historical novel, consisting of extended social studies research, lessson planning, and materials development in the areas of culture, history, and geography.
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Rationale for the ELE3340 Novel-based Project:  To become a creator of effective Social Studies curriculum, to relate Social Studies teaching/learning interactions to the great themes of the human experience (past and present), to enable children to make decisions and carry out meaningful actions for change for a better world.

Consider your interest in these topics from U.S. history

Connect one of the above with one or more of the issues below

Concern for and interest in today's global issues

Choose one of the following novels, upper elementary level,
as your source and organizer for the themed Social Studies investigation


                                                                            

Civil War Era                                                     Depression Era                                                    
Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt                         Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor
                                                                             Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse (click Teacher Resources/ Marco-grams/ July 2003)

Native American culture
Julie of the Wolves by J.C.George                     World War II
                                                                            Hiroshima by Laurence Yep
                                                                            Sadako and the 1000 Paper Cranes by E. Coeur

Colonial Era                                                        Immigration                                                                                                         
Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes                      Dragonwings by Laurence Yep


 Note: For spring, 2009, we will be participating in campus-wide commemorations of Women's History Month. The ELE3340 history plan will develop a biographical lesson on an important woman in the military (the 2009 theme at EIU) closely related to your novel.  Women who were the focus of this plan and of WHM display in spring (07) are listed below: We are going to research to find appropriate women with a military impact who are connected with the times and/or circumstances of the novel.  Already, there is Beryl Markham, Clara Barton, Jane Addams, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Out of the Dust relates well to the photographer, Dorothea Lange, etc., women as photographers and journalists, etc.

Ideas from spring 2007 (some will be useful to us, 2009, and we will find more with further research)
Johnny Tremain -- Suffragettes (also fighting for a voice in natinal affairs and for the vote) -- Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Jane Addams
Julie of the Wolves -- Rachel Carson (naturalist, environmentalist), Sacajawea, Pocahantas.  Do we know any Native American women who served in wartime?
Dragonwings -- women pilots: Amelia Earhart, Sally Ride, Katharine, the sister of the Wright Brothers, Beryl Markham
Across Five Aprils -- Harriet Tubman, Clara Barton, Louisa May Alcott
Roll of Thunder -- Marian Anderson, Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer
Out of the Dust -- Eleanor Roosevelt
Hiroshima/ Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes -- Jane Addams, Eleanor R.