Remembering the Past

Content Objectives

Students will:

• Learn about the concept of remembering the past.
• Access prior knowledge and build background about important events in American history, and how we have learned from them.
• Explore and apply the concept of how to properly memorialize historical events and figures.

Language Objectives

Students will:

• Demonstrate an understanding of the concept of remembering the past.
• Orally use words that describe different kinds of monuments and who or what they honor.
• Extend oral vocabulary by speaking about visiting monuments and memorials.
• Use key concept words [remember, monument, building, sculpture, structure, significant, memorial, honor, anniversary].

Other

Explain

• Use the slideshow to review the key concept words.
• Explain that students are going to learn about remembering the past:
• Why it is important to remember the past.
• How we can remind ourselves of what has happened in the past.
• Different types of monuments and memorials that can be built.
• When to visit a monument or memorial.

Model

• After the host introduces the slideshow, point to the photo on screen. Ask students: What is this a map of? (The American colonies). What do we remember about how the American colonies were formed? (They were formed after the American colonists revolted against the British and won the Revolutionary War, etc.)
• Ask students: What important events have occurred in America since it became an independent nation?(Trail of Tears, slavery, The Civil War, World Wars I and II, Vietnam, The Depression, women's suffrage, civil rights movement, etc.).
• Say: Many important events have happened in America to make it the country that it is today. How can we make sure that these events, and the people who made them possible, are remembered forever? (Permanent monuments and memorials can be built to teach about people and events of the past).

Guided Practice

• Guide students through the next two slides, showing them that monuments and memorials are built to teach others about past people and events. Always have the students describe the monument or memorial, and its purpose.

Apply

• Play the games that follow. Have them discuss with their partner the different topics that appear during the Talk About It feature.
• After the first game, ask students to talk about what people and events deserve monuments, and what do not. After the second game, have them discuss monuments they can think of that are in America, and what they commemorate, as well as monuments they can think of that have built in the rest of the world, and their purpose.

Close

• Ask students: What monument, in the United States or somewhere else in the world, would you like to visit? Explain what you already know about the monument, and what you would like to learn about it, and the people or events it memorializes.
• Summarize for students that monuments and memorials are some ways in which we remember the past. Monuments and memorials remind older people while teaching younger people about what happened. Encourage them to think about what they would like to be remembered for.