(This is the abstract for Carol Buswell’s curriculum unit, “Exploring Your Community.”)
Developed by utilizing the resources of the National Park Service’s Tribal Legacy Project, the National Archives, the National Museum of the American Indian, and the Library of Congress, this teaching unit provides specific tools and activities for intermediate grade students, as well as their teachers, parents and/or caregivers to help them discover the sacred beauty, strength, and diversity of their own communities. It can be used effectively for most other age groups as well.
In this curriculum, Native American methods of gathering and distributing information, as well as the more typical methods used by Lewis and Clark, serve as models for learning the first, most basic differences between primary and secondary sources and their uses. Learning these principles and methods is reinforced by creating, caring for, storing and using primary and secondary sources about the student and his/her own community. It can be presented as a complete unit over a two week period or broken up and introduced sequentially as individual lessons over a longer period of time.