Created by Kristen Huffman
Biography:
Kristen Huffman is a 6th and 7th grade social studies and Spanish teacher and MTSS leader at Hancock Middle School, in Hancock, MI. Some of Kristen’s professional passions include connecting students with the relevance of social studies and discovering the satisfaction of learning.
Title of Lesson: Wilfred Erickson Interview - Copper Mining, Primary and Secondary Sources Lesson Plan
Subject Area: US History
Grade Level: 6
Approximate Time to Do Lesson: three weeks of 50 minute class periods
Tags: Social Studies, Copper Mining, Keweenaw, Economics, Human-Environment Interaction, Primary Sources, Study Skills
Overview: This series of lessons is an in-depth study of an oral interview with Wilfred Erickson, Painesdale copper miner. These lessons are designed to explicitly teach key learning skills to beginning of year sixth graders, including activating background knowledge, rereading, summarizing, studying unknown vocabulary, and writing long answers. The primary objectives of this mini-unit are for students to understand what a primary source is, along with its learning benefits compared to secondary sources, and be able to describe the copper mining process that Wilfred Erickson used. Students will study the oral interview with a partner, participate in a Jigsaw read of excerpts from Hollowed Ground, and finally write a long answer covering a summary of copper mining, the stages of copper mine development, and state benefits and drawbacks of primary and secondary sources.
Standards Addressed:
6 - G1.2 Use skills of geographic inquiry and analysis to answer important questions about relationships between people, their cultures, and their environments, in their communities and within the larger world context. Students use information to make reasoned judgments based on the authenticity of the information, critically analyze the information and present the results (focus on this standard)
6 - G2.2.5 Generalize about how human and natural factors have influenced how people make a living and perform other activities in a place. (exposure to this standard)
6 - G4.3.1 Explain how people have modified the environment and used technology to make places more suitable for humans, as well as how modifications sometimes have negative/unintended consequences (exposure to this standard)
6 - G4.3.2 Describe patterns of settlement and explain why people settle where they do and how people make their livings (exposure to this standard)
6 - G5.1.4 Define natural resources and explain how people in different places use, define, and acquire resources in different ways. (exposure to this standard)
Modifications for Diverse Learning Needs: Extra scaffolding questions, vocabulary identification and introduction, interview transcript.
Lesson Objectives:
- Students will be able to activate their background knowledge on the first day of the mini-unit, and activate their learning at the beginning of each class.
- Students will be able to reread, summarize, study unknown vocabulary, and write a long answer.
- Students will be able to summarize the mining of copper from the Champion Mine in Painesdale, MI in the early to mid-1900s.
- Students will be able to summarize the stages of copper mine development, and describe technology used to mine in the 1840s.
- Students will be able to state the helpfulness of and drawbacks of our primary and secondary sources.
Download the Lesson Plans and Support Files Below
- Lesson 1: Erickson Interview Lesson Plan (document)
- Lesson 1: Copper Mining Sources Long Answer Rubric (document)
- Lesson 1: Hollowed Ground - Jigsaw Reading Guide (document)
- Lesson 1: Hollowed Ground(pdf)
- Lesson 1: Erickson Interview Slideshow (powerpoint)
- Lesson 1: Wilfred Erickson Transcripts (research files)