The Library of Congress

America Dreams
Statue of Liberty

Teachers

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This project invites you and your students to search and sift through rare print documents, early motion pictures, photographs, and recorded sounds from The Library of Congress — right from your classroom! Experience the depth and breadth of the digital resources in the American Memory collections and tell the story of a decade as you help define the American Dream.

Objectives

By completing this WebQuest, your students will demonstrate their understanding of the American Dream. They will:

  • analyze, interpret, and conduct research with digitized primary source documents
  • interpret 19th and 20th century social life in the United States using digitized documents from the American Memory collections
  • define, present and defend their ideas about what the American Dream has been, through the decades
  • relate what they have uncovered from inquiry and research to their own American Dream

Knowledge demonstrated through performance:

  • competence in the use of electronic research tools (e.g., Library of Congress)
  • ability to assess the authenticity, reliability and bias of data gathered using electronic research tools
  • ability to create a product to present and defend their understanding of the American Dream
Curriculum Standards

You can link this project to your local or state teaching standards. The National Educational Technology Standards (NETS) may prove useful to teachers implementing this project, as well.

In addition to a body of content, this project teaches "thinking" and helps students make the connections needed to build deeper understanding of the content they are studying. As you develop your implementation strategy, what thinking and communications skills will you encourage? Inference-making? Critical thinking? Creative production? Creative problem-solving? Observation and categorization? Comparison? Teamwork? Compromise?

Standards

McREL 4th Edition Standards & Benchmarks

Civics Standard
Standard 14. Understands issues concerning the disparities between ideals and reality in American political and social life

Historical Understanding
Standard 2. Understands the historical perspective

Language Arts
Standard 4. Gathers and uses information for research purposes
Standard 9. Uses viewing skills and strategies to understand and interpret visual media

Entry Level Skills and Knowledge

A basic understanding of Internet research, knowledge of search terms to navigate in the American Memory collections, and reasonable facility with multimedia tools are needed.

Advice:
Working with archival collections, like American Memory, requires one to think like a historian or an archivist. Resources from the Teachers Page can help students to become familiar with these collections. Explore the Teachers Page to discover what can support your students' work.

If using primary source documents is new, read primary source documents. Develop a few practice lessons with students before you launch this WebQuest. You will find student lessons and teaching suggestions for your use.

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Last updated 12/19/2002