Margaret B. Clancy
SAMPLE LESSON PLANS
The lessons plans for each week will follow the corresponding week’s curriculum. However, from the outset students are to bring a folder which they will use for their mapwork. They are also required to keep a list of vocabulary words which will be introduced to them as we study the unit. All students will be required to read one of the books listed under Reading List for Children and to make a book report which will be due the 6th week of the unit. These books listed are either fiction or nonfiction books written by or about people and happenings in the New Haven area. Finally, all students will be required to write a short story about how New Haven will be in the year 2020.
WEEK 1 Lesson Plan—To present New Haven on a broad scale to the students the following will be used:
I. A present day map of New Haven obtained from the New Haven Chamber of Commerce will be distributed to each student. If it is not possible to obtain enough free maps from the Chamber then the downtown portion will be copied and distributed. A discussion with the students about various landmarks shown on the map will insure that students are looking at the map correctly.
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A. Students will locate the following on this map:
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1. The Green
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2. Dixwell Avenue
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3. Wooster Square
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4. The Railroad station
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5. Columbus Avenue
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6. Whalley Avenue
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7. Chapel Street
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8. Grand Avenue
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B. Students must explain the following:
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1. What are the signs used to designate hospital?
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2. What sign is used to designate post office?
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C. Students must write down all the points of interest they can find on this map.
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D. Each student will have to write down two things that they learned about New Haven from studying the map.
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1. Some will concentrate on transportation
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2. Some will concentrate on closeness to the water
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3. This exercise should bring out an awareness on the part—of the students of New Haven’s main features.
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II. A video of New Haven obtained from the Chamber of Commerce will be shown to give students information on New Haven today. (This video is not yet complete but will be by fall, 1992. The Chamber will make it available to me in the spring and may also send a person to speak while presenting the video)
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III. Photos of New Haven’s skyline taken this summer from East Rock will be shared with the students. They will be asked to identify different buildings and landmarks depicted in the photos. Other activities will spring from this.
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IV. Pages will be read to the students from one of the New Haven Guide books such as “Enjoying New Haven, A Guide to the Area” by Betsy Sledge and Eugenia Fayen.
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A. Selections will be based on interest of the students.
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B. Pages dealing with the ethnic mix in New Haven will be included.
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C. Students will write a one page essay on their ethnic heritage. These will be displayed around the room.
WEEK II—I will discuss the settling of New Haven under the Reverend John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton, and the dividing of the area into nine squares with the public area in the center. Fair Haven Middle School has a huge mural depicting this part of New Haven’s history, and I will tie that in to the lesson by having students do some research on the mural.
Once I’ve caught the students’ attention with the mural I will discuss the origin of the grid plan used in laying out New Haven. We will look at the main streets running North and South and East and West. A discussion.of the location of a meetinghouse on the public square will reinforce in the minds of my students how important the input of citizens is to the running of democracy, to the running of a city. I will point out to the students that the Meetinghouse also demonstrates the centrality of religion since (1) its main function was as a house of worship, and since (2) only members of the church (i.e. the saved or elect) could participate in government and since (3) the town leaders were leaders of the church. Pictures, maps, prose and poetry of the Colonial times will be read to or by the students, and they will begin to collect new words for a vocabulary list.
WEEK II—Lesson Plan
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I. As we start this week’s lessons students will be asked about the mural of John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton in the front hallway of Fair Haven Middle School. I will take each class down to look at the mural and classroom discussion on the founding of New Haven and the mural will follow.
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A. Students will have to find out who painted the mural, when, who posed for it, and why was it done.
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B. Students will have to write a paragraph describing the mural.
II. Students will be given a copy of “A Plan of the Town of New Haven 1748”, which shows the Public Square and its surrounds from the original Wadsworth map of 1748. Since it was 1638 when New Haven Colony was founded, this map comes long after the founding of New Haven, but it is a clear picture of the town planning used. The founding fathers used previous knowledge and experience along with vision in carving out the nine square town. The town plan was based on the ideas of the Romans whose camps were laid out centuries before in a grid pattern with a central square left open for use as a market or common. It was also based on the ideas of the Greeks who wanted the houses and buildings situated so that they would break any winds which could bring chill and possibly disease. Thus, the town was laid out with its center a good distance from the water even though New Haven had a good harbor and its founding fathers had set their sights on it becoming an important maritime center.
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A. Students will study the map and identify the nine squares then and now.
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B. Students will be required to locate on these maps as many familiar streets and landmarks as they can using last week’s information
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C. Students will keep this map in their map folder.
III. The tape, “New Haven Walking, Cultural Tour” by Annabelle Simon Cahn, will be played. Not all will be used because the majority of the tape concerns buildings of Yale. However, there is great information on New Haven’s early history and some of its buildings on and around the Green.
IV. Students will be given copies of Psalm LXV.
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A. The occasion, content and meaning of the psalm will be discussed.
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B. Students will write a poem about present day life in New Haven.
V. A picture of the Pardee-Morris House will be shared. This house is important to the study of colonial New Haven because it is one of the oldest houses still standing. Located in Morris Cove, the first structure was built in 1685 by Eleazer Morris. Burned by the British troops in 1779, it was rebuilt the next year incorporating what remained of the original structure. It remained in the Morris family until 1915. At that time it was purchased by William Scranton Pardee, a defendant of the Morrises. Pardee donated the house to the New Haven Colony Historical Society in 1918 with an endowment for its maintenance as a museum for public use. The house is important to our unit because it is a home in which New Haveners lived for two hundred years. Its boards, chimneys, and furnishings tell a great deal about life in those times.
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A. Some students may wish to do a report on this house.
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B. Here is a chance to take a field trip.
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C. There is an excellent history of the Pardee-Morris House in the Journal of the New Haven Colony Historical Society, Vol. 28, Number 2, Spring 1982 titled,”The Pardee-Morris House and Its Owners” by Elizabeth M. Betts. Some of this will be shared with the students.
VI. Students will be assigned a research paper on early New Haven. Topics will include: Judges’ Cave, origin of the name New Haven, life of John Davenport or Theophilus Eaton, the Puritans, the Quinnipiac Indians, or any topic of their choosing that deals with colonial New Haven. Information on these topics can be found in the Reference section of any library, in “New Haven, an Illustrated History” edited by Floyd Shumway and Richard Hegel, or in “Three Centuries of New Haven The Tercentenary History” by Rollin G. Osterweis. These papers are to be one page in length, just long enough to acquaint the student with the particular topic chosen.
WEEK III—A focus on some business and industry that grew up during the 1700s and 1800s in New Haven will help the students understand how New Haven grew from a colonial settlement to an industrial city. While the founding fathers initially settled New Haven with dreams of building a large shipping center, a small harbor and other obstacles frustrated that goal. It was the development of industry that really changed New Haven and made her the city of today. Two vital contributions to that growth were the mass production technique first used by Eli Whitney at his gun factory here in New Haven in the late 1770s and the railroad which grew and expanded across our nation in the 1800s.
Encouraged to make and produce their own products because of the deteriorating relationship with England in the early 1700s, New Haveners became deeply involved in manufacturing. This economic independence helped to keep New Haven strong during the Revolutionary War against England.
After the war economic growth and immigration were encouraged. Eli Whitney’s idea of mass production had been embraced, and this gave a surge to the growth of industry and the job market. Mass production required large numbers of workers. The “Single Man”s Boarding House” still standing on the site of Eli Whitney’s factory on Whitney Avenue is a reminder of this. While we recognize that Eli Whitney is best known for his invention of the cotton gin, it was his ideas for mass production that affected New Haven.
New Haven’s population jumped from 10,678 in 1830 to 40,000 between 1850 and 1860. Industry employed many of these immigrants, and the railroad hired a large number. It was during these times that the railroad was growing, and it needed laborers to lay the tracks throughout the state. The railroad was providing the avenue for transporting New Haven’s products to markets in other cities, states, and countries. The New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad Company was organized in 1872, and the New Haven Railroad Station was built in 1874.
Among the many ethnic groups that immigrated to New Haven during these times were the Italians. Many of them were brought here to work on the railroad under the Padrone system and stayed. The padrones were Italian employment agents who paid for the passage of young Italian men to America, found jobs for them and then took all or most of the money these men made as payment for this service. Our unit next week will talk more about the contributions Italians made to New Haven.
WEEK III—Lesson Plan
I. Slides that report the New Haven Census from 1790-1990 will be shown. These are available from the Ethnic Heritage Center of New Haven, Inc., and it is possible that a representative will come with the slides to present them to the classes.
A. Questions about the information on the slides will include:
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1. What were the years of largest immigration to New Haven?
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2. What were the years of largest migration?
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3. What was happening in the world during these years?
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4. Why did these happenings affect the flow of people into New Haven?
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B. Students will be asked what ethnic groups are growing the fastest in New Haven today based on the information from the 1990 census and their own observations?
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1. What is happening in the world today which is generating this growth?
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2. What institutions help the new arrivals to New Haven?
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3. Are they the same basic groups that helped the new arrivals of long ago? Why?
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II. Information on the contributions of Eli Whitney will be shared from the Eli Whitney Historic Site—Time Line and the picture of the site that I took this summer.
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A. Students will write a one page report on Eli Whitney and his ideas for mass production which changed manufacturing in New Haven for ever.
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B. We will take a field trip to the Whitney site and the Grove Street Cemetery where he is buried.
III. Looking again at our maps of New Haven today, we will locate the railroad station and the tracks.
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A. The part railroads played in the growth of New Haven will be discussed
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B. We will examine the part Italian laborers played in the building of the railroad.
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1. I will read pp 26-27 from “The Ethnic Almanac.”
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2. I will read pages from “The Italians, In Their Homeland, In America, In Conn..”
IV. We will look at a pamphlet, “Points of Interest in New Haven” put out by the Chamber of Commerce in 1935 for Connecticut’s Tercentenary.
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A. We will read of the industry in New Haven at that time.
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B. A copy of the New Haven map contained in the pamphlet will be given to each student
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1. This map also has sites of interest marked on it, which we will discuss.
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2. We will compare the map of 1935 to our present day map to see the changes in New Haven.
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a. We will discuss how redevelopment affected the city.
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b. We will discuss how super highways affected the city.
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c. Students will have to find the 1935 sites on today’s map.
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d. Hopefully, these activities will excite some students to research sites and industries of New Haven that no longer exist and make optional reports on them.
At this point in the study of the unit students should be reminded that they are to read one of the books from the reading list and make a report on it for the last week of the unit. Some of the suggested books deal with the lives of Italian immigrants and their struggles and/or various sites in New Haven.
WEEK IV and V—During these weeks we will look closely at the two ethnic groups I’ve chosen, the Afro-Americans and the Italians, to see what they contributed to the growth of New Haven. The first known Italian who settled in New Haven was William Diodati, who arrived in 1715. By 1800, according to the census, there were 102 Italians in New Haven, but by 1888 2,000 had come. They came primarily from the province of Benevento and settled in the Wooster Square area. This had been an Irish area originally, but as the Irish became more affluent they moved out. The old homes around Wooster Square were used as boarding houses and divided into apartments by these immigrants. St. Michael’s Church was established in 1889 on Green Street by the Italians. It remains an Italian church to this day, meaning it has no geographic boundaries as other parishes in the Roman Catholic faith do. Its parishioners are Italians who live in and out of New Haven. By 1900 there were so many Italian immigrants a Consular office was established on Chapel St. to assist them. St. Michael’s had increased its population to 10,000. The immigration continued with large numbers coming every year until the outbreak of World War I. Even within the Italian community there was a distinction between those who came from Benevento and settled in the Wooster Square area and those who came from the North, called the Marchigians, settled in the Hill section, and called St. Anthony’s their church. Here it is important to point out to the students that the church was important to the Italians as it was to the Afro-Americans for similar reasons, really. The Italians came from a place that had no national government until 1873. Italy had strong provinces that all competed with one another. The thing they almost all had in common was religion. So too were the Afro-Americans lacking a common nation or even common customs. They had moved around so much that it was only in their churches that they found security.
The Afro-Americans’ migration began with World War I and increased more with World War II. Factories like Winchester Repeating Arms were in dire need of workers and paid Afro-Americans from the South to come up to New Haven to work. And they were happy to come because their opportunities for education, employment and owning property in the South were very limited. By moving to New Haven they were giving their families and themselves a bright new future without fear of the Klu Klux Klan mobs, segregation, or separate education. They were brought up by trainloads, and many settled right near Winchesters in what is called Newhallville.
Already existing in New Haven were Afro-American Churches which provided the “home” for these new arrivals. The Dixwell Avenue Congregational Church had been organized in 1820 and was one of the churches that supplied support for these Afro-Americans. The Church has constantly supported and promoted education and activities that would enrich the lives of its members. Many of its programs are currently held in the Dixwell Community House, The Q House.
Another Afro-American Church of great significance in New Haven was organized in 1844. St. Luke’s Episcopal Church is located on the corner of Whalley Avenue and Sperry St.. Historically it is considered one of the most beautiful Afro-American churches in America.
The 3rd Afro-American Church of great significance to New Haven and its Afro-American community is Immanuel Baptist Church, located at the corners of Chapel and Day Streets. Today it runs the Grand Avenue Homeless Shelter and among its prominent parishioners in the 1930s and ‘40s was Polly McCabe, an outstanding humanitarian who has a school named after her. We will look at that next.
Polly McCabe, daughter of a Baptist minister, was educated in the Stratford public schools. She graduated as valedictorian from Stratford High School In her adult life she settled in New Haven and with her husband raised four children. During this time Folly worked at the “Q” House and did a great deal of volunteering. She was particularly concerned about young Afro-American girls who were dropping out of school when they got pregnant. She worked toward providing an education for these girls while they were pregnant. Unfortunately it wasn’t until after her death that the Polly McCabe was started at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. The New Haven Board of Education then built an even bigger Center in 1986 on Columbus Avenue. The Hill Health Center and the Mary Sherlock Day Care Center are located there also.
We will discuss other prominent people, both Afro-American and Italian, living and dead, who made a good life for themselves because they lived in New Haven. I will include Mayor John Daniels and the owners of Keyes Funeral Home, Dr. William Verdi and the Schiavone family
WEEK IV and V—Lesson Plan
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I. Photos of St. Michael’s Church and the statue of Christopher Columbus at Wooster Square will be shared with the students. Students will be asked to write a one page report on one of these pictures or one of the other pictures which will be used these weeks.
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II. We refer to the present day map of New Haven as we talk about Afro-American migration and the three churches that provided a home for the new arrivals.
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A. Pictures of these buildings will be shared along with a picture of the Dixwell Community House.
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B. Students will have to locate these buildings on their maps.
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III. Students can make a list of streets, buildings, statues and other art work named for prominent Afro-Americans or Italians in New Haven.
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IV. Students can make a list of Afro-American or Italian social clubs and tell why they are important.
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V. Students can compare and contrast the importance of the churches in the lives of the Afro-Americans and Italians.
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VI. The picture of the Polly McCabe Center and newspaper articles on the Center will be shared with the classes. Some students may want to do a report on this. (News articles are listed under Classroom Material).VII. The picture of the Keyes Funeral Home will be shared.
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A. This should be located on the map.
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B. A discussion of other successful Afro-Americans in New Haven will follow.
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C. Some students may want to write a report on this picture.
Not all of the assignments above are to be done by every student. The students will be allowed some choices.
WEEK VI—At this point I will turn to what lies ahead for New Haven and for the citizens of New Haven, namely my students. I will point out that the great industries like Winchester no longer exist in our city, and that there are few jobs for an unskilled, uneducated laborer We live in a city that is service-oriented. Computers, telecommunications, medicine, etc. . . . is where growth is today. These are where the jobs will be tomorrow. All of these require education. A discussion with students at this point should reinforce education as their immediate goal. I will then move to my point, which is to convince the students of New Haven’s value to them. I will point out that it is in the cities that man has developed his civilization to its highest form. Plutrach said, “The city is the teacher of man.”
We will look at the future of New Haven, namely the Taubman Mall, the completion of housing on Division Street, and the development of the Ninth Square. All of this futuristic discussion will be tied in to how it all will affect my students.
WEEK VI—Lesson Plan
During this week we will look at the film,”The City As Man’s Hope”, and discuss how the message relates to New Haven. I will read some selections from “Gathering of Ghetto Writers,” edited by Wayne Charles Miller.
All students will have to make a list of all the colleges and universities in the New Haven area. They will have to locate them on the present day map of New Haven and tell a little bit about each one. This assignment will tie in quite well with a program already in place between New Haven students and local colleges called MOST. This program invites students from 8th grade and high school to visit local colleges during a school day in order to learn what is available to the student after graduation from high school. These trips are free to the students and are usually done before April. Therefore, this assignment will call upon some prior knowledge the students have.
During this week we will look back at our maps again to find the Ninth Square. Using the oldest map and then the newest map students will be able to appreciate the importance of city planning. Current information on this project will be in newspaper articles which we will use. Since we will spend time learning about the future of New Haven through newspaper articles, the students will be required to write a newspaper article showing that they know the correct format, Who?, What?, When?, Why, How?.
WEEK VII—This will be our concluding week. I will tie up loose ends and then look at New Haven today. I will briefly talk of the art of politics, the art of compromise, and show how an Italian chairman of the Democratic part, Arthur Barbieri, and John Daniels, the Democratic mayor who is Afro-American, are working together for a better New Haven. I believe this will help the students understand pluralism, merit, compromise, the art of politics, and the importance of individuals getting involved in their government. They will come to understand that a democracy is built on individuals and their contributions, that New Haven is a city of democratic governance, that New Haven needs their talents and will share her riches with them.
WEEK VII—Lesson Plan
For the concluding week of the curriculum unit I will have a speaker from the mayor’s office come and speak on the importance of all individuals getting involved in government. I will have the speaker talk about when and how my students can become voters and why it is important. I will also have the speaker talk about where and how my students can get involved in activities provided by the city such as summer camp, volunteer programs, etc. . . . All of these things will give the students a sense of importance and a sense of belonging, It is at this age level that children are easily influenced by the “crowd”, so by reaching them as a group good things can happen for New Haven and for them.
I will call for book reports, short stories, map work and vocabulary lists. We will share these with one another in class. The vocabulary list we will make as a class by taking words from each student’s list. A big booklet with the best of all the students’ works will be put together for each class. These booklets will be available for parents and visitors to look through when they come into my classroom.
