Tara L. Ehler
One potential challenge to implementing this unit is ensuring historical accuracy in students' work. It does presume that students have studied the 20
th
century, so the lessons contained within the unit do not explicitly address the historical content. Is it fair then to hold students accountable for 100% accuracy for such a wide swath of time? Students must understand that historians and writers, including fiction writers, concern themselves with accuracy and conduct extensive research before beginning a project, and there will be certain standards and expectations for students to meet.
The goal of this unit is really to assess students' understanding of broad strokes of history. That is, do students understand change over time in society regarding women's roles, race relations, working conditions, and other social conditions in an urban center? Can they create a family that will reflect these changes? Do they acknowledge the role of major world conflict in disrupting family life or creating industrial growth? Since this is geared toward 8
th
grade students, it is foundational work for their high school study of American history.
This project is asking students to synthesize all the work they've done in the 4
th
quarter in order to create this family. My interest in assigning this project is to pull the picture together for students in a creative way—not to hone in on specific details. This is how the work students do might differ from a research paper or History Day project. It is more akin to writing historical fiction. While I will ask them to strive for accuracy and will mark them off for anything blatantly incorrect, I am mostly asking them to rely on their class notes, rather than conduct intensive research and so cannot hold them accountable for minor errors. I will provide a timeline for students to refer to and check themselves against, especially when it comes to immigration dates,