Children today are so used to the speed of modern life that they find it hard to imagine life when four miles an hour was considered "high speed." The development of the Erie Canal was really a turning point in US history. A vast and contentious government funded project, "Clinton's Ditch," as it was known, became the nation's first super highway linking the farms and produce of the developing midwest and the urban and international markets available on the Eastern Seaboard. It also provides a logical point of entry for teaching students about how to determine historical context.
I discovered Myra's chapter on teaching historical context at the same time I discovered Martha Kendall's engaging book, The Erie Canal. This book is beautifully written to allow students to identify literary techniques that establish historical context. These include the "Extended Now and Then Contrast," "The Mid-Narrative Jolt," "Sensory Descriptions of the Unfamiliar," and "Thought Experiments." These techniques are described in detail in Making Sense of History. After trying out the ideas described in the book, teachers identified additional authorial craft that might be used to highlight historical context including using questions to encourage tentative thinking and quirky anecdotes to highlight a key point and to portray the humanity of the participants in history.
We began by examing some photographs from a JackDaws kit on the Erie Canal. Each group was given a separate set of photographs and asked to note what was familiar and what was unfamiliar. Participants filled out a t-chart (in the attached file) to note their observations. These observations were shared with the class. Having built some prior knowledge and some relevant vocabulary, students then broke into groups to read sections from Kendall's book. Their purpose was to identify different techniques the author used to create a sense of the historical context. We began this portion by demonstrating the point through a shared reading activity. Finally, students wrote a letter from themselves to a child living along the Erie Canal. All guiding sheets, as well as a list of references, are included in the attachment.