Welcome to Harvey, Illinois: Past, Present, and Future.

Abstract:
This project was designed to enable students to explore the history of Harvey, Illinois; the organizations and areas related to current life in Harvey; and to envision the role the students play in creating the future Harvey they desire. There are three sections--past, present, and future. Students come to three doors and make a choice whether to open the door to the present or travel through time to the past or the future in a time machine. There are a variety of activities that the students (in groups or individually) can perform that will help them learn what they need to perform the tasks.

These activities are most appropriate for students in grades 3-6 but can easily work for older students. Teachers of students in grades K-2 can use some of these activities with the whole class or choose those activities that match the abilities of their students. Illinois Learning Standards and NETS for the unit are included in the project. This project was designed to be very flexible. The activities are designed so that the length of time spent on the project will depend on the learners and their interest. The project can last from one to three weeks.

Throughout these activities, the teacher is expected to be facilitator, coach, and co-learner as all learn together about our community. In the teacher lesson plans, you will find many additional activities that you can add based upon the needs and interests of your students.

In order to prepare our students for the 21st Century and its demands, we must prepare our students to use visual information more effectively. Visual literacy will be one of the important tools that will help our students use the vast amount of information with which they will be bombarded.

According to the American Memory site title "Why Use Primary Sources", primary sources can bring "living history into our classrooms." Primary sources in the classroom will help students do the following:

1. "Develop critical thinking skills,

2. Understand that all history is local,

3. Acquire empathy for the human condition,

4. Consider different points of view in analysis,

5. Understand the continuum of history."

Using American Memory primary sources found in the Library of Congress web site can also add interest and depth to the lessons we teach in our classrooms. They are authentic and were not created for any particular grade level or curriculum topic so their effective use will depend on the levels of the students and the skill of the teacher/facilitator. With brain research demonstrating the power of creating connections from prior knowledge to new knowledge for learning, primary sources can enable learners of all ages to develop more comprehension as they use visual tools to create more connections.

Also, as digitization continues to become more common, we will have access to more primary sources than ever before. Because technology tools such as computers, digital still cameras, scanners, and digital video cameras have become more ubiquitous and reasonably priced, most families and schools have or soon will have ready access to these tools and will want to digitize their own primary sources for themselves and their ancestors.

Additionally, there is a surge of increase in genealogy research and scrapbooking. These two current trends together will most likely lead to many wanting to do digital scrapbooks with authentic primary sources. The ability to locate primary sources on the world wide web will make genealogy research much easier and more productive for individuals.

If you were not involved in the professional development activities on this web site, I highly recommend that you visit that section to explore more about visual literacy and primary sources.

To visit the teacher lesson plans for each section, you can click either here or at the top on past, present, or future. The order of the activities does not matter since the activities are independent of each other but it is expected that students will do some of the activities from each section.

VISUAL LITERACY	PRIMARY SOURCES	OUR COMMUNITY