Unit 1 Day 3 Detailed Lesson Plan

Teacher: Jarrett Losey Course: United States History

Lesson: Unit 1, Day 3- Personal History and Grade Level: 11th

Perspective
Class Length: 60 Minutes

Overview:
Coming midway through a unit designed to increase students awareness of the importance of
perspective and identity in history, this lesson strives to give students a chance to see for
themselves how an individuals story can be undervalued, altered, or even simply ignored in the
study of history.
The lesson for day 2 had the students analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of their textbook,
and deciding what they would like to see in a history textbook. In working together to summarize
my personal history into three sentences, the students will see firsthand the difficulty of telling
someone elses story that the authors of their textbooks face.

Enduring Understandings:
Students will understand the importance of their perspective and of understanding the
perspective of others.
Students will understand the inherent shortcomings of an attempt to shorten and explain
someone elses experience.

Goals/Objectives:
Students will understand the difficulty of paring down a story while retaining its
authenticity.
Students will understand the challenge and therefore danger of attempting to tell someone
elses story.
Students will work together in groups synthesizing and summarizing information.

Materials:
Enough copies of my personal history for every student.
Desks arranged into small groups.
Procedure: 60 minutes total
Warm-Up (15 minutes)
Put essential questions on the board:
o How does individual perspective alter the description and interpretation of historic
events?
o Does history teach us a single story?
Two truths, one lie- Students will play this ice breaking game with partners. It serves to
break the ice, as well as get students thinking about what parts of themselves they want to
share with others. (5 minutes)
In their groups, have the students discuss if they have ever seen a movie or TV show
based on a book they have read. How did the two interpretations of the story differ? After
a few minutes, ask the groups to share what examples they came up with. (10 minutes)

Body (40 minutes)

Pass out your own personal history. The students should first read it on their own and
take brief notes on what they find important. (5 minutes)
Have the small groups discuss and compare notes. They should negotiate and decide on
three sentences that best summarize my story. (15 minutes)
Next, have the groups share and explain their summaries with the class, while you copy
them onto the board. (5 minutes)
As a class, discuss how well these three sentence summaries tell my story. Do they even
all tell the same story? How does this compare to small sections in a textbook attempting
to cover incredibly complex subject matter? (15 minutes)
Close (5 minutes)
Return to essential questions, ask the students if they have a good understanding of the
questions importance. Have our discussions answered them? If not, what can we do next
time to make sure they are?