125 Years of Childhood: Comparing and Contrasting the Lives of Children in Connecticut

By Patricia Wiedenmann

Objectives:

Students will examine photographs of children from Connecticut History Online and compare these children's lives with their own in order to draw conclusions about changes in society over the past 125 years.

Suggested Grade Level: 5th-6th

Time Required: 50 minutes

Essay as Homework

Work Packets:

• CHO Photographs
• Venn Diagram

Procedure:

1. Introduce the lesson by having students think about differences they know about or might expect between their own lives and those of children in the late 19th-early 20th century. You might want to write responses on the board to refer to later.

2. Explain what students might look for in photographs to help them gather information about the past, details such as:

• Who is in the picture? Are there adults or only children? Is there only one child, or are there many?
• What seems to be the relationship between the people in the photograph?
• What are the children wearing?
• What is the setting of the photograph? Is it a city? The country? Inside? Outside?
• What can you see in the background?
• What activities are going on?

3. You might want to demonstrate this process of observation/analysis with the whole class using one of the photographs from CHO.

4 . Have students pair up and direct them to the CHO Images in the 125 Years of Childhood work packet. Let students browse amongst these images and their records to familiarize themselves with the website before they begin their assignment.

5. Have the students work in pairs to study the images and draw conclusions about the changing lives and roles of children in Connecticut.

6. Print and hand out the Venn Diagram and ask students to complete it by comparing and contrasting their lives today with the lives of children in the past.

Homework:

Have each student choose one photograph to write about. (You may want to print the students’ photos for them to take home.) Following your own writing guidelines, have each student write a short essay from the perspective of one of the children in the photograph describing what was going on just before the picture was taken, what is happening as the photo is taken, and what will happen next.

Possible Extension Activities:

1. Have students bring their own pictures from home and use them to show differences or similarities between their lives today and the lives of children in the past.

2. Have each student pick one image from CHO to compare and contrast with a photo from home in one paragraph or short essay.

3. Post the photos and text in the classroom or turn them into a PowerPoint presentation.