What Happened HERE Before Us? - Launching Local History

Carry the G2-Spring I-STILL-WONDER chart to the front. Read aloud each child's wondering. Highlight wonderings about 'who came here' and 'what happened in this place.'

• Honor each wondering by name
• Group similar wonderings

M-3-F-CHR-01-A Illustration

MG-1 reproduction at 11x17 - Main Street with 5 floating source-lenses (architecture, newspaper, photograph, oral-history elder, plaque). Diverse children on sidewalk holding the 4-question Source Detective Card. Land acknowledgment ribbon at bottom. Warm watercolor style. Used as the entry-point visual every lesson.

MG-1 Illustration

Used as the central anchor connecting all seven unit threads - displayed at the front of the room throughout the term. The G2-Fall land-acknowledgment ribbon at the bottom is INTENTIONAL - the G3-Fall unit never erases the G2-Fall foundation. Regionally customizable: the storefront, the elder, and the plaque can be modified to match the school's actual locality, but the FIVE LENSES are universal.

Last spring you wondered about families - YOUR family and other families. This fall we ask a new question: what about the PLACE - this town, this region, the land we walk on? What happened here BEFORE any of our families arrived? Today we begin a new role: PLACE HISTORIAN. A historian asks two big questions of every place: WHAT happened here, and HOW DO WE KNOW? Over 18 weeks we will use FIVE kinds of sources to answer.

• Wonderings become compelling questions.

  model I wonder when our school was built. I wonder who lived on this land first.

  prompt What is one thing you wonder about THIS place?

• What is our class's compelling question?
• Name 2 kinds of sources a place historian might use.

• Each child writes 2 NEW wonderings about THIS place on green sticky notes.

  scaffold Sentence frames: 'I wonder when ___', 'I wonder who ___'
• Group sticky notes on the wall into 5 emerging themes (timeline / Indigenous / settlement / sources / civics).

M-3-F-CHR-01-B Chart

24x36 laminated chart titled 'OUR CLASS COMPELLING QUESTION' in 48pt at top. Below in 36pt: 'What happened HERE before us, and HOW DO WE KNOW?' Below that, 5 colored bands ready for sticky-note wonderings - one per emerging theme. The chart stays on the wall all term.

• What is our class's compelling question? Write 1 wondering you want to investigate.

• Recite class land acknowledgment (carried from G2)
• Preview: tomorrow we build a timeline

• Walk to one landmark, sign, building, or place-name in your neighborhood. Write or draw one wondering about it.