Project Scroll

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    For teachers

    Project Scroll for classrooms Six free lessons on the real maps and records.

    Six ready lessons in local history and map reading, built on the real maps, directories and county histories of the St. Joseph River Valley. Free, nothing to sign up for, and nothing collected from students. Print this page and go.

    The teachers’ pack (PDF)Broadway in 3D

    Then and now

    Grades 3 and up · 40 minutes · Map reading, change over time

    You need: Seven towns, then and now and a screen or printed copies.

    1. Choose a town near your school. Open its page and fade slowly from the old plan to today.
    2. List three things that are still there (a street, a square, a river crossing) and three that are gone.
    3. Find the street that changed its name, using the challenge on the page.
    4. Talk about it: why might a town rename a street? Who decides?

    Going further: Walk the street, if you can, with the “Where am I?” button on a phone, and photograph what stands there now.

    Who was in town

    Grades 4 to 8 · 45 minutes · Primary sources as data, graphs

    You need: Who was in town and a screen or printed copies.

    1. Pick one town’s 1860 or 1861 business directory.
    2. Sort the entries into trades: law, medicine, food, building, transport, making things.
    3. Make a bar graph of the trades. Which town had the most lawyers? The most shoemakers?
    4. Ask: who is missing from a directory that people paid to be listed in? (Most farmers, labourers, women and children.)

    Going further: Compare two towns, or a directory of today, and write what changed.

    This day in the valley

    Grades 6 to 12 · 45 minutes · Primary and secondary sources, citation

    You need: The valley’s almanac and a screen or printed copies.

    1. Find the almanac entry nearest to today’s date, or a student’s birthday.
    2. Open the county history page it cites. Read the whole paragraph around the date.
    3. Decide: was the writer there? How many years after the event did they write? Who told them?
    4. Write a one-sentence citation for the source, with book, year and page.

    Going further: Look for the same event in a newspaper of the time and compare the two accounts.

    Weighing the evidence

    Grades 6 to 12 · 50 minutes · Evaluating sources, reasoning from evidence

    You need: Reading gravestones and the death certificate guide and a screen or printed copies.

    1. Read the guide together. List who made a gravestone, a death certificate and a county history, and when.
    2. Give pairs a disagreement: an age on a stone and an age on a certificate that differ by a year.
    3. Each pair decides which to trust and writes why, using the guide’s questions.
    4. Share: what extra record would settle it?

    Going further: Play one of the open cases on the case board as a class, and post the class’s answer.

    Broadway in 3D

    Grades 3 to 8 · 45 minutes · Map reading, measuring, change over time

    You need: Broadway in 3D (press Classroom lesson in the model) and a screen or printed copies.

    1. Open Broadway in 3D on the classroom screen and press Classroom lesson: six tasks in the model, each with a question.
    2. Go to the Old Public Square, where Broadway and State Street cross, and find the year the village was laid out.
    3. Slide Time to 1909 and read the painted shop signs. Ask: what kind of map tells us which shops stood here then?
    4. Use Measure to find how wide Broadway is from shop front to shop front, then walk south to the Pioneer Log Cabin and find when it was built.

    Going further: Fly out over Stone Lake and talk about what makes it unusual, then open “look through the postcard” and compare the model with an old card.

    The 1909 shop hunt

    Grades 3 to 6 · 30 minutes · Primary sources, sorting and counting

    You need: Broadway in 3D (press 1909 shops) and a screen or printed copies.

    1. Press 1909 shops in the model: thirty-four storefronts on the two business blocks of Broadway south of State Street, read from the 1909 fire map.
    2. Open each sign. Students list the shop and what it sold.
    3. Sort the list into trades: food, clothing, hardware, services and the rest. Which trade had the most shops?
    4. Ask: which of these shops would you still find on a main street today?

    Going further: Compare 1909 with the 1860 directory in Who was in town: what changed in fifty years?

    Notes for teachers