Panama Canal: Part I

Recently in our literacy class, we were given an intriguing document-based lesson on the Panama Canal. The Inquiry/Essential Question was What is President Roosevelt doing in his autobiography and what role did the US play in the acquisition of the territory used to construct the Panama Canal? The rest of the lesson had us, the preservice teachers, played the role of the high school students. 

The first thing that we did was view a video on the Panama Canal in order to build prior knowledge because, let's be honest, most Americans know that the Canal exists and that is it. Next, we read a secondary source that outlined some basic information about events that led up to the construction of the canal. We were asked to underline passages that we felt were important, such as names, dates, and other important people. The third step was to read sections of Teddy Roosevelt's autobiography and summarize each portion. Additionally, we had to decide if the president was using lies, half-lies, exaggerations, rationalizations, or obfuscations in his autobiography.

The next portion of our assignment was to look at a collection of documents (letters, memos, political cartoons) and analyze them. Then, we were to share our interpretation of our assigned document with our group and share whether or not we thought it supported or challenged President Roosevelt's autobiography. 

This would be a great assignment to do with a high school class. It is interactive, encourages group work, and would be a change from the routine that I see in my class. Students will be able to learn how to examine a variety of sources and their thinking will be stretched and preconceived notions will be challenged.

I would love to use this as a lesson plan for my students in an upcoming unit on imperialism. I think that I would have to provide a little more background knowledge (like definitions of obfuscations, for instance) and model what types of "important" things they should look for in the Background piece.

What could possibly go wrong?