What Does it Mean to Be an American Part I

Today in class we'll see and hear about everyone's chosen artifacts.

• After hearing from everyone, we'll note our initial impressions of our set of artifacts by responding in our notebooks to this question:what values do these things seem to represent?

• We'll then hear about everyone's chosen "American" songs. Students will tell us the title, artist and a few key lyrics. We'll return to our notebooks and answer this question: What do these songs tell us about America? 

• We'll stay in our notebooks and write about what (if anything) seemed to be missing from these representations of America (artifacts and songs). 

• We'll have a final, more developed piece of writing in our notebooks responding to this prompt: Based on the artifacts and the songs, what conclusions do you have about what it means to be an American? What are the qualities, issues, concerns, and beliefs associated with being an American? What are the actions, purposes, and goals that express what it means to be an American? 

During the last part of class, we'll introduce the website that is going to guide our work over the next couple of days: What it means to be American.

Your homework (which you may be able to start in class) is to:

• Read assigned Smithsonian Article-Link to Assigned Articles

• Write about it. Summarize the story. Describe what you liked or didn't like about it. Identify the ideals or values it seems to be representing. Comment on what the article says about America or being an American. Be sure to use specifics and/or quotations as necessary. 

• Next, do another notebook response. Use this prompt and the guiding questions that follow: What does your family own that belongs in the Smithsonian? 

• What do you think it means to be American? And what do you own that might be able to answer the question? In your response, describe the object and why it belongs in the collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. 

• Finally, take a picture of the artifact (or if you don't have it, find an image that represents it). Save your picture to your American Studies folder because we'll be using them in class tomorrow.