1. Unit 1: American Ideas and Historical Skills
What is History?
What Makes an Event Historically Significant?

2. Questions What is the difference between history and the past?
What makes an event historically significant?
What is evidence?

3. Task 1: Source Analysis
Sons of the Pioneers

4. “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” (1934)
I'm a roaming cowboy riding all day long, Tumbleweeds around me sing their lonely song. Nights underneath the prairie moon, I ride along and sing this tune. See them tumbling down Pledging their love to the ground Lonely but free I'll be found Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds. Cares of the past are behind Nowhere to go but I'll find
Just where the trail will wind Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds. I know when night has gone That a new world's born at dawn. I'll keep rolling along Deep in my heart is a song Here on the range I belong Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds.

5. Tumbling Tumbleweeds Written by Bob Nolan
Canadian-born writer, musician, actor
Formed The Sons of the Pioneers with Roy Rogers in Los Angeles in 1934
Tumbling Tumbleweeds was their first hit and made them instantly famous
Why would an historian be interested in this song? Is it historically significant?

6. Historical Significance
“The story of a man who leaves his past to follow the wind, planting no roots and feeling little for the loss. As a cowboy he is content to follow the sun and the wind, where every day a new world is born.” -Richard Aquila
From Wanted Dead or Alive: The American West in Popular Culture (pp )

7. The Myth of the American West
Popular theme in American culture
Cowboys, open space, unlimited freedom, a fresh start, individualism, an escape, the simple life, one with nature, beauty of nature, something better, opportunity
Historical context: The Great Depression
Significance: the song sheds light on the meaning of the West in American culture and American values
How did Americans feel as they struggled through the Great Depression?
Why would a song about a happy wandering cowboy be so popular during this time, when the frontier hadn’t existed for 40 years?

8. Task 2: I Left a Trace
Jot down activities you have done over the past 24 hours
From those activities, make a list of the traces you left over the last 24 hours. (eg, going on Facebook and leaving a post, going to the gas station and receiving a receipt)
Did you leave those traces purposefully or accidentally?
Do you think those traces will be preserved or not?

9. Discussion Questions
Did you do anything that left no trace or a trace that cannot be preserved? What does this mean for historical records?
If future historians could only study your traces, how much could they know about our society?
What would future historians think about you if they studied your traces? What if they could only study traces you purposefully left?
What other kinds of traces, relics, testimony, and records would help them learn about our society?
If historians were specifically trying to study you, what materials, not created by you, could they use?

10. Historical Significance
Task 3: Sketching Significance
On a blank piece of paper, sketch out the most significant events, people, and developments in the history of the U.S. or the world.
Can use pictures/icons/words
Arranged in a way that makes sense to you
You have 15 minutes. Don’t stress! I only want you to think quickly.
You will have to explain your choices and how/why you arranged it the way you did.

11. Time’s Up!
Before we move on, add yourself to the sketch…

12. Reflection
Consider:
Does your sketch show well-known events and powerful people or ordinary lives that most people live? (leaders/political history v. social)
Are there references to nations, countries, or empires in the sketch?
Does your sketch connect to local, national, or international issues?
Do your choices feature big, historical changes? (e.g. Indus Rev)
Did your choices change people’s lives?
How did you position yourself in relation to the other parts? Why? (is the individual/historian part of the historical process)
Does your sketch tell a story? If so, what’s the message? (narrative history v. chronology)
What reasons or criteria helped you decide what to include in your sketch? How do we determine historical significance?

13. Historical Significance
Task 4: Time Capsule
Prompt: Pretend that we are creating a time capsule. I need you to select five items that you consider to be significant for historians in 100 years to understand our society.

14. Discussion Consider within your group:
Did your items change people’s lives?
Are your items the result of/cause of big, historical changes?
Do your items connect to local, national, or international issues?
Do your items reveal something unique about our time period?
Are your items connected to well-known events and powerful people or to ordinary people like you and me?
Based on your answers to these questions, what criteria did your items need to meet in order to make it into the time capsule?
In other words… how do we decide that something is historically significant?

15. Two Criteria for Historical Significance
Did it result in change?
Did it have an affect on many people over a long period of time?
(Maybe it prevented change)
Did it reveal something?
Does it tell us something about an important issue in history or today?
Example: justice, equality, the environment & natural resources, economics, culture, interaction & conflict

16. History vs. the Past What’s the difference?
Past: All the stuff that has ever happened. This includes things that we know about and things that have been lost to us forever.
History: The interpretation of the past. History is constructed [created] by historians who select sources, ask questions, and make inferences [a statement or judgment] from the remains of the past

17. Summary: How is History Made?
It is interpreted in comparison with other sources
Evidence is incorporated into meaningful historical account
It is found and deemed significant
A trace emerges
It is preserved
(I left a trace) (time capsule) (history v. past)

18. Reflection In your google docs journal, respond to these questions:
How is history different from the past?
What makes something historically significant?