1. Teaching the West and Biography
Applying the content in our classes

2. Studying History
“History is not tidy. It contains conflicting narratives. Not all of the answers are known. Understanding requires active thinking. This is the brand of history that students want to inquire about, discover, and make their own.”
“History: Uncovering the Past Through Inquiry,” Kathleen Anderson Steeves.

4. Presentation Questions
After brief group discussion around topical questions:
What are the essential questions you might ask or answer after considering the topics we’ve encountered this week?
What “big ideas” have you gleaned from this week pertaining to the west, biography, gender, race and ethnicity?

5. Essential Questions for our Teaching
What are the large questions (overarching) that link this topic to others in a course?
What are the essential questions that students should be able to answer after study of this unit/topic?
How will you know they can answer those questions? In what ways can they show you what they know?

6. Essential Questions
Is there such a thing as one true story about a person’s life?
How has the media helped to preserve and/or create the sense of regional difference?
What choices do biographers make and what responsibility do they have to their reader?
What is the relationship between the historical reality of the west and the mythology of the west?
How do we balance the compelling aspects with the important story of a person’s life?
How is the perception of the western woman and the eastern woman different in the historical context?

7. Before Reading/ Setting Learning in Motion
Anticipation Guide
(a few short controversial statements with no subordinate clauses)
All women perform similar roles and social tasks.
Women exert influence primarily as the partner to men.
Women’s contributions to society are overshadowed by men’s accomplishments
Certain jobs are best done by women.
Gender determines the roles people play in society.

8. BKWL Building background knowledge inquiry photos and images
anticipation guides
short excerpts
brief primary source documents

9. Chipeta “Quray’s Squaw” or “Queen of Utes”

10. Competing Interpretations

11. During Reading/ Building Knowledge Phases
Use your own autobiography or a short biographical piece (Chipeta, Emily Griffith, Florence Roche, Sister Blandina …)
Interview another person about her/his past
Exchange autobiographies and “sources”
Birth    Education    Activities Interpersonal relationships    Career goal

12. Working with Biography Instructions
Interview your partner
Read their autobiography
Add their source documents to your collection of information (DO NOT explain the source document to your interviewer)
Write a short biography
Give your written work back to your partner for review
Share out with the group the stories or the process

13. Building Knowledge
What did you find most surprising in the account you read about this person?
In what ways was she similar to other people in her time and place?
In what ways was she unique and very different from others?
Is this a person you would pick as a friend and why?

14. Empathetic Writing Formats
Poetic response templates
Where I Come From
I Am Poem
Bio poem
Cinquain
RAFT - Role, Audience, Format, Topic

15. After Reading/ Extending the Learning
Chipeta
What insights does her story offer about issues of race and immigration in the 19th century?
Who were other important figures in her story?
Chief Hosa
Chief Quray
Evans
Pitkin
Meeker
Adams

16. After Reading/ Extending the Learning
Emily Griffith -- Historical context
Social Gospel Movement
Jane Addams, Hull House
Immigrant culture in America - - Assimilation agenda
City Beautiful Campaigns
Social Darwinism

17. Extending the Learning
Denver and other Places for map-based Inquiry
Central School
Five Points
Twenty-fourth Street School
1633 Humbolt Street
1521 Filmore Street
Longfellow School
13th and Welton
Capital Heights Presbyterian Church
Fairmont Cemetery
Kiwanis Club
Colorado Education Association
Number 9 Pearl Street – Denver
Pinecliffe

18. Ideas for assessing knowledge
Create a FACEBOOK or MY Space profile
Twitter your character for a week
Make a calendar for a week in the life of your character
Fill in the personality head for a biographical figure
Design a Monument or a Stamp
Write a Eulogy or Epitaph
Venn Diagram

19. Resources for Educators