Lesson 1: Scope Time Machine, The 1920s
Author: Lindsay Kenney
Date created: 03/19/2013 6:05 AM EDT ; Date modified: 03/27/2013 6:10 AM EDT
VITAL INFORMATION
Subject(s)
History, Language Arts (English)
Grade/Level
Grade 8
Time Frame
39 minutes
Learning Context
Students have been working rigorusly on an ELA workbook provided by the state. For Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, the
students will be taking a break from this workbook. The students will be taking a look at Scope magazine, by Scholastic. We
will have the opportunity to read nonfiction about the 1920s and how snowdogs helped to save lives in Nome, Alaska. Today
the students will do a gallery walk and learn about the 1920s so they have a background for the article.
Objectives and
Understandings
Students will be able to define the Roaring Twenties.
Students will be able to identify relevant topics of the 1920s in a video clip and galley walk.
Students will be able to analyze different aspects of the 1920s such as epidemics, entertainment, innovations, and life for
African Americans.
Students will be able to analyze aspects of the 1920s and compare them to advances we have today.
Students will be able to explain kinds of medicine that were available, life for African Americans, innovations, and popular
entertainment during the 1920s.
Students will be able to read an analyze a nonfiction article and gather information about a particular topic, The Relay to Nome.
Students will be able to analyze and differentiate the differences between a fiction and nonfiction article in Scope magazine.
Students will be able to analyze infomation and draw conclusions about the 1920's through various multimodalities.
Students will be able to incorporate new vocabulary terms in their final news article prompt.
Students will be able to participate in whole-class and small-group discussions.**
Students will be able to synthesize information about Nome from several sources in order to response to a writing prompt, news article.
Students will be able to compose a news article celebrating the 88th anniversary of the Relay to Nome.
Students will be able to incorporate dialogue with proper punctuation in their composed news article.
Students will be able to identify characteristics of a news article such as, headline, byline, lead, explaination, additional information.
Essential Questions
Rationale
1. Administrators: By introducing the students to the 1920s, they are able to learn a little about history,
and make comparisons to current topics today. This lesson will allow the students to read various articles
and analyze/compare two different time periods. This lesson incorporate non­fiction, and will be a great
introduction to reading an article on the relay to Nome, Alaska. 2. Students: Throughout this lesson, you will be working with a topic that is easily relatable. You will be able
to make comparisons of the 1920s and your current time period. You will be able to see how times have
surely changed. You will also be able to move around and work with your peers. 3. Critical Pedagogues: The students will be able to work with one another while taking a journey through a
gallery walk of the 1920s. This lesson is great because it incorporates non­fiction with reading and analysis.
The students will also be getting a well­deserved break from the workbook.
Background Knowledge and
Skills
The students have background knowledge of the 1920s from their history class. They have also read nonfiction pieces before,
including magazines. Today's class will require the students to work with one another reading various articles about the
1920s.
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Standards
NY- New York State Common Core Standards (2011)
Subject: English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects
Grade: Grade 8 students:
Content Area: English Language Arts
Strand: Reading Standards for Literature
Domain: Key Ideas and Details
Standard:
Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the
text.
Strand: Reading Standards for Informational Text
Domain: Key Ideas and Details
Standard:
1. Cite the textual evidence that most strongly supports an analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from
the text.
Standard:
2. Determine a central idea of a text and analyze its development over the course of the text, including its relationship to supporting
ideas; provide an objective summary of the text.
Standard:
3. Analyze how a text makes connections among and distinctions between individuals, ideas, or events (e.g., through comparisons,
analogies, or categories).
Domain: Range of Reading and Level of Text Complexity
Standard:
10. By the end of the year, read and comprehend literary nonfiction at the high end of the grades 6–8 text complexity band
independently and proficiently.
Grade: Grades 11–12 students:
Content Area: English Language Arts
Strand: Reading Standards for Literature
Domain: Key Ideas and Details
Standard:
Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the
text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
Domain: Integration of Knowledge and Ideas
Standard:
Demonstrate knowledge of eighteenth-, nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foundational works of American literature, including
how two or more texts from the same period treat similar themes or topics.
Summary
The students have been working really hard on their ELA workbooks. For the next few days, the students will be taking a
break and reading an excellent nonfiction piece from Scope magazine. Today, the students will be taking a journey through a
gallery walk of articles from the 1920s. They will answers discussion questions that go along with these articles. This lesson is
designed to introduce the article for Thursday.
Procedure (Including
Motivation and Closure)
Anticipatory Set (4-8 minutes)
1. Introduce Class
2. Talk to the students about the 1920's.
3. Ask them what they know about this time period.
4. Briefly mention 4 topics,
innovations
entertainment
African Americans
epidemics/medicine
5. Show video- Scope Time Machine: The 1920's
Discuss:
modern hairstyle
access to medicine
school opportunities
women's rights
entertainment
money
Instruction/ Guided Practice/ Independent
6. Tell the students about gallery walk. (Define gallery walk.)
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7. Explain to students that they can work together with a partner/group. (DO THIS AFTER INSTRUCTION IS GIVEN.)
8. There are 4 stations. At each station, there is an article and a question that I would like you to answer about the 1920's.
9. Have students go around and answer each question with their GROUP. (USE ANIMAL CARDS TO PUT CLASS INTO GROUPS.)
10. Tell students they have 20 minutes to do this, and then we will be discussing the answers as a class.
Gallery Walk Articles.
Important Innovations
What were some innovations that affected people's lives during the 1920's?
The Birth of Mass Culture
During the 1920s, many Americans had extra money to spend, and they spent it on consumer goods such as ready­to­
wear clothes and home appliances like electric refrigerators. In particular, they bought radios. The first commercial radio
station in the U.S., Pittsburgh’s KDKA, hit the airwaves in 1920; three years later there were more than 500 stations in
the nation. By the end of the 1920s, there were radios in more than 12 million households. People also went to the
movies: Historians estimate that, by the end of the decades, three­quarters of the American population visited a movie
theater every week.
But the most important consumer product of the 1920s was the automobile. Low prices (the Ford Model T cost just $260
in 1924) and generous credit made cars affordable luxuries at the beginning of the decade; by the end, they were
practically necessities. In 1929 there was one car on the road for every five Americans. Meanwhile, an economy of
automobiles was born: Businesses like service stations and motels sprang up to meet drivers’ needs.
Entertainment
What kinds of entertainment were popular during the 1920's?
The Jazz Age
Cars also gave young people the freedom to go where they pleased and do what they wanted. (Some pundits called
them “bedrooms on wheels.”) What many young people wanted to do was dance: the Charleston, the cake walk, the
black bottom, the flea hop. Jazz bands played at dance halls like the Savoy in New York City and the Aragon in Chicago;
radio stations and phonograph records (100 million of which were sold in 1927 alone) carried their tunes to listeners
across the nation. Some older people objected to jazz music’s “vulgarity” and “depravity” (and the “moral disasters” it
supposedly inspired), but many in the younger generation loved the freedom they felt on the dance floor.
African Americans
What was life like for African Americans during the 1920's?
Race and Culture
African­American life in the 1920s was segregation in the South just as the Jim Crow Laws had stipulated. Blacks could
only get jobs as domestics, agricultural workers, and the timber industry. Marcus Garvey developed a back to Africa
movement, which was a scam. Harlem Renaissance was when poets (Langston Hughes) writer Zora Neale Hurston,
musicians Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington. Alain Locke led the movement (first black Rhodes Scholar). From 1925 to 1935
black and white artists got together to discuss each others special areas and appreciate their efforts, no matter what the
skin color was. From 1915 to 1970 some 6 million blacks came North seeking relief from segregation and better jobs, it
was known as the Great Migration. The blacks went to New York City, Washington D.C., Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles
mainly.
Medicine
Throughout the 1920s, new technologies and new science led to the discovery of vitamins and to increasing
knowledge of hormones and body chemistry. New drugs and new vaccines were released following research begun
in the previous decade. Sulfa drugs became the first of the anti­bacterial wonder drugs saving thousands of lives
from bacterial and viral infections. In 1920 Herbert McLean Evans discovered Vitamin E, and its anti­sterility properties, and Elmer V. McCollum
discovered Vitamin D, its presence in cod liver, and its ability to prevent rickets, a skeletal disorder. Vitamins
A, B, C, K, and various subtypes of each were also discovered during the 1920s. Insulin ­ In 1920 Dr. Frederick Banting of the University of Toronto had an idea that would solve the
dreaded diabetes disorder. Previous to this, a diagnosis of diabetes meant slowly wasting away to a certain
death. Fred Banting and his colleague Charles Best were able to make a pancreatic extract which had anti­
diabetic qualities which they successfully tested on diabetic dogs. Soon an entire research team was working
on the production and purification of insulin. Other researchers assisted the discoverers to purify insulin for
use on diabetic patients and the first tests were conducted on 14 year old Leonard Thompson early in
January 1922. Following the publicity of the success of these tests there was a huge world­wide demand for
insulin with some sufferers who were near death being saved. These were a spectacular success. Word of
this spread quickly around the world giving immediate hope to many diabetic persons who were near death.
A frenzied quest for insulin followed. Some patients in a diabetic coma made miraculous recoveries. Penicillin was originally isolated from the Penicillium chrysogenum (formerly Penicillium notatum) mould. The
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antibiotic effect was originally discovered by a young French medical student Ernest Duchesne studying
Penicillium glaucum in 1896, but his discovery was ignored by the Institut Pasteur. 11. Have students come back together and discuss questions as a class.
12. Briefly describe the article we will be reading tomorrow.
Extension
Sample Student Products
Differentiated Instruction
Assessment/Rubrics
Students will be assessed by participating in the discussion as well as answering questions from the gallery walk.
Reflections on Teaching
Materials, Resources,
and/or Handouts
video
article
questions
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