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Economics and Geography Lessons

The House on Maple Street


MCPS Status of Book as of 4/4/96:
Approved as a Reading/Language Arts Core Book for Grade 2
Approved as Library Book for Grades PreK-2


Title: The House on Maple Street by Bonnie Pryor with illustrations by Beth Peck (Mulberry Books, New York, NY, 1987)

Lesson Developed by Patricia King Robeson

Literature Annotation: This beautifully illustrated story was written by reflecting upon the time when two girls who live at 107 Maple Street discover an ancient arrowhead and a broken china cup. This story covers hundreds of years of history and many locations within the United States. It begins with the Native People using the land to meet their basic needs and describes what happened to them. Later the settlers came looking for a new place to establish a home and a small town developed.

Grade Level: 2-5

Duration: 2 to 3 class periods; this book could be used to introduce communities or to trace the development of how communities grow overtime.

Economic Concepts: Scarcity, Production

Geography Themes: Place, Relationships: Human and Environments, Movement

MSPAP Outcomes and Indicators:

Economic Outcome: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the historical development and current status of economic principles, institutions, and processes needed to be effective citizens, consumers, and workers in American society.

Indicators:

Geography Outcome: Students will develop an understanding of geographic concepts and processes as needed to examine the role of culture, technology, and the environment in the location and distribution of human activities.

Indicators:

Objectives: Students will be able to:

Vocabulary: arrowhead, wagon train, course of stream, gold rush, bubbling spring, westward movement

Materials:

Teacher Background: Knowledge of the early history of our country from the time when only the Native People lived here through to the westward movement.

Lesson Development:

Review/Motivation:

  1. Show the students a china cup containing an arrowhead. Rattle the object in the cup, but do not let the students see what is in the cup. Ask them to predict what they think is inside. Put the cup aside without telling them what is in it until after they have heard and discussed the story.

  2. Explain to the students that the story they will hear could have taken place in many locations. It begins 300 years ago and ends in the present. Ask students to tell you what they think the land around the school and their homes might have looked like three hundred years ago.

  3. Read aloud the verse below and ask the students to explain it.
    Where we walk to school each day,
    Indian children used to play.
    All about our native land
    Where the street and houses stand.

  4. Read the story, The House on Maple Street, as students listen.

Activities:
Story Discussion:

  1. Explain how the physical setting of the land was used by the Native People to satisfy their wants and needs. (After the fire, grass and small plants grew on the land and the buffalo came for food and water. The Native People followed the buffalo. They killed the buffalo to satisfy their needs.)

  2. Identify the natural resources the Native People needed and explain how they used them. (Buffalo for clothing, food, tepee, shoes, cooking utensils; trees for poles, weapons, canoes; water for drinking, washing, traveling; clay for pots.)

  3. Explain why the Native People left the area. (Scarcity of natural resources - buffalo moved on because of lack of food and the Native People followed them.)

  4. Explain how the people in the wagon trains used the land and its resources to satisfy their wants and needs. (Wagon trains traveled on flat land along creeks and rivers whenever possible. The people used the creeks for drinking water and to water animals, bathe and wash clothing; trees branches were used for small fires for cooking meals, and logs were used as benches.)

  5. Explain how Ruby's family changed the physical setting of the land to satisfy their wants and needs. (Cleared the land of trees to build a house and plant crops. Used the trees to build the house and make furniture.)

  6. Describe some of the jobs the early settlers had to do. (Plant trees and crops, travel to town for supplies, harvest crops, wash clothes, build fences, fish for food, prepare meals, take care of the farm animals)

  7. Ask if any of the children have to do jobs like the ones we just described? Which ones? How is the way the children do their jobs different from the way they were done in the story? (Students should bring out the fact that today's technology has made their job easier and faster.)

  8. Ask how transportation changed during the story? Why? (Native People had horses and canoes; settlers had carts or wagons and horses or oxen; and later came trucks and cars. Technology - new inventions - changed the way people traveled.)

  9. Explain the sequence from a single house being built to a town being developed. (A road was built in front the house and wagon trains used the road. As more and more people started to move west, some of them decided to settle in the region near the little house. The creek was filled in and more roads were built and then more houses and shops.)

  10. Ask why a truck delivered ice to the houses on Maple Street during the early days of automobiles? (People needed ice for their ice boxes to keep their food from spoiling.) (You may need to explain this to the students.)

  11. Ask why trucks don't deliver ice to houses today? (Electricity was discovered and electric refrigerators were invented.)

Now show the cup and arrowhead to the students and explain that finding items like these help us explain how people in the early years of our country lived and how they satisfied their wants and needs. You might define the cup and arrowhead as artifacts and explain how archaeologists are people who research the past and analyze items like these.

Sequence Activity:

  1. Divide the students into groups of seven and give each student a sheet of plain paper and a copy of the "Sequence Strips" handout. Instruct the students to think about the story and pictures in the book, and to draw a picture which illustrates the information on the strip of paper given to them. Students should label their pictures and may also color them.

  2. After the students have completed their drawings, instruct them to work as a group and paste their pictures in the correct order on a sheet of chart paper.

  3. Ask for one group to volunteer to retell the story using their sequence chart.

Conclusion/Closure: Divide students into groups of four and give each group a piece of chart paper. Instruct them to make a chart of the story using these headings: Write headings on the board.

Who Came Why They Came Why They Left How They Changed the Land

Each group that came and left should be represented. They can look at their earlier sequence pictures or you may list the following groups on the board: Animals, Native Americans, Settlers, Ruby's Family, Ruby's Brother, Ruby's Niece, School Teacher, Young Couple and Chrissy, Jenny and her family. (See the answer chart.)

Thoughtful Application:
Have the students add another column to their charts, with the heading:

How did each group meet their needs and wants at this location/place?

Discuss the charts, helping students look for similarities and differences among the groups and also with themselves.

Extension:
Make a timeline of the story, and follow this with pictorial personal timelines. Discuss all the types of homes in the story and compare them to the students' homes.

Return to the Economics and Geography Lessons introduction page .

Return to the Social Studies Overview .


Last updated on April 4, 1997
Maintained by John L. Day
<jday@umd5.umd.edu>