American Time Capsule

Lesson Plan - Get It!

Audio:

About a hundred years ago, the idea of creating time capsules really took off.

A time capsule is a durable, yet relatively small, storage unit that contains items that represent a certain time and place. It is meant to be opened decades or even centuries later by people living in a new and unfamiliar world.

• Have you heard of time capsules before, or perhaps even helped create one?

Read America's Oldest Known Time Capsule Was Made by Paul Revere and Samuel Adams. Then, reflect upon the following questions.

• Which of the time capsules is the best? What makes you think so?
• What kinds of items did the time capsule creators include?
• How did those items represent their times?

Time capsules often contain fascinating collections of artifacts. Artifacts can mean little without context. When we put things in context, we are reimagining the world in which certain people, objects, or events occur.

Read about Establishing a Broader Context, and make notes on the following questions.

• What is the definition of historical context?
• How does a historian establish historical context?
• Locate at least two or three other sources on the topic of historical context using your own research, and add any new information or ideas to your notes.

After compiling your notes, consider this question.

• If you were to write a history on a chosen topic, what elements would you include to create the context for your topic?

Make a list of at least five or six elements that can be provided to show historical context based on your readings or your own ideas.

Then, reflect on the following questions.

• Can you think of any other elements that would help create the context for historical events or artifacts?
• What makes context so important to understanding the past?

Historical people, objects, and events do not occur in isolation. Rather, they are part of a vast web of connections with other people, objects, and events. One of the jobs of the historian is to complete that web as much as possible so the real meaning and significance of history become more clear.

In the Got It? section, you will gather some of the clues to understand the contexts of contemporary America—the America of the past 30 years.