"All states and schools will have challenging and clear standards of achievement and accountability for all children, and effective strategies for reaching those standards."
— U.S. Dept. of Education

The work of creating clear standards in various disciplines and at various grade levels has dominated the attention of educational leaders in America for several years. Such standards now exist, and our focus needs to move to the second part of the challenge: supporting "effective strategies for reaching those standards."

Community-centered projects that involve students in authentic research for a public purpose can be tremendously effective strategies for helping students reach high standards. Following are the Montana Standards for Writing with illustrations of how they have been taught by teachers in the Montana Heritage Project.

Montana Standards for Writing

Content Standard 1: Students write clearly and effectively.
Content Standard 2: Students apply a range of skills and strategies in the writing process.
Content Standard 3: Students evaluate and reflect upon his/her growth as a writer.
Content Standard 4: Students write for a variety of purposes and audiences.
Content Standard 5: Students recognize the structures of various forms and apply these characteristics to his/her own writing.
Content Standard 6: Students use the inquiry process, problem-solving strategies, and resources to synthesize and communicate information.
 

Upon Graduation–End of Grade 12 Benchmarks: Students will:

Students in Roundup explored their personal roots by writing the histories of the oldest artifacts in their families’ possession. Students found themselves conversing with parents and grandparents about objects that had long been on display in their homes but about which they had known little: a tea cozy from Scotland, a necklace from Crete, and a clock that had been a wedding gift to great-great-grandparents. 

Simms students created a self-guided auto tour for the Sun River Valley. They began by compiling a list of historical locations in the valley, plotting each site on a map of the area, then researching and writing concise summaries of what happened at each place. Next, the class contacted organizations and individuals throughout the valley requesting pictures. In order to fund the project, the Senior Honors English wrote a Montana Arts Council Special Projects Grant. When Travel Montana saw the finished brochure, they had 20,000 copies printed.

Students in Broadus researched, wrote, and recorded an audio tour of the Powder River Historical Society Museum. Each student chose a station of the museum, made an inventory of all artifacts in his or her station, then created lists of information needed to better understand their subjects. Students then searched for answers in the public library and by interviewing people identified by museum staff. Students wrote reports for the library archives and created a set of audio tapes for use in walking tours of the museum.

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Upon Graduation–End of Grade 12 Benchmarks /Students will:

Seniors in Nancy Widdicombe’s class at Harlowton conducted a year-long research and writing project into the history of ranches that have been in the same family for at least 100 years. Teams created sets of open-ended questions designed specifically for each family and drawn from their preliminary research. Each team toured important sites, including barns, hay meadows, lofts, buffalo jumps, and historic outbuildings or houses. They transcribed the interviews and wrote reports about the site visits. After discussing how to organize the material they had gathered, they agreed to tell the story of each family including material dealing with the past, with the present, and with the families’ expectations for the future. Individual students within each team wrote drafts that dealt with different parts of the overall history. They combined these drafts into unified histories, which were edited before being sent back to the respective families for further editing and revisions. After another draft to clarify some facts and add needed detail, the final drafts were read by multiple editors. Students created a PowerPoint presentation of their findings and a video of the project for a public open house. They created a website featuring photographs and excerpts from their book. The book itself, Images of the Upper Musselshell Valley, was the main product they created. They printed twenty-five copies, intended primarily for family members and the local museum and library, but they had to reprint it twice to meet demand for it from the community.

Students in Darlene Beck’s class in Townsend wrote a book focusing on Women in History. They explored local newspaper and museum archives to see what events influenced women’s lives. They compiled lists of women in the community and drew on background readings in historical narrative about women to formulate questions they wanted to ask. They invited seventy-five women from the Townsend area to attend an afternoon tea at the school to kick-off their project. Students interviewed them about many aspects of their lives as nurses, teachers, homemakers, mothers, post mistresses, musicians, bus drivers, senators, veterans, waitresses, mayors, business women, ranch hands, gardeners, and more. Students spent six weeks interviewing, photographing, and writing about women of the Townsend area. They published a book of vignettes called The Women of Broadwater County, which covered such topics as the devastation of local families by construction of the Canyon Ferry Dam; sugar beet farming in the 1930s; the advent of cars, radio, television, and computers; and the impact of World War II on their lives. The audio recordings of the interviews were donated to the Broadwater County Library’s archives, and copies of the book were sold to the community.

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Upon Graduation–End of Grade 12 Benchmarks:/Students will:

Rose Goyen’s English classes in Libby conducted oral interviews with fifteen Korean War veterans and wrote essays based on their researches, which were compiled into a book. 

Students in Dottie Susag’s class in Simms wrote a comprehensive history of the high school from 1918-1941. They research this through school records, the census from the County Superintendent of Schools, and local phone books (to track down people still living who might have information). They recruited twenty-two community mentors to serve as consultants, teachers, advisors, and chaperones on learning expeditions. Mentors came to the school and classes throughout the quarter, accompanied students to interviews of the elderly, provided expert advice in specific subject areas, encouraged students to seek further help, and worked with students on individual writing projects. The history of the school was divided into four periods, and each team created a draft of a history for one of these periods. Through discussions about each others’ work, the separate drafts were edited into a single book.

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Upon Graduation–End of Grade 12 Benchmarks:/Students will:

The Bigfork Chamber of Commerce asked the Mary Sullivan’s high school classes to host a celebration commemorating Bigfork's centennial. As the centerpiece of this community celebration, students created a carefully scripted and illustrated 100-year history of the community. They combined archival and oral interview research. Their quest for turn-of-the-century information led them to trunks in their grandparents' attics as well as to the K. Ross Toole Archives at the Mansfield Library at the University of Montana. They presented their findings at Bigfork: One Hundred Years By the Bay, a program attended by about 350 community members in the Bigfork Center for the Performing Arts.

Students in the Libby Heritage Class decided to take the excitement of local history to younger students. Teacher Jeff Gruber arranged for them to teach a class to third graders. Their ideas evolved slowly into a scripted skit of scenes from Libby history, with characters in costumes which was followed by question and answer sessions. "We were given something to strive for," said student Donna Mari, "and now it’s our turn to help. I think it would be very careless on our part if we didn’t use our opportunities to share what we have learned."

Juniors at Chester High School selected historical photographs from the Liberty County Museum collections, then researched and wrote interpretive text, creating display panels for the museum.

Roundup High School conducted research for interpretive signs for the Park Trail, which will be a historical interpretive walking tour. Students have selected and photographed fourteen sites as part of an ongoing, multi-year project.

Students in Renee Rasmussen’s English classes in Chester researched and wrote nominations to the National Register of Historic Places for three local buildings. The most recent was a house built by Estonian immigrants. In researching who had built the house and why, students learned about the Russian Revolution, the Dawes Act, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl and the history of the railroad.

Students in Libby researched and wrote a cookbook, Cooking with Characters. Each recipe was accompanied by a family story, and in many cases a photograph, connected to that particular dish.

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Upon Graduation–End of Grade 12 Benchmarks:/Students will:

Students at Simms High School researched the years 1925-1935 in their community and used their research to write essays, short stories, and poems for a literary magazine, Stories in Place. They visited the Cascade County Historical Archives to read bound copies of the Great Fall Tribune for the decade and conducted interviews with community members who could tell them first hand about their experiences in the time period. Writers visited the classroom to discuss different genres, then students wrote essays with guidance from Michael Umphrey and poems with the help of Linda Peavy, who spent a week in the school under the Montana Council’s Artist in Residency Program.

Juniors in Mary Sullivan’s classes in Bigfork published a literary magazine, Voices from the Millennium, after working with writers Michael Umphrey and Mark Gibbons. The magazine included a wide variety of poetry and prose. Each member of the junior class submitted at least one piece of writing.

As part of a study of World War II and its impact on the local community, freshmen in Christa Umphrey’s classes at Ronan High School wrote questions they had about the topic. They began by looking through dozens of books of various genres that were related to the war, such as Studs Terkel’s The Good War, Ellie Wiesel’s Night, and John Hersey’s Hiroshima. Their work was to form their own questions. When the class had a few hundred, they began a search for answers. They visited the World War II collection at the Miracle of America Museum in Polson. Throughout the year, speakers with personal experiences of the war visited the classroom. They read excerpts from the Diary of Anne Frank before attending the University of Montana’s production of the play. They recorded interviews were recorded with local veterans as well as men and women who lived on the homefront during the war. They investigated such topics as Ronan high school sports during the war, the impacts of the war on local agriculture, local entertainment during the war, the effects on families, local conscientious objectors, the internment of Italians and Japanese at Fort Missoula, and the rationing system. The unit culminated with an open house at which the gymnasium was converted to a temporary museum. The exhibits featured writing in many forms: essays, maps, PowerPoint presentations, and photo essays.

Red Lodge students in Lori Bremer’s English classes researched the history of mining, agriculture, art and ethnic origins in their community during first semester. During second semester students used this research about local places and people to write research-based stories, poems, and a film script.

Students in Jeff Gruber’s government class in Libby met with community residents over a ten-week period for a community self study based on the Montana Study conducted in the 1940s. Working as a team, students and community members researched and discussed the most serious problems the community faces, putting them in a larger historical and geographical context. Students teamed with adults to research and report back to the group on such topics as histories of the town’s churches, schools and businesses; the impact of the natural world on the way people work and recreate; the town’s economic connections to the state and the nation; modern influences and how they have changed the community. The focus of the study was upon how to make life in Libby better. One outcome of the project is an ongoing effort to create a performing arts center in the town.

Students in Chester posed the question, "What does it take to build and sustain community?" They did research in old newspapers and at the local museum as well as through interviews with community members to complete ten-page research papers on such topics as "The Role of Fathers," "Hospital and Clinic: How it Affects the Community," "Economic Relationships between Agriculture and Businesses in a Small Town," and "The School’s Part in Shaping Community." The papers were read to the community at an open house, and then were placed permanently in the school/community archives.

Students in Phil Leonardi’s geography class in Corvallis used the internet and various printed sources to identify the most important national and global events in each decade from 1910 to 1950. They organized this information into a concept map, and then each student selected one topic for deeper research. Each student wrote a 500-word narrative about the event. After these narratives were completed, students were invited to explore what local impact the event had. This led to more research, including oral interviews and trips to the archives. They wrote a second 500-word narrative about those local impacts. Based on these narratives, each student created a one-minute script for a video. The completed video, "Corvallis Minutes," described global events of the twentieth century and how they affected Corvallis. The finished 30-minute video was shown to the community at a special Heritage Night program.

© 2002 Montana Heritage Project

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