Defining and Reading the American Landscape
by Danita Dodson
The American Environment in Historical Perspective
Gilder Lehrman Project at University of Colorado, 2016
Metadata
Grade Level: 9-12
Number of class periods: 4
Common Core State Standards: RH 11-12.1,2,4,8,10; RH; WH 11-12.1a, b; RI.11-12.7
Unit Overview
Over the course of the unit, the students will analyze a passage from a secondary source document about the concept of landscape, and they will also evaluate primary source images related to the concept in this informational text. In addition, students will analyze poetic texts that are responses to the landscape. These “nature” writings from American literature offer students an opportunity to see the landscape through the eyes of the human presence within it. Students will closely analyze both the secondary source passage and the literary texts with the purpose of not only understanding the literal meaning but also inferring more subtle messages. They will ultimately understand the multiplicity of perspectives about the landscape that resonate in the poetry sources. Using textual evidence to draw their conclusions, they will present arguments as directed in each lesson.
Lesson Overview
In this lesson the students will carefully analyze a portion of a secondary source that argues the importance of studying the American landscape in terms of its multicultural human presence. This selected segment of the article will provide the students a broader understanding of the poetry that they will read in the lessons following this one. A graphic organizer will be used to help facilitate and demonstrate their understanding of the segment from the essay. As a writing assessment, students will carefully analyze primary source images of braceros, using key words from the selected secondary text.
Objective
Students will be asked to “read like a detective” and gain a clear understanding of the content of a passage from Patricia Nelson Limerick’s “Disorientation and Reorientation: The American Landscape Discovered from the West.” Through reading and analyzing the secondary text, the students will know what is explicitly stated, draw logical inferences, and demonstrate these skills by writing a succinct summary and then restating that summary in their own words. In this first lesson of the unit, this will be facilitated by the teacher and done as a whole-class activity. They will use a graphic organizer to help facilitate and demonstrate their understanding of the segment from the article.
Introduction
Patricia Limerick asserts that to fully study the American landscape in terms of both history and nature the scholar should pay close attention to the human presence in addition to the geography, climatic, botanical, and zoological qualities of a particular place. Who inhabited (or inhabits) the landscape? What is the person or group’s response to the landscape? In “Disorientation and Reorientation: The American Landscape Discovered from the West,” Limerick argues that American studies have traditionally focused upon the Anglo-American presence and response to a newly “discovered” landscape, underlining the narrow historical view that “patterns of change in landscape often reflect the choices and preferences of the segment of society that carries economic and political power.” She asserts “a full study of the human relationship to landscape cannot confine itself to a powerful elite” and must, therefore, include an exploration of the presence of minority workers who transformed, and were transformed by, their relationship to the physical landscape. This lesson centering upon the selected segment from Limerick’s article is helpful in exposing students to the idea of the multiplicity of experience in America’s past and present. A possible area of ethnic historical study is the immigrant/migrant experience in agriculture. The bracero program that resulted in the migration of many Mexican laborers during the World War II era is the subject of a subsequent lesson to follow this lesson.
Materials
Limerick, Patricia N. “Disorientation and Reorientation: The American Landscape Discovered from the West.” Journal of American History 79, no. 3 (1992): 1021-1049. The selected passage in this lesson is from page 1026.
Graphic Organizer 1: “Disorientation and Reorientation: The American Landscape Discovered from the West”
Bracero Posters in PDF format from the Smithsonian Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program). Click here.
Graphic Organizer 2: Analyzing the Photo
Vocabulary
landscape, presence, manifested, encounter, exclusive, place, human, disproportionate, Anglo-Americans, truncated, bracero
Procedure (Instruction and Assessment)
Set: the teacher will introduce students to the concept of landscape through a viewing of a slide show of relevant artwork. Students can contrast the images with the dictionary definition of landscape and their own experiences and imagination.
All students are given an abridged copy of Limerick’s essay “Disorientation and Reorientation: The American Landscape Discovered from the West” and then are asked to read it silently to themselves.
The teacher then “share reads” the letter with the students. This is done by having the students follow along silently while the teacher begins reading aloud, modeling prosody, inflection, and punctuation. The students are then asked to join in with the reading after a few sentences while the teacher continues to read along with them, still serving as the model for the class. This technique will support struggling readers as well as English Language Learners (ELL).
The teacher explains that the students will be analyzing this segment of the article today and that they will be learning how to do in-depth analysis for themselves. All students are given a copy of Graphic Organizer #1. This contains the selection from Limerick’s article.
The teacher puts a copy of Graphic Organizer #1 on display in a format large enough for all of the class to see (an overhead projector, Elmo projector, or similar device). Explain that today the whole class will be going through this process together.
Explain that the objective is to select “Key Words” from the first section and then use those words to create a summary sentence that demonstrates an understanding of what Limerick was saying in the first paragraph.
Guidelines for selecting the Key Words: Key Words are very important contributors to understanding the text. Without them the selection would not make sense. These words are usually nouns or verbs. Don’t pick “connector” words (are, is, the, and, so, etc.). The number of Key Words depends on the length of the original selection. This selection is 142 words long so we can pick seven or eight Key Words. The other Key Words rule is that we cannot pick words if we don’t know what they mean.
Students will now select seven or eight words from the text that they believe are Key Words and write them in the box to the right of the text on their organizers.
The teacher surveys the class to find out what the most popular choices were. The teacher can either tally this or just survey by a show of hands. Using this vote and some discussion the class should, with guidance from the teacher, decide on seven or eight Key Words. For example, let’s say that the class decides on the following words: landscape, presence, manifested, encounter, exclusive, place, human, disproportionate, truncated. No matter which words the students had previously selected, have them write the words agreed upon by the class or chosen by you into the Key Words box in their organizers.
The teacher now explains that, using these Key Words, the class will write a sentence that restates or summarizes what Limerick was writing about. This should be a whole-class discussion-and-negotiation process. The final negotiated sentence is copied into the organizer in the third section under the original text and Key Words sections.
The teacher explains that students will now individually be putting their summary sentence into their own words, not relying upon Limerick’s exact words. Again, this is a class discussion-and-negotiation process.
Wrap-up: Discuss vocabulary that the students found confusing or difficult. If you choose, you could have students use the back of their organizers to make a note of these words and their meanings.
Assessment: Distribute a primary source image and Graphic Organizer 2 to each student. Have the students write their responses to the questions on the handout. This can be either an in-class or a take-home assignment. The teacher emphasizes to the students that all of the arguments in a well-organized paragraph must be backed up with textual evidence taken directly from the passage that they have read today.
Extension (Writing)
Students will view images of Bracero Posters from the Smithsonian Bittersweet Harvest: The Bracero Program) and then, using the key words and concepts from the selected text from Limerick’s article and the Graphic Organizer 2, write about the human presence represented in the images of the landscape.
This writing activity will prepare students for the next day’s lesson, a close reading and analysis of “Day-Long Day.” This text is a poem about the bracero experience written by Tino Villanueva, a Mexican American writer whose parents were migrant workers during the World War II era. The application of Patty Limerick’s passage in today’s lesson will aid understanding of this poem and its focus upon the human presence within and response to the inhabited landscape.
Additional Resources
Bracero History Archive. Click here
Villanueva, Tino. “Day-Long Day.” Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing. 9th ed. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts. New York: Longman, 2009. 1061.
Vazquez-Aguilar, Erika. Soy Bracero. New York: Xlibris Corporation, 2011. [Book of poems by a Mexican American poet whose work is based upon memories of the bracero experience as told to her by her grandfather.]
Graphic Organizer 1
“The landscape thus has a number of layers, all demanding the scholar’s attention: rock and soil; plants and animals; humans as a physical presence manifested in their physical works; and humans as an emotional and spiritual presence, manifested in the accumulated stories of their encounter with a place. Our attention and curiosity here cannot be exclusive. One can glimpse the full power of a place only in the full story of human presence there. Thus, exclusive attention to the movements, actions, and impressions of Anglo-Americans is equivalent to the arbitrary editing of a scripture, skipping entire chapters and devoting disproportionate attention to a few featured verses. The complete story of the investment of human consciousness in the American landscape requires attention to the whole set of participants . . . With anything less, the meaning of the landscape is fragmented and truncated” (Limerick, “Disorientation and Reorientation: The American Landscape Discovered from the West”).
Key Words:
Summary:
In Your Own Words:
Graphic Organizer 2: Analyzing the Photo
Photo # ______
Give the photo a title:
What is the significance of the central figure(s) or object(s)?
What action is taking place in the photo?
What mood or tone is created by the poster and what in the picture is creating that tone or mood?
What message does the photo give to the viewer?
Which of the key words from Limerick’s “Disorientation and Reorientation” passage would you use to describe the photo? Why? Answer in three or four complete sentences.