Asking questions

Asking Questions About the Fruit Belt

ALL GRADES

When presented with the interpretive historical source lessons and projects, this lesson meets Michigan Content and Benchmark Standards for Social Studies: V: 2 Conducting Investigations

Download the sample analysis of the Fruit Belt Artwork (PDF)

This lesson is designed to introduce students to historical research. Students will think about what they may already know and what they would like to know by asking questions. While we have utilized the Fruit Belt as an example, this lesson and the source lessons that follow may be adapted to fit any topic of historical inquiry.

Objective: Students will formulate questions about the Fruit Belt (or other topic of inquiry) and organize these questions to direct their investigations. These questions will later be used to organize the information they’ve gathered by looking at primary sources.

Activity:

Ask students to think about what they know about fruit growing or the fruit industry (does not have to be limited to Michigan) and record some answers on the chalkboard. The following questions may help generate discussion:

Have you ever picked or eaten fruit grown in Southwest Michigan? Where or When?
Do you know anyone involved with the Benton Harbor Fruit Market or related Fruit Belt business? How are they involved?

Explain to students that the first step to learning about the past is asking questions. What do we know about the fruit industry? What would we like to know or learn? Students should complete the questions worksheet. Explain that broad, open-ended questions can best help direct research. Some examples are:

How was fruit shipped in the past? What types of containers or processes were used in shipping? How did the these and modes of transport change over time?
How did technology affect the harvest labor?

Encourage students to act like detectives searching for clues in order to answer the questions they have. The clues are the primary sources they find (documents, artifacts, oral histories, photographs, buildings, landscape, maps & charts, art, and literature). The historical source lessons will introduce these primary sources, where to find them, and how to interpret them.

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WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY / THE HERITAGE MUSEUM AND CULTURAL CENTER