Putting it All Together

ALL GRADES

For the Educator: This segment helps the student synthesize the information presented in each of the historical source lessons (documents, artifacts, oral histories, photographs, landscape, maps and charts, buildings, art, literature). The following is a sample of how students might synthesize what they have learned thus far. 

View the Lesson: Synthesize and Share

Download the worksheet: Putting it all Together

After gathering and analyzing your historical clues, you’ll want to put them together to compose a story about the past. You can gain a lot of insight by looking at the information you’ve found in maps, documents, photographs, and other sources to learn new things about Southwest Michigan’s Fruit Belt. Put the information from these sources together to answer the questions you have about the Fruit Belt industry. Look at evidence from supporting sources to gain a more complete picture of fruit growing and its history in Southwest Michigan.

In our research for the fruit belt exhibit, we found this basket and speculated that it was used to harvest fruit.

Looking at the photograph we found, we now know that the basket was worn around the neck by the fruit picker during the harvest. We also learned about the techniques used to sort and pack fruit.

In our oral histories, we learned how growers “faced” fruit as they packed it into bushel baskets, so that the prettiest and biggest fruit would show on top.

Allied industries like the Saranac Machine factory, which manufactured basket-making machines, were integral to the fruit belt. It was important for these allied industries to be located close to rail, water, and roadways for convenient transportation.

We confirmed this importance by finding Sanborn Insurance maps that showed us how close factories like the St. Joseph Iron Works, which also made machines, were to railways, roads, and waterways.

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Michigan Curriculum Framework (PDF) / CURRICULUM GUIDE MATERIALS

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