One man's home
In this lesson students will examine house plans from the Built Heritage Collection at the North Carolina State University. They will use their knowledge of history, observation skills, and inference to draw conclusions about how the functionality of homes has changed over time to meet the needs of the homeowners.
Learn more
- Built Heritage collection The Built Heritage collection in North Carolina State University Special Collections provides access to documentation on hundreds of buildings and structures in North Carolina dating from the 1700s to the early 1900s.
Related pages
- Native American music: Two North Carolina tribes: In this lesson plan, students will listen to songs from two North Carolina tribes. Students will learn about the music through listening, analyzing, singing, moving, and playing instruments.
- The Craft Revival and economic change: In this lesson plan, originally published on the Craft Revival website, students will interpret photographs and artifacts as representations of western North Carolina’s economy at the turn of the century. They will also analyze historical census data and produce a visual web that will represent the changing nature of the economy of western North Carolina.
- Culture everywhere: In their study of culture, students will use a chart to show the different ways that cultures meet basic human needs and recognize that archaeologists study how people from past cultures met basic needs by analyzing and interpreting the artifacts and sites that they left behind.
Related topics
- Learn more about North Carolina, analysis, architecture, culture, history, and social studies.
Legal
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Learning Outcomes
- Students will be able to answer these essential questions:
- Why was this home built in this particular manner?
- What was life like for this person during this period of history?
- Students will be able to form arguments in response to this thought-provoking statement and support their answers with valid arguments:
- People should build homes for functionality and convenience only.
- Students will also be able to:
- Utilize visual data
- Draw inferences
- Draw conclusions
- Form opinions and support them with facts
Teacher planning
Time required for lesson
One 70-minute class period
Materials/Resources
- Student textbooks
- Copies of “Group Findings: House Plan Analysis” worksheet (Note: This Word document can be modified to fit your students’ needs.)
- Copies of pictures for discussion from the Built Heritage Collection from the North Carolina State University Special Collections Research Center. Each group will need a copy of a single house or floor plan (Note: To access the images, you may need to make sure you have enabled your browser to accept pop-ups from the Built Heritage page.):
- Basement plan, Cedar Grove
- First floor plan, Cedar Grove
- Second floor plan, Cedar Grove
- Floor plans, Barnabus Jones House
- Floor plans, McCurdy Log House
- Cross section, west elevation, and floor plans, Brinegar House
- Basement and foundation plan, Rugby Grange
- First floor plan, Rugby Grange
- Second floor plan, Rugby Grange
- Basement plan, Pleasant Valley
- First floor plan, Pleasant Valley
- Second floor plan, Pleasant Valley
- First floor plan, Shaw House
- Second floor plan, Shaw House
- Optional: computer with LCD projector or an overhead projector to project photographs from the Built Heritage website (You may choose to project the images instead of distributing paper copies.)
Pre-activities
- Create packets ahead of time to make distributing materials easier and more efficient. Place a single house plan or floor plan and several copies of the “Group Findings: House Plan Analysis” worksheet in a large envelope. Repeat this procedure until you have created a packet for each group.
- Before this activity students should have background knowledge of:
- What is an architect?
- How have building materials changed over time?
- How has this affected how and why people build homes today?
Activities
Preview Activity: Comparing Personal Experience with Key Concepts
- Have each student sketch a floor plan of his or her home.
- Have the students label each room and write a quick description of each room’s purpose.
- Have each student list the members of his or her family (i.e. mom, dad, me, two brothers, and one sister). Ask students, did your parents have your home built or did they buy it? Do you have your own room?
- Ask several student volunteers to describe their homes.
- Ask students, how have homes changed throughout time? As students call out answers, have them hypothesize about the cause of this change.
By leading students through this questioning process, you give them conceptual information they will need to better understand how and why homes have changed over time.
Main activity: Social studies skill builder
- Explain to students they will work in pairs or groups of three to gather information about several homes built in North Carolina in different time periods to hypothesize about the culture of the area during the time the home was built.
- Using the house plans, their textbooks, and each other, they are to complete the “Group Findings: House Plan Analysis” worksheet for each plan they examine. (Note: the worksheet can be modified to fit your students’ needs.)
- Place students in pairs or groups of three, depending on class size.
- Give each group a packet of materials and five to eight minutes to analyze and gather information. Observe students to see if they need more time to complete this step.
- Tell students to pass their plan to the group to their right, while taking the plan from the group to their left. This way, students get to analyze more than one plan, and teachers do not have to make multiple copies. Repeat this procedure until students have analyzed all or most of the plans, and then end the activity.
- Pull the class back together to debrief the activity. Have each group share their inferences about one plan they analyzed. Did other groups make the same inferences? If they made different ones, what evidence caused them to make these inferences? What do homes tell us about the culture of the area in which they were built? How can historians use this information?
- To conclude the lesson, the author recommends using one of the following activities, which allow students to express themselves creatively while demonstrating what they have learned during the unit:
- Draw your home in a different time period: Draw your home as you think it would have looked during any decade from the 19th century (1800s). Make sure the completed drawing includes the following items, which can be used to create a rubric:
- Your name, title of the plans, date of the time period your home would have been built, and scale (use ½” = 1′)
- Plan details: each floor and room is clearly labeled
- Neatness/appearance: the plan is neat and easy to read
- On the back of the drawing or on a separate piece of paper, write to to three paragraphs describing at least three similarities and three differences between your 1800s home and your home today. Be sure to explain how the culture of each time affected how your home was built (i.e. number of bedrooms, fireplaces, bathroom inside or outside, etc.)
- Free of errors that confuse or interrupt the reader
- Future Home Plan: Design the “dream home” you hope to build or own when you have a family of your own. Project what you think your life and our society will be like in 20 years. Make sure the completed drawing includes the following items, which can be used to create a rubric:
- Your name, title of the plans, date of the time period your home would have been built, and scale (use ½” = 1′)
- Plan details: each floor and room is clearly labeled.
- Neatness/appearance: the plan is neat and easy to read
- On the back of the drawing or on a separate piece of paper, write two to three paragraphs describing how your dream home will meet the needs of your family (Consider: do you have an office in your home? How many children do you have or hope to have?). Be sure to explain how the culture of the future affected how your home was built.
- Free of errors that confuse or interrupt the reader
- Draw your home in a different time period: Draw your home as you think it would have looked during any decade from the 19th century (1800s). Make sure the completed drawing includes the following items, which can be used to create a rubric:
