How to Use this Site

Goals:

Teach students about Sandburg using modern techniques and methods.

Introduce students to Sandburg's life and works who may never visit the Carl Sandburg Home.

Find relevant connections to Sandburg in modern day America.

Link Sandburg material to curriculum goals for Language Arts, Social Studies, Science, and Computer Literacy.

Objectives:

Complete each Where to? What Next? activity and collect a clue. Complete all ten activities and use the clues to unlock the password to the People's Place.

Enter the People's Place using the password and discover Sandburg more intimately.

Procedure:

To expedite clue finding in your classroom, the activities have been COLOR CODED.

Break your students up into groups of three or four and assign each group a color. The group will then do the three activities associated with that color and collect the clues from each.

The clues are letters to a word Carl Sandburg did not like.

As the letters come in, you may decide to write them on the chalkboard.

Sketch out nine letter blanks on the board and fill in the letters as students discover them.

Teacher's Hub

Once they solve the riddle, discuss with them the definition of the word and its connotations. Why was it the "most detestable" of all words to Carl Sandburg? How do your students feel about the word? How has the word affected them in their lives?

Enter the People's Place.

The People's Place takes one on a virtual tour of Carl Sandburg's home and the farm at Connemara. It invites you to read poetry, listen to music and look into the past.

Assign different areas of the People's Place to the different groups.

You may have each group report what they discovered or the next time you are in the computer lab rotate so each group discovers a different area of the People's Place.

Time:

Following one color line will take 45 minutes to one hour. As a classroom, they should be able to solve the puzzle in one or two class periods.

Exploring the People's Place can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours.

Classroom Use

The Where to? What Next? activities can be reviewed and accessed through the Teacher's Hub.

Many activities can be used independently as complementary or extension activities for other units of study.

The People's Place can be reviewed only if you know the password. You can guess. You can collect the clues and solve the password, OR you can contact the park!

Website Competency Goal Coverage