January Unit: Historical Photograph Research Essay
Bringing Research Into an Authentic Writing Product with SO MANY Resource Goodies for You!
My January has started with a new-to-me writing unit that has done a lot to revive my spirits and turn my brain back on — writing a research-based essay exploring a historical photograph.
I happened upon this essay in The New Yorker during my regular Twitter-scrolling, and because the photograph so entirely arrested me, I stopped to read the whole thing start to finish. (This is rare in my online reading life where bouncing around is infinitely more common than stopping to stay awhile.) Instantly I thought: mentor text. Here’s why:
It begins with such a compelling, personal lead. It reminds me so much of this Anna Quindlen sentence study I use with students all the time.
Students LOVE writing from photographs. It’s a regular part of my notebook time writing warm ups, the New York Times Learning Network has a fantastic photo of the day series. Expanding that natural interest and engagement into a longer piece of writing made sense to me.
It’s brief. This feels achievable by actual students.
It’s flexible. While we connected it to a social studies unit on Russia, you could connect it to ANY historical time period. Or not, just study historical photographs in general.
The structure provides a clear template for research: What do we see? What do we know about the photographer? What do we know about the subjects?
And authentic research writing! If you’ve been around any time at all, you’ve heard me rant about how a “research paper” isn’t a thing. But lots of modes and genres of writing include and incorporate copious research. This is an excellent example. Rachel Syme, the author of our mentor text, would never call this a “research paper”, but this essay is filled to the brim with research!
This is authentic historical writing! Historians don’t really write five-paragraph essays about the causes of the Civil War (like most of our students do in some form or fashion in history class). But they might dig out the history of a famous photograph. This part really excited me — and continues to excite me — because our students were doing the work of real historians by piecing together bits of research with broader historical context to create historical records that didn’t otherwise exist!
The Unit Plan
As aforementioned, this writing unit teamed me up with my social studies next-door-neighbor and frequent collaborator, Sam Futrell. She is my Jack Antonoff. She was finishing her Russia unit and looking for a culminating activity; I happened upon this mentor text. It was kismet.
Since we were moving through the research and writing in both classes, we were able to move through the unit fairly quickly. (Research units are notorious for getting bogged down and slooowwww. Did you ever spend an entire semester on a research paper when you were in high school? I definitely did.)
Here’s the unit plan: