Students are encouraged to read at home, where parents help them track their reading minutes, then teachers record their reading minutes in portfolios where minutes turn into "miles. " They visit sixteen cities around the state to collect clues and solve eight crimes. This activity weaves facts into the crimes that students are trying to solve as they travel their reading miles.

Students will:
Increase reading fluency with time spent reading at home
Review addition and subtraction as they add minutes into their portfolios and then subtract them as miles when they travel in Wisconsin
Use map-reading skills to trace their routes from city to city on a Wisconsin road map
Apply problem-solving skills to match their collected clues to the descriptions of the criminals in their game packets

How does a trunk carry the story of conserving natural resources?

The Civilian Conservation Corps, known as the CCC, was one of the programs started by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. It created new jobs for young American men to work on drought and wildfire relief, soil erosion, and state parks and public outdoor spaces. CCC members worked long days and lived in barracks at camps.

This episode is part of The Look Back, a series made for learners in grades 4-6 that explores eras from Wisconsin’s history through artifacts. The collection is hosted by historians who model an inquiry process: sharing artifacts, asking questions, visiting archives and museums to learn more, telling the story of their findings as they go, and making connections to our lives today.

Before railroad lines and highways crisscrossed the landscape, travel by water was the way to get around, and relied on lighthouses to help navigate. Throughout the 1800s, the Great Lakes saw a significant increase in shipping traffic, which meant more lighthouses were needed. The first lighthouse in what is now Wisconsin was built on Rock Island and many more followed, both in Door County and all along Wisconsin’s Great Lakes coastlines.

This episode is part of The Look Back, a series made for learners in grades 4-6 that explores eras from Wisconsin’s history through artifacts. The collection is hosted by historians who model an inquiry process: sharing artifacts, asking questions, visiting archives and museums to learn more, telling the story of their findings as they go, and making connections to our lives today.

How do canoes recovered from a lake help us learn about the first people and communities in what is now Wisconsin?

Dugout canoes were used across the Americas by Native people for thousands of years for travel, fishing, transporting goods, recreation, and more. With the recovery of two dugout canoes from the bottom of Lake Mendota, more about First Nations communities has been brought to the surface for us to learn from.

This episode is part of The Look Back, a series made for learners in grades 4-6 that explores eras from Wisconsin’s history through artifacts. The collection is hosted by historians who model an inquiry process: sharing artifacts, asking questions, visiting archives and museums to learn more, telling the story of their findings as they go, and making connections to our lives today.

Weathering processes are going on all around us, but they generally happen very slowly, so we don’t usually notice. However, if you look at an old stone wall, or the tombs in a graveyard, you can easily see the effects of weathering. The following experiments aim to show how two important weathering processes work.

The Wisconsin Black Historical Society/Museum (WBHSM), located on the corners of North 27 and West Center Streets in Milwaukee, Wisconsin opened its door and its heart to the community, city, and state in 1987. Based on the premise that a people who know their history will grow to love and appreciate themselves more, WBHSM strives to create a bright future out of a heart-breaking past. With limited physical space and reduced visitation hours, one of WBHSM's most valued treasures are its videos of various aspects of African-American culture available on its website.

WBHSM documents and preserves the historical heritage of African descent in Wisconsin. WBHSM exhibits, collects and disseminates materials depicting this heritage. Serving as a resource center for all people interested in Wisconsin’s rich African American heritage, the Museum’s purpose is to encourage and promote family community and cultural activities.

Women & the American Story (WAMS) is the flagship education initiative of the New York Historical Society’s Center for Women’s History. This free curriculum project provides teachers and students, as well as curious individuals, with information about the myriad and often critical roles women played in shaping United States history. The primary sources, life stories, essays, and learning activities included in each of the ten units were designed for middle school students but also to be easily scalable for elementary and high school classrooms.
Colonial women were hard at work affecting the colonies in many ways, from enslaved women bringing agricultural knowledge that made colonies flourish to housewives inventing new ways to perform basic tasks. Women took part in the armed resistance to European invasion and challenged the gender norms they were forced to live under. The power of women was well recognized by English colonial governments, who made laws to govern their reproduction, tried them for heresy and witchcraft, and severely punished their crimes, even when the women themselves were not at fault. The very first published poet of the English colonies was a woman. Even though the odds were against them, the women of the early English colonies were important to the development of the New World.
Women and the American Story provides lessons and activities for students to explore the experiences of colonial women and gain insight into how women of the colonial era contributed to the development of colonial America.