Historical Travel Brochure
Grades: 3-7
Historical Travel Brochure
Students create a travel brochure enticing others to visit a time and place in history, sharing information about the things one will see and do while they are there.
Engage
Explore a time period or culture through primary and secondary sources, literature, images, museum visits, and classroom discussions. Divide students into small teams and let them know they will be designing a travel brochure to encourage someone to visit a specific time, place, or culture. Assign the culture or location to each team, or let them choose on their own based on the interests expressed by team members.
Have teams begin their research using a KWL chart to review what they know and identify additional information they need.
When each group has collected a solid amount of information, ask them to complete a Venn Diagram comparing life in that time and place to life now. This will help you identify misconceptions and will help them identify unique features to include in their brochures.
Give students time to complete additional research as they begin to organize their information.
Create
To get started, bring in examples of travel brochures and ask students to explore the samples to find common content or elements. Students can share their findings, and create a reference list.
Rather than outlining exactly what student brochures should include, work to transfer this responsibility to your students. You could agree on content/topics that must be included as a class, which makes it easier to develop a rubric or checklist for the project either as a teacher or as a class.
Students can use one of the brochure template to combine their text and images.
Share
Print the brochures and display them to celebrate student effort. This also provides a way for all students in class to review and expand their knowledge. You may also want to share these in your school library or media center so other students in the school can explore them to learn about history.
Have each team present the information in their brochure orally to the rest of the class, helping them refine their argument about why someone would enjoy a visit to this time and place. You may want to ask a representative or two travel agencies to review the brochures and oral presentations and provide feedback.
Assessment
The finished travel brochure provides an excellent summative assessment of student knowledge about a historical time period, location, or culture. You can use their research notes and Venn diagram comparisons as formative assessments to identify misconceptions and ensure they are making progress. Create a rubric or checklist to help guide student work during research, writing, and publishing.
Standards
C3 Framework for Social Studies State Standards
D2.Geography.5.3-5
Explain how the cultural and environmental characteristics of places change over time.
D2.Geography.8.3-5
Explain how human settlements and movements relate to the locations and use of various natural resources.
D2.History.2.3-5
Compare life in specific historical time periods to life today.
D2.History.16.3-5
Use evidence to develop a claim about the past.
D2.Geography.5.6-8
Analyze the combinations of cultural and environmental characteristics that make places both similar to and different from other places.
D2.Geography.8.6-8
Analyze how relationships between humans and environments extend or contract spatial patterns of settlement and movement.
D2.History.2.6-8
Classify series of historical events and developments as examples of change and/or continuity.
D2.History.16.6-8
Organize applicable evidence into a coherent argument about the past.