Maine Memory Network

A 3rd Grade Project

Dorothy Small, the Technology Integrator for elementary schools in MSAD 54, and Janine Leach, third grade teacher at Norridgewock Central School, saw the local history projects that middle school students in neighboring Skowhegan were doing through Maine Memory and decided that their students, too, should become historians.

Maine Historical Society staff helped the teachers set up a meeting with the Norridgewock Historical Society to talk about historical resources in the community, goals for a student project, and to begin planning.

The initial project: the third graders would tell the story of Norridgewock in an online exhibit. While the students would be involved in the technology-end of the project, everyone agreed that the students' primary focus should be on researching and writing the town's history.

The students, in effect, are the directors of the project. They read, interviewed community members, and studied primary sources at the Norridgewock Historical Society. Then, as they wrote Norridgewock's history, they directed a team of teachers and staff from the Norridgewock and Maine Historical Societies who scanned and uploaded the selected historical items into Maine Memory. Students from Skowhegan Area Middle School, the middle school that Norridgewock students will attend, also helped the third graders.

Finally, the students used Maine Memory's album tool to pull the images together and enter their exhibit text.