Reversing the Flow of the
Chicago River: An Engineering Marvel or Environmental Catastrophe?
Matt Buckles
AHTC Summer Fellowship 2009
National Archives and Records
Administration, Chicago, IL
To download this lesson in PDF format, click here.
Lesson 2: The Chicago River Reversal Project
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Project
map of the city of Chicago
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Break
students into small groups, give each group a copy of a portion of the Chicago
River dredging map (River 2-29) and a copy of the drawings of the altered width
of the river (River Width 1-8).
Provide Map
Analysis Worksheet from National Archives to analyze primary documents in
groups.
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Students
get out Graphic Organizer from yesterdayŐs lesson. On the back of paper, make T-Chart comparing Positive and
Negative aspects of the project.
Use information from the Graphic Organizer, maps, and class discussion to
identify positive and negative aspects of the project thus far as a group.
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Using
previous groups, (or by combining groups depending on class size) pass out new
set of documents. Each group will
get one of the following documents: chrivfunding, chronicleletter, issuesreport, publicworks. Groups assigned roles analyze individual document. They will use the National ArchivesŐ Primary
Document Analysis Worksheet to analyze the background of the document
– as we discussed with the dumping document from the previous day.
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Based
on their document, groups will write a two paragraph describing Major W.L.
Marshall. What type of person is
he? How does he feel about the
project? How does his audience
impact his tone and description of the project?
