Lesson 1:

 

Students will look at a Champaign Urbana map and focus on the street names of a portion of Urbana . They will be asked to think about why streets get named as they do. They will then look at a 1993 geographic census noting the top 20 most used names for streets in the US.

 

 

Procedures:

 

·        Project Google maps of Champaign Urbana onto a screen and zoom into the area in Urbana: North of Springfield Ave., East of Lincoln Ave., West of Race Street, and South of University Ave, or take a city map provided by the city of Champaign Urbana and pass one out to groups of students.  Ask them to write down the names of the streets.  Can they categorize them into group types?

 

·        Ask, what is significant about these names? Busey, McCullough, Coler, Lincoln, Stoughton, Clark are named after who/what?  Why these names?

 

·        Ask, what are the other names that are not people names: Main, Cedar, Orchard, Wood, Race, and Birch.  Specifically, what does the word Main Street connote in terms of the beginning of the city of Urbana.

 

·        Hand out Street Name Census and have them read the text on the left side first and then look at the rankings. . There is a summary of this at: http://www.nlc.org/about_cities/cities_101/184.aspx.

 

·        Ask what type of streets names are used the most. Which is used most frequently? Why not Main or 1^st street? Why would Washington be the first person named street on the list? Does the area in Urbana they looked at follow the census findings?

 

 

Analysis of Local Primary Sources:

·        Google map of Champaign Urbana, http://maps.google.com/.

·        OR, map of Champaign Urbana

 

 

Ties to a National Primary Source:

·        Most common street names found ranked in the US Census report of 1993, Geographic Division.

A summary was produced by The National League of Cities and can be found at:

http://web.archive.org/web/20051027093314/http://www.nlc.org/about_cities/cities_101/184.cfm