Beyond Two Sides in Westward Expansion
Seventh-grade social studies classes meet for forty-five minutes. In a unit on westward expansion, the team uses John Gast's 1872 painting American Progress, a Lakota winter count entry recalling the winter the soldiers killed many women, and an excerpt from the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. During a gallery walk, students label the painting propaganda and the winter count the Native side, then stop analyzing. Their exit slips show they can identify perspective but cannot explain how each source's purpose and context shape what it can and cannot show. The state standard requires explaining causes and consequences of westward expansion and analyzing multiple perspectives. The teacher has one class period to deepen the analysis before a short constructed-response assessment. Several students have family roots in the region, and the teacher wants to avoid flattening the lesson into a two-sided morality play. The department's inquiry arc expects students to form an evidence-based claim about consequences.
1. How should the teacher sequence the forty-five-minute lesson to move students beyond two sides and into contextualization?
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Open with a question that requires judgment: 'What did westward expansion make possible, for whom, and at what cost?' Do not begin with the painting as a simple pro-expansion image. Give groups a source-purpose sort: creator, date, audience, genre, and one claim the source supports and one it cannot support. The painting is a promotional allegory; the winter count is a communal calendar kept for memory and survival; the treaty is a legal text. Ask: what kind of evidence is each? Then students complete a three-column chart: what the source shows, what it cannot show, what other evidence is needed. Pair sources deliberately: the painting and winter count are not two sides but different genres with different purposes. End with a one-sentence synthesis using two sources. Circulate with prompts such as 'What was this source made to do?' and 'What would a historian still need?' This teaches contextualization rather than labeling.
2. What would a strong constructed-response prompt and scoring focus look like for assessing contextualization?
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Prompt: 'Explain how two of the sources provide different evidence about the consequences of westward expansion. Describe each source's purpose and context, and use that to explain its usefulness and limits.' Scoring focus: first, accurately identifies genre, creator, audience, and historical moment for each source; second, links purpose to content, explaining why the source emphasizes some consequences and omits others; third, makes a claim about usefulness for a specific historical question, not a global verdict on truth. A strong answer might note that the painting evidences settler ideology and visions of progress, while the winter count evidences Indigenous memory of violence and loss; neither alone documents the full legal or economic process. The rubric should reward students who explain limits without dismissing the source.