Curriculum Toolkit
WHAT HOME MOVIES REVEAL: A GUIDE FOR EXPLORING THE SOUTH SIDE HOME MOVIE PROJECT ARCHIVE
An imaginative, engaging and joy-filled curriculum for classrooms, teaching artists and student researchers.
• 2 complete interactive lesson plans
• 4 new activities with all assets included
• 3 step by step creative projects
• Free teacher access to a special collection
• Aligned with ISBE and CPS standards
The South Side Home Movie Project curriculum is a toolkit for exploring the power of home movies as primary sources. It's not just about
watching videos; it's about understanding how these snippets of history
tell the American story. The SSHMP curriculum guides students as they
dive deeply into topics like the Great Migration through home movies and
oral histories, making history come alive for young people in a
familiar format. Through interactive lessons and creative projects, they will discover the essential role archives
play in preserving these precious memories, and how they can use these artifacts today. It's a fun, interactive way
to connect kids with their past while teaching critical skills. The
curriculum includes a wealth of activities created by teachers for
teachers so classrooms can dive right in.
The new curriculum was designed for you to teach these lessons in your classroom or offer them directly to students. We hope you find this toolkit engaging and helpful, and look forward to hearing your feedback.
Each module contains two components
LESSON GUIDES:
Interactive plans and unique activities for facilitating one or more class periods that offer new ways to engage with topics from Self-Representation, Cultural Identity and Authorship to the Great Migration, Storytelling and the value of archives.
sign up for a professional development workshopCREATIVE REUSE PROJECTS:
Step-by-step projects that engage students in exploring and activating the SSHMP archive based on principles of Creative Reuse, and generating their own creative projects that draw on archival home movie footage. Options for Beginners (students with minimal or no video production skills or access to video production software) and Advanced (students with moderate to advanced video production skills and access to software).
MODULE 1: ORIENTATION
An interactive introduction to the South Side Home Movie Project, archiving, and how to watch home movies. This lesson serves as a prerequisite for the other Lessons and Projects.
GUIDING QUESTIONS
What is an archive? What can I do with it? What is the South Side Home Movie Project?
What can we learn about people by watching their home movies?
How are home movies different from other movies, what do they show us that other films don’t?
What are home movies for?
How can we record, preserve and share our culture with the future?
THEMES
self-documentation, family, cultural preservation, research
COMPONENTS
Guide and Lesson
Activity: Home Movie Bingo
Activity: WordCloud
+CREATIVE REUSE PROJECT
Beginner: Image Collage
Sample pages from Module 1: Orientation
MODULE 2: The Great Migration through Home Movies
Connecting the stories of one South Side family to the historic cultural shifts of the Great Migration, these lessons and projects engage students in exploring oral histories and home movies seeking answers to the question, "how do we share our cultures with the future?" Dig into the deeper stories, discover the specificity of this archive to Chicago’s South Side, and connect personal stories to cultural and historic moments.
GUIDING QUESTIONS
What can one family's home movies reveal about the Great Migration? How do the McClelland family home movies teach me about my culture and history?
How does this home movie archive complicate our understanding of who calls the South Side home or what the South Side is?
What does self-documentation reveal about life in Chicago during the Great Migration? How does it enhance or correct representations of self, people, groups? How do home movies preserve aspects of life during this period and afterwards?
Who gets to tell their stories? Whose story survives? If I don't share my story, who will?
THEMES
Origin stories, migration stories, self documentation, family, oral history, pride, resistance, cultural identity, research
COMPONENTS
Guide and Lesson
Activity: Build Your Background Knowledge
Activity: Diving Into the Case Study
CREATIVE REUSE PROJECTS
Beginner: Time Capsule
Advanced: Video Essay
Sample pages from Module 2: The Great Migration Through Home Movies
With thanks to our Collaborators
SSHMP has a long history of collaborating with students and teachers to bring our home movie resources into classrooms and after school programs around the city, long before we developed formal curricular tools. We are tremendously grateful for those early experiments in connecting young people to SSHMP for the inspiration they provided to make our resources more accessible, topical and interactive.
Our deepest thanks to the creative partners, educators, teaching artists, students, funders and colleagues who offered their insights, experiences and generous support to the development of SSHMP’s first full curriculum toolkit.
KEY PARTNERS
Julia Hinojosa, Associate Director of Education Programs, Arts+Public Life
Chicle Corcoles, Teen Arts Council, Arts + Public Life
Razor Wintercastle, Production and Technical Education Manager, Arts + Public Life
KEY PILOT PARTICIPANTS AND TEACHING ARTISTS
Mark A. Diaz, Associate Director of Education, Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education
Chaniece Holmes, Red Clay Dance
Gustavo Jardim, filmmaker and educator, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Whitney Jean, South Shore Fine Arts Academy
Margy LaFreniere, Education Project Manager, Museum of Science and Industry
Anna Mason, YOUMedia Teen Library, Chicago Public Library
Larissa Nikola-Lisa, Perspectives High School
Teen Arts Council, cohorts 2020-2022, Arts + Public Life
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Erin Venable, Loft43 Creative Marketing & Design Studio
CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANT
Naadia Jameela Bernadette Owens, Liberate and Transcend Curriculum Consulting
FOUNDATION SUPPORT
Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation “Broadening Narratives”
University of Chicago Women’s Board
With gratitude from the South Side Home Movie Project Team,
Sabrina Craig, Associate Director of Engagement and Partnerships, Arts + Public Life
Justin Williams, Assistant Director, South Side Home Movie Project, Arts + Public Life
Jacqueline Stewart, Founder and Director, South Side Home Movie Project