Objectives

1. The students will develop observation skills to help identify the object.
2. The students will use their sense of touch to help identify the object.
3. The students will frame yes-or-no questions so as to obtain the maximum amount of information.
4. The students will be able to retain oral information acquired through listening to the other's questions.
5. The students will honor each individual's questions without interruption.
6. The students will consult resources for maximum efficiency.
7. The students will receive and respond to each other when in conference.

Teaching Strategies

1. The teacher piques curiosity by challenging the students to identify an object through the use of their senses, research skills, and questioning skills.
2. The teacher permits the students to take the time to receive and respond to the ideas of other students.
3. The teacher utilizes pupil-directed learning by encouraging the students to identify an object through observation and investigation.
4. The teacher addresses the interrelationships of the object to its environment or setting.  In other words, she/he demonstrates how an object can teach history.
5. The teacher encourages further reading and independent follow-up by stimulating the curiosity of students.  She/he also makes references available to them.

Suggested Activities

1. Display a farming tool, for example.
2. Proceed through the object reading process.
3. Ask the students to imagine the type of farm on which the object might have been used.
4. Have the students draw a map indicating the layout of the imaginary farm or house, the number and placement of the buildings, the type of building material used, the type of machinery used, the lay of the land, the location of the farm, the size of the farm, and its approximate date.
5. If possible, visit a living history farm such as The Home-place at Land-Between-the-Lakes.  This 1820-1850 Kentucky farm setting will demonstrate various mid-nineteenth-century farm activities to the students.
6. If possible, visit a modern grain farm.  Point out not only the contrast in activities but the contrast in roles.  Farming is a highly specialized business today as opposed to a means of subsistence yesterday.
7. Discuss the difference in agriculture yesterday and today.
8. Discuss the different roles of agriculture in our nation's history.

Resource Materials

1. Farm tool or implement.
2. Instructions of the inquiry procedures for each student.
3. Unlined paper
4. Colored pencils.
5. Field-trip amenities: Permission slips, lunches, on-bus activities or games, chaperones. 
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