PRESERVING HISTORY

INSTRUCTIONS: Have students write a one page essay answering the following question:

In 500 years, historians will be very interested in how we lived. Pretend you are going to put an artifact into an archive (a place where historical documents are kept) for historians to study in the future. What item found in your home would you place in the archive? Why? What would that item tell a future historian about the way we live now? What sort of questions do you think a future historian would have about the object you chose? Will they understand what the object was used for, or why you thought it was important?