Students investigate how misinformation, selective storytelling, and hidden motives have shaped major historical movements and their consequences for people and the environment. Through source analysis, field-based inquiry, seminars, and collaboration with a journalist and conservation partner, they learn to question who benefits from dominant narratives and how those narratives influence public action. Over the semester, students build a multimedia portfolio and evidence-board gallery that connect the American Revolution, The Crucible, westward expansion, the Civil War era, and impacts on Indigenous nations and Great Plains ecosystems. The experience prepares students to communicate evidence clearly, revise their thinking, and apply media literacy and historical reasoning to issues affecting communities today.

Students will analyze primary and secondary sources from the American Revolution, The Crucible, and Manifest Destiny to identify claims, evidence, perspective, hidden motives, and misinformation. They will evaluate how information manipulation shaped decisions about westward expansion, new states entering the Union, and the resulting impacts on Indigenous nations and Great Plains ecosystems using maps, timelines, field observations, and local agency data. Students will strengthen fact-checking, media literacy, discussion, and evidence-based writing skills through Socratic Seminars, caption revision, and multimedia portfolio work. They will collaborate with peers and community partners to create an accurate public walking gallery and multimedia campaign that communicates how controlling information affects communities and environments.

Students will create an ongoing multimedia portfolio that includes source analyses, annotated maps and timelines, fact-check checks, Socratic Seminar reflections, and revised evidence-based captions after each investigation. In teams, they will build station-based evidence boards that trace hidden motives, misinformation, and impacts across the American Revolution, The Crucible, Manifest Destiny, the Civil War era, and effects on Indigenous nations and Great Plains ecosystems. They will also produce a short multimedia campaign piece, such as a video, podcast, or digital slide story, shaped with feedback from a journalist or media literacy partner. The culminating product is the Truth Trail Showcase, a walking gallery of maps, source excerpts, captions, reflection snapshots, and action ideas for land stewardship presented to community visitors.

Open with Truth Trail Launch Day as a gallery walk featuring provocative headlines, maps, political cartoons, land advertisements, courtroom excerpts from The Crucible, and images of Great Plains change, asking students to jot what message each source sends, who benefits, and what may be missing. Follow with a brief whole-group debrief and reveal the driving question about what happens when powerful groups control information that shapes movements or policy. Then students work in teams on a short “fact or framing?” challenge with a journalist or media literacy partner, sorting sources by claim, evidence, perspective, and possible hidden motive. Close by introducing the semester goal: building an evidence-board walking gallery and multimedia portfolio for the Truth Trail Showcase with feedback from conservation and media literacy partners.

Host a Truth Trail Showcase as a walking gallery where visitors move station to station through student evidence boards featuring maps, source excerpts, revised captions, and reflection snapshots. Invite families, other classes, the conservation nonprofit, and the journalist or media literacy partner to question students about hidden motives, misinformation, and the effects on Indigenous communities and Great Plains ecosystems. Add a short student-led media corner where teams share one multimedia portfolio piece and explain how their thinking changed through source investigations and Socratic Seminars. Include a feedback wall so guests can leave comments on clarity, accuracy, and the relevance of students’ land stewardship and media literacy connections today.