 Just having lived in this country you have all the background knowledge all the tools you need to analyze this and Have some understanding of maybe what the artist is trying to say, so it's a good starting point And I want to use a kind of really basic Looking tool called the observation interpretation charts anyone done anything like this before Okay, yeah, it's pretty familiar and the goal is just to separate what you see from what you think it means But it's more challenging for kids than you might think Hopefully it will give them the tool thingy to write a good historical argument because you're essentially coming up with all your evidence And then using that evidence to make an argument So let's just start our goals is to make a long list Of observations based on this piece. What is it that you see here? License place, okay, that's a state name State Order the plates are not going to order by Okay, I heard district Very separate here. I missed common colors white blue yellow gray It's we the people of that So there is it's still something out on the Korean place It's like each license plate has a state thing or How Like Alabama hard I didn't see not all of them What else do you see on individual A year yeah And the artwork behind depending on if it's just a plane some are just two colors three colors Like a picture behind it It's on the seat of a car, right Rest stop like see you know or like in a diner or drive in or something What do you see that makes you think dine or drive it? What is it about the metal on the out? Cush in the Or car seat Six six five six five in terms of how many license plates are in each row There's a pattern There's not always the same number of License plates in a row, but it does all transfer to sixes and fives. Okay Some have natural features on them while other are political statements So the types of things chosen by the state some are natural features and some are political It looks like some of them actually Have like Alabama had to tag on when they had to renew it and some don't like you look at Colorado There's no dates on Colorado. Alabama. It's actually But it depends and the number one color of the license plate the background tends to be white Yes, the Dominic color So that's good that's couple people are noticing the dates on them some of them have them some of them don't There's a bit of a range Don't make sense by themselves and a couple do like Hawaii is none South Dakota is this but the most part sort of if you look if you just look at one plate It doesn't really make much sense. It's just a couple letters or numbers Okay, so looked at individually. It's rare that a single license plate will have a word on it. That makes sense. Okay So anything else design-wise that is common to the license plates or rectangles, okay? So they're all the same shape Bolts it is four bolts and those bolts are in the same location Okay So there's evidence that these are mass produced All right, are we ready to start moving into this column? Thinking about all of this as evidence. What do we think the artist is trying to say? Why did he put these license plates together to fill up the preamble and what does that tell us about our country? All of them together is what shows us what our country is made of and really the foundation of the nation That we can't really go back to Civil War era. We're not divided. We have to be all together So it's the putting them all together Is how do you say the spirit of the country or the country basically what makes this make sense? So we are indivisible We've come out of Civil War and we're still part of the union. Okay now what I say the shift to our culture We are a nation of highways that are interconnected and the car is the way we get places we move from the cities to the suburbs we move from Route 66, you know, so it becomes or a nation of cars and highways So his choice to use license plates is not random He's really using that material to make another point about how our car culture and that's another connection Right as you mentioned the highways connect all the states. I Think it brings out the individual characteristics and history of each state but yet we're all as Everyone has said connected and that let's make that's what makes us strong but yet we each have flavor and and Things that are unique that make each state. Yes special Great So everyone had the theme or the slogan that you noticed the symbols whether they're natural environment or Political symbols that you know the flavor is a great way to put it But as you said, we're all indivisible. We're all part of the union And I think maybe that pattern kind of emphasizes that as well