Social Studies Unit~~

Today I started my unit in social studies on Native Americans. While planning the unit, I first realized that I cannot jump into teaching the standard without basic review of skills dealing with maps. So today, we made sure we understood cardinal and intermediate directions and completed an activity that aided in their development of this task.

I wanted to do a project with the students that was more geared towards project based learning because my school is focusing on that and I believe the students really enjoy this type of learning and learn an immense amount from this. However, I believe that my students still need assistance in their research abilities and their time management skills. With that being said, I am having "checkpoints" throughout this unit where the students check in with me as a group to show me what they have completed in their research.

The main idea of this unit is that the students are going to be grouped together, based on their interest, in groups of 4 or 5 and will be given a group of Native Americans. For example, the Arctic group or the Southwest group. The students will be answering the essential question, "How did the Native Americans use their environment to obtain food, clothing, and shelter?" The standard also gives the students a certain tribe in that group to focus on, so the students can look into that group.

The students will be working together on research and once the research is complete, they will be working on how to present their ideas. I have told them that they are responsible for teaching the class their material, and the class is responsible for learning the material. Therefore, their presentation needs to be thorough and the students need to be paying attention.

The actual presentation has to include 2 visuals (one being a diorama) pertaining to their Native American group, has to be creative, and the students need to use some type of multimedia. For example, they can create a powerpoint or they can find a quick movie to help in their presentation.

During their presentations, I will be asking questions to check for understanding and development and extension of ideas. This will be my form of assessment of knowledge in group settings. Every student has to speak and present.

As an individual assessment, the students will be pretending that they are in a given tribe (given by me) and they need to explain how this group used their environment to obtain food, clothing, and shelter. The students will talk about the daily life in this group.

In order to make sure that the students participated in the research and group preparing activities, I will have the students write down what they did in order to add to the research. I will be giving a self-evaluation of what they think they deserve as a grade.

I am excited for this learning experience to get going!! Our social studies time is in the afternoon, and many meetings and activities interfere sometimes with our afternoons, so I am hoping that we stay on track and the students enjoy this project!!