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Katie Clouse
08 09
Project
Summary
West Valley Central School
1. General Overview of the Proposed
Project:
Students will discover how women’s roles
have changed throughout history. Native American women and Colonial
women will be compared. Students will use the information gathered
to produce a time line and a digital Photo Story project to display
their findings.
2. Clear Purpose and Objective:
Through the use of a variety of
resource books and internet sites, students will research the
changing roles of women throughout history and use the information
to create a time line and a Photo Story project.
3. Stakeholders: grade level, who will
benefit, who will participate in this project.
This project will benefit and
involve fourth grade regular education and special education
students.
4. U.S. History Content Area
U.S. History content
includes: Native Americans, Colonial Times, Historical Wars, and
present day New York.
5. Outline Describing Content
Women’s roles within each of
the historical content areas will be investigated and then compared
to identify the change and growth in the role’s of women through the
years.
6. Software to be used, internet
materials, contacts, etc.
Photo Story, various bookmarked websites
and a variety of United Streaming and Power Media Plus videos.
7. Level of Student Involvement
Students will work independently and in
small groups to gather information. Then they will work together as
a class to produce the time line and the Photo Story project.
8. Evaluation process (include students
when possible)
Successful completion of this project will
be achieved when each student has a completed time line and the
class has created a large scale model of the time line and a Photo
Story project detailing the changing roles of women throughout the
years.
9. Timeline: how you envision the
project being carried out between start up and conclusion
The project will be introduced
in September, materials/information will be gathered throughout the
year, and the time line and Photo Story will be created in May.
10. Comments or Questions:
If I find a program better
suited to the final digital project, can I use it instead of Photo
Story?
Katie Clouse
4th Grade
West Valley Central School
Women Throughout History
Project Journal
The instruction for this project
began at the beginning of school in September. We began our year
learning about the Colonists and the Native Americans. During that
unit we discussed at length the roles of women during that time
period and we compared them to present day women of both groups.
Then throughout the course of the year we continued to look at the
women of the time periods we were learning about and compared them
to modern women. When we compared them we discussed things like
what women wore, what their roles in society were, and what rights
women had during that particular time period. Then at the end of
the year we used this project as a culminating activity for all of
the information. For the project, students worked with a partner to
research a particular group during a particular time period.
Students used their social studies textbook, encyclopedias, and the
internet (Google) as resources. They were to decide what their
group of women wore, what their rights were, and what their role in
society was. They were then to write an essay detailing what they
learned. These essays were posted on our class time line. In
addition, they were to research and identify at least three famous
women from their time period and include them in their essay.
Students then printed pictures of their famous women and posted
those also on our class time line. Two of the groups (made up of
enrichment students) researched the changing roles of women over the
years. One group researched Native American women and the other
researched Colonial women. They also wrote essays and posted them
on the top of our timeline.
After the timeline was completed,
then students worked with their partner to create a Photo Story to
show what they learned. (**NOTE** Earlier this year we created a
Photo Story project about the Erie Canal, so this takes that
technology piece one step further for them.) Students were shown
how to create a folder on the desktop of the computer to store their
pictures in. Then students were shown how to use Google to search
for pictures for their project. They were shown how to save them
into their folder on the desktop. Finally, students were reminded
how to use Photo Story to create their projects. All projects were
viewed by the class. Then student projects were loaded onto the
teacher’s video ipod and students took it to show to one adult in
the building.
Through the course of doing this
project, I learned that projects of this size are better to be done
all at one time. I found that while teaching certain units this
year I forgot to incorporate into the instruction the piece about
women. As a result, I had to do more review/teaching about it at
the end of the year. I think it would be better to simply do this
unit all at one time at the end of the year. By doing it this way
you would be forced to review New York State history in general to
discuss the changing roles of women. Instead of trying to do a
little bit with each unit and having the notes for it spread out
throughout the notebook, you could do it all at one time and have
the notes all together. The students LOVED doing this project!
They especially loved the technology piece. They learned how to do
an internet search using Google. They also learned how to use
Google to get pictures. In addition, they learned more about how to
use Photo Story. In the past we used that program to create a class
project. This time they created their project with a partner and
when they go to fifth grade they will use the same program to create
their own project.
Not only did this project increase
their technological abilities, it also reviewed the history of New
York State and showed the students how women have changed throughout
history! All in all, I think it was a VERY worthwhile project.
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