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Charlotte
Dudley
08 09
Project
Summary
West Valley Central School
1. General Overview of the Proposed
Project:
This project will be guided research on 4
different Native American tribes, their cultures, and their
perspectives in our world. The research will occur within the
framework of a team game.
2. Clear Purpose and Objective:
Students will develop
understandings of how each Native American tribe used their natural
resources to meet their needs and wants. Students will compare and
contrast 4 tribes from different regions of the U. S. Students will
begin to develop an understanding of how stories of history change
drastically according to one’s perspective.
3. Stakeholders: grade level, who will
benefit, who will participate in this project.
This project will benefit and
involve fifth grade regular education and special education students
--all 5th graders at WVCS.
4. U.S. History Content Area
The culture of
Iroquois, Lakota Sioux, Hopi, and Tlingit Native American tribes and
how that reflects their beliefs and natural resources.
5. Outline Describing Content
Students will be assigned to 1
of 4 teams, each team representing 1 of the before-mentioned
tribes. 40 picture cards are displayed. Each tribe is represented
in some way by 10 of the mixed and unlabeled picture cards. The
task of each team is to claim and explain why a card belongs to
their team.
The teaching period is divided
into thirds: research time, team teaching time, and claiming points
time.
1.
Research time: each team must research their tribe using
library books (provided by the teacher) and bookmarked websites
(Native American Hotlist).
2.
Team Teaching Time: each student must share all research
with their teammates since in the Claiming Points time the teacher
may call on anyone in the team to explain why a picture belongs to
their team.
3.
Claiming Points: One student from a team (any student chosen
by the teacher) must explain to the entire class what a picture card
illustrates and why it belongs to their tribe. This is a 5-8 day
game, and points earned start out high and decrease as time goes on.
4.
On the last research day, teams are allowed to “steal”
pictures/points from another tribe if there are any cards left
unclaimed.
5.
The team with the most points does not have to take the final
test and gets an automatic “A”.
After the research section of the project,
a same/different chart will be generated to compare and contrast the
tribes. Next a same/different chart will be developed to compare
and contrast the native American’s ideas of natural resource usage
to the White man’s usage of resources in the New World.
A short final test will be generated that
will ask students to sort cultural items among the 4 tribes, and
write a short essay on one of our same/different charts.
6. Software to be used, internet
materials, contacts, etc.
Internet sites on identified on my 5th
grade hotlist:
http://www.kn.sbc.com/wired/fil/pages/listgrade5ch.html
Right now these include:
http://www.ic.arizona.edu/ic/kmartin/School/index.htm
http://www.nativeamericans.com/index.htm
http://www.carnegiemnh.org/exhibits/north-south-east-west/index.html
http://www.iroquois.net/
http://www.eesd.org/Matsumoto/TM30/history/na/na.html
http://library.thinkquest.org/J0110072/navigation/native_american_chart.htm
http://www.bluecloud.org/11.html
Library books from both the school and
Concord Library are also provided for research.
7. Level of Student Involvement
Students will participate in:
·
guided research
·
team collaboration of knowledge
·
oral presentations
·
compare/ contrast of knowledge
·
sorting of knowledge
8. Evaluation process (include students
when possible)
Students will complete sorting activity and
essay question test.
9. Timeline: how you envision the
project being carried out between start up and conclusion
10/08 Student Unit: This will be a 2
week long unit.
10. Comments or Questions:
I did develop this project last year. It
was wildly popular and highly effective in teaching this topic. I
will be tweaking it this year to improve the compare/contrast
segment of the project.
Charlotte Dudley West Valley Central School
Grade 5 Social Studies
Native American Research Project
Reflective Journal:
This has been a very successful unit. The students have
done some serious research while thinking of it as a game. They
were very eager to get started because they wanted to quickly claim
their photos. However, they just as quickly learned that without
knowing the facts about each picture, they could get no points.
Then the serious research began.
Since I started this project last year, I knew from
experience that the students would be more interested in researching
in library books and the internet than the S.S. textbook. (We all
hate that textbook.) However, there is lots of good information
easily available to them in the textbook. Therefore, on Day #1,
after explaining the whole project, I assigned textbook pages to
each team to read that day in class. It gave them a good background
for the rest of their research. This improved the whole project
over last year.
Some of the cards are easy to research. Others are
harder to find. This provides for differentiated learning within
the teams. More able students enjoy the challenge of searching for
information on the more difficult pictures, while less able students
feel successful in their research of easier items. The teacher is
free during this time to give subtle guidance to those struggling
with research skills.
The teaching time is crucial. This is the time that
teammates share their knowledge with each other. Some researchers
copy words, but then don’t really know what they mean. This becomes
apparent in the teaching time, and teams realize that they haven’t
completed the task until each student can recite basic facts about
each picture.
Claiming points can become highly competitive, since the
winning team does not have to take the final unit test. It is up to
the teacher to insist on a few criteria. I demand that every team
listen carefully to other teams as they explain their cards. (All
teams will need this information at test time.) The teacher should
pick the team member who will explain each card. This is another
way of differentiating the instructional level. It also makes sure
that all team members are contributing equally and to their ability.
I also make the person explaining the cards do so without reading
from a paper. This ensures that they know what they are talking
about. I do sometimes ask leading questions to elicit all the
information I think is necessary. If the team member can not
adequately explain the picture card, then I return the card to them
for more research. They may try the same card on another day (for
fewer points).
This project truly uses cooperative learning to
accomplish the task. My students have really enjoyed this project
for the last couple years. They ask for similar projects as the
year progresses.
All teams work together to complete the resources
graphic organizer. Then all but the winning team use the organizer
to guide them in the test essay. This has worked well as a way for
me to guide an over-all review of the unit before the test. Test
grades this year were consistently high.
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