Native American Project

The new school year has begun. This year I am teaching a 4/5 combo. As we all know combination classes are tough. I have been planning all summer to make this class the best possible.

I am integrating a lot of social studies and science into reading to fit both curriculums in. However, those will come later in the year. Thankfully, common core makes it easier to integrate subjects.

In 4th grade students in California focuses on California events, in 5th grade students in California focus on US history. Instead of looking at US history as separate events, we are looking at events on a timeline.

We started with the Native Americans. The students were assigned into groups of ~3-4 students (10 tribes in total from all over the US). They had four things to research: What they ate, what shelter they used, what they did for fun, and what environment they lived in.

Each person had a job: Researcher, writer, illustrator, and assistant (if they had 4 people in their group). The researcher looked up information on the computer, or the social studies books. The writer wrote the information in the sentence frames provided (The __(tribe)____ ate _____, etc.). The illustrator, draws pictures to represent the captions. The assistant helps where ever needed.

Once the posters were completed, I reviewed what the presentations should look like. Each student would present one part of the poster. Then I put them with one other group to practice their presentations. The students then rotated twice to practice at least 3 times. The next day they did their presentations for the whole class. The audience took quick notes on each Native American group, so they were paying attention too, they had to fill in 1-2 words about what they ate, did for fun, their shelters, and environment. It was a good activity. After the students were finished with the Native American presentations, we created our timeline, and added the Native American's flourished in 12,000BC. Next we will move to the different explorers!