Skip to main content

Exploring the Louisiana Territory

Inquiry Day!

"Imagine your room, all of the stuff in it. Now imagine how much more stuff you could fit in it if you were to double in size!" This is how our group of Social Studies Super Stars introduce the concept of the Louisiana Purchase, which was one of the greatest land deals of all time. In doubling the size of the U.S., President Jefferson wanted to learn what was out there. He hired the explores Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to lead an expedition through the Louisana Territory. To help them along their way, Louis and Clark hired Sacagawea, a Shoshone Native American woman to be their guide. To bring our students along on their journey, we had a Voki of Meriwether Lewis. The Voki was meant to say that something went wrong in time and he and his partner Clark, never went on their expedition. Something went wrong when we tried to play the Voki for the class. I am not sure if the volume was not working, or the video itself was not working. I had to improvise in the moment and recite the speech that I had written for Lewis to say. Once the students were introduced, the students had eight minutes to work at each of our stations. My station was the exploration of the Rocky Mountains. In that station, there was a reading passage for the students to read and a quiz similar to Kahoot! to play. This station started out with a rocky start, no pun intended. As the game worked like Kahoot!, I believed that the iPads would be able to work the quiz which I made on airconsole.com. However, the iPads were registering as computers on the website and not handheld devices. Because of this, we had to all log into our phone to allow the students to play. In the interest of time and to avoid having my group members unlock their phones everytime they shut off, I used my phone and one other phone to allow the students to play. Another issue arose when it came to the students reading. The passage was a bit long and it took the students a while to read. The first group I had Round Robin read, but some students were too quiet and their group members struggled to follow along. The next groups to follow I had read independently, which allowed us to get to the game faster, but the students had a hard time comprehending what they had read. One group also took a very long time to get through the passage, so they did not get to play the quiz. Doing the station over again, I would definitely pick a shorter passage and maybe read to the students to help them with comprehension. The students who did get to the questions were able to retain the information after we went over the questions, but seemed to be guessing when they answered. It may have also been a better idea to have a video for the students to watch instead of a reading passage. Aside from some technical difficulties, the lesson went fairly well and the majority of our students met our objective on their independent practice which allowed them to report back to President Jefferson on their findings. Great work explorers!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Finishing Fieldwork Once Again

Yet again we have reached the end of a fieldwork cycle. This is always a bittersweet moment to reach. Our class of fifth graders was very intelligent and engaging to work with. I will miss them now that we are done, but I am proud of what we accomplished. Overall, I think my group's direct instruction was our best lesson. Our inquiry had a few "hick-ups" that could be improved with a little more practice and planning, especially when it comes to knowing where the students are going to move to their next station. Our cooperative learning lesson was a great experience as well. This was the first time I had taught a cooperative lesson. In class today we talked about what makes a cooperative lesson more than just group work. Group work is something that everyone has experienced in school at one point or another in their school career. Most people hear group project and they freat because people don't pull thier own weight and someone ends up doing it all. In a cooporative...

Giving Back to the Community!

Newburgh Ministry! On Friday, I volunteered at the Newburgh Ministry for MSMC's Project Jumpstart. I was a bit nervous about the area at first. I felt fairly uncomfortable getting out of my car and walking in there by myself. The next time I go, I am signed up to go with people from my group so I should feel a bit more comfortable. Aside from arriving, the rest of the night was a lot of fun. When I first got there, the kids were coloring and doing crossword puzzles. I sat down with the kids that were there and helped a little girl who was 4 years old color in one of the pages. Once everyone one arrived, Miss Veronica brought the kids over to do some yoga to get them ready for the night. I followed along with the yoga and it was fun. After that, each student got an iPad and was able to research different thing they could find in the ocean. The wifi wasn't working right so I help the kids sign onto the hotspot on my phone. I helped the little boy in the picture above find some ...

The Young Untied States

Our First Day As Social Studies Teachers! February 22, George Washington's birthday, my group of Social Studies Super Star began to teach the 5th-grade class about the United States as a Young Nation. In 1789 Washington became the first president of the USA by a unanimous vote in the electoral college. Practically every person in the US wanted Washington to lead us as our first president except for Washington himself. As we taught the class these interesting facts, we implemented several strategies to help the students remember key vocabulary. I made sure that everytime a vocabulary word came up, I would either have the students say it with me or repeat it after me in a choral response. This was a great way to get the students to start internalizing this new vocabulary. After every two slides, we asked the students to answer check for understanding questions that were based on the information they had just learned. Our group also made sure to get an answer from each gro...