A New Home – Changes

Submitted by: Barbara Emanuelson (2nd grade)
School: Laburnum

Summary

Students research Native Americans and European settlers using books and a variety of websites. Students discuss in their small groups the topic “A New Home: Changes.” They discuss how communities change over time, and compare/contrast life for the American Indians prior to the appearance of Europeans. They will role-play a first meeting between an American Indian and white European. Then they will choose one of the tribes that we have studied and work in pairs to create a pictorial re-enactment in Pixie of a first meeting between an Englishman or Spaniard and an American Indian. They will include an audio recording of the discussion in Pixie, and then type it out using Pages. Their projects will be published on the class blog. Finally, they will relate what they learned regarding communication to help them welcome new ESL students at Laburnum.

TIPC Ratings

Target – Students found their own websites for research and pursued side topics that they found interesting and relevant for the project (languages, clothing, etc). They evaluated the websites for accuracy and usefulness.

Target – Students assigned each other tasks in the 4-person discussion groups at the beginning of the lesson. Later when they paired up for the Pixie project, they chose their partners. They reflected on their roles afterwards. They plan on publishing their work to their classroom blog.

Target – Students solved an authentic problem, communicating between two different culture groups, and they related it to communicating with the ESL population at Laburnum. They discussed the changes that the cultural groups went through as they traded with each other and evaluated the benefits and problems that resulted. They figured out ways to communicate without using language (signs and objects)

Approaching – students predicted and created new conversations based on what they learned, using two digital tools Pixie and Pages. They went beyond the assigned parameters to include their own ideas and new facts that they discovered in their research.