2nd Grade American Indian Problems & Solutions

Second graders at Holladay Elementary have been learning about the Powhatan, Lakota, and Pueblo Indian tribes in Social Studies (SOL2.2), and they’ve been learning how to identify the problem and solution in fictional texts in Language Arts (SOL2.8f). So today students in Ms. Coyle’s and Gardner’s classes created comics about the American Indians and included a problem and solution. First I posted a link to StoryboardThat on their classroom page and instructed them to choose an Indian tribe for their story. Next we discussed problems that the various Indian tribes might have. The students mentioned sickness, war, weather, drought, animals, and more. They had lots of ideas! As the students thought of a problem and solution for their story, I instructed them to look at the different Scenes and find a good setting for the tribe they selected. The “US History” tab has examples of longhouses, tipis, and multi-storied terraced buildings. The “Outdoor” tab has examples of woodlands, grasslands, and deserts. Then I showed them how to find American Indian characters under the “1600s to 1800s” tab and how to customize their skin, hair, eye color, facial expressions, and poses. After the students had their drawings in place, they added speech bubbles and typed sentences explaining the problem and solution. Finally they posted the links to their comics on the Google Classroom page with a question for their classmates to answer. You can take a look at some examples here.