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 Detailed
Teacher Plans for This Project
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Introducing the Project
Each teacher tip
section may take more than one class session
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Research Cycle: Questioning, Planning
- Intro the Research Project; Home page, Scenario,
Background info on 3 Regions of Colonial America
- Describe the tasks; Focused Research, Notes
Sheet, Summary Sheet, Group Presentation, Persuasive Letter
- Explain Expectations; Rubrics; Research, Organization, Teamwork, Presentation
Persuasiveness
- Discuss Guiding Questioning, focus questions
- Preview websites;
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Teach Research
Expectations
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Research Cycle: Planning, Gathering
- Open and save Notes Sheet to determined area
- Teach Copy/Paste function, Teamwork expectations
- Define 3 strands of research;
Geography, Culture, and Economics
- Explain how Guiding
Questions focus research
- Gather related information from web pages
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Continuing the
Research Cycle
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Research Cycle: Gathering, Sorting, Sifting, begin
Synthesizing
- Plan research by
reviewing Guiding Question and focus questions
- Gather
information from web pages
- Evaluate the information on Notes Sheets
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Go Around the
Research Cycle again
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Research Cycle: Sort & Sift again,
Synthesize, go back and Gather
- Go back to Gather
missing information from web pages
- Evaluate information by reviewing the rubric and filling out Research Summary Sheet
- Evaluate progress. Ready to continue or need to
gather more information?
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Day 5
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- Introduce Letter Format
- Prepare Personal Letter
If individual
group members need extra support, consider presenting group
PowerPoints before assigning individual letters, then use letters to
families as an individual assessment
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Day 6
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Day 7
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- Complete PowerPoint presentations
- Present PowerPoint presentations
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Day 8
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- Evaluate and celebrate!
- Students reflect on personal learning
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Tasks:
Students will research websites and use online tools to
explore how the geography, culture and economy of a colonial region would best
support or hinder a given occupation.
Students will gather, analyze, and evaluate information on
each colonial region.
Students will demonstrate knowledge and understanding of
how geography, economics, and culture affect specific occupations by choosing
one region over the others and supporting that decision with specific
reasons.
Students will demonstrate understanding by writing a
personal letter and giving a persuasive presentation giving the reasons why
they selected one of the colonial regions over the other two.
Students will document their sources by creating a bibliography or list of works cited. You will find many helpful tools for instruction and models for student use on the page titled Citing Sources for Student Research.
The Problem Lesson Suggestions
- Discuss problem with students.
- Assign Teams of 3 or 4. The teacher will need to
assign the occupation roles. View the occupation
list on the web site. Number the occupations you decide to use
then have the teams of students select numbers to assign the
occupations.
Examples: Trader, printer, cabinetmaker, farmer, indentured
servant, banker, gold seeker, farm worker, fishermen, preacher, miller,
and ship builder
- Inform students that they must support their
decision with reasons why they did and why they did not select the
other regions.
Questioning
Lesson Suggestions
Asking questions about the occupation:
In order to start the research you will need to have students understand
their occupations. Once occupations are assigned lead a class
discussion on how their occupations might influence their decisions.
Explain the categories of Geography, Economics, and Culture
Help students to start thinking about how the questions are
categorized into the 3 main concepts of geography, culture, and economics.
Sample Questions:
Geography
How does the geography of the area affect
your occupation?
What type of land do you need?
Do you need large or small land areas? Good soil?
Do you need to be close to a city? Rivers? Water Areas?
What are the major cities in this area?
Culture
How does the culture of the people in this
area affect your occupation?
What kind of people might use your product or services?
What do your customers do for an occupation?
What are the religious beliefs of the people in the area?
What was life like?
Economics
How does the economy of the area affect
your occupation?
Is your occupation a service or do you make a product?
What do you need to make money?
What are the jobs in the area?
What products are produced?
What kinds of crops are there?
Planning Lesson suggestions
Introduce the Note Sheet
students will use to collect information. Reiterate the categories of
geography, economics, and culture. Determine where students will save to
and demonstrate the saving process.
Gathering Lesson Suggestions
Students will need modeling and support to accomplish the
gathering of information.
Students will need the following technology skills to be
successful:
Make sure students know how to use the task bar at the bottom on the screen
to open multiple documents. Demonstrate minimizing screens instead of
closing commonly used documents. Show students how to navigate within each
website. Scroll down and preview most of the pages with the class, scan for
keywords, model reading captions and following links to find
information. Then demonstrate how to copy and paste info from
websites into their retrieval charts. Make sure you set expectations for
how much to copy and paste---short phrases, or keywords only!
Reading Skills and Strategies
Teachers may need to include the following reading
strategies as a part of the lessons.
- How to scan and look for key words
- How to determine importance of information
- How to determine which category the information
fits in
- Define necessary vocabulary words
Two websites that offer helpful lessons on note taking techniques are:
- Reading for Information: The Trash-N-Treasure Method of Note Taking by Barbara Jansen.
- Take Note: Five Lessons for Note Taking Fun by Gary Hopkins for Education World.
Additional Lesson:
Before students start their research it would be very
helpful to have students do a map on the colonial areas and the settlements
or sites for each. This will build familiarity with the geographic region.
Sorting and Sifting Lesson Suggestions
As teams gather their notes be sure to monitor how much
they are copy/pasting and how the are organizing their information. Have
volunteers share their retrieval charts and model how to check if data is
in the correct categories.
Analyzing: Students need to
have real discussions in their teams about what facts would benefit them
the most. Print off a copy of the notes and have them rate each fact’s
importance away from the computer.
Synthesizing Lesson Suggestions
As students have reviewed their gathered information they
will need to decide which area. To help them move to this level you will
need to hold a class discussion on how the information relates to their
assigned occupation.
Here are a few scenarios:
- DOWSER:
If you are a waterfinder you might decide to settle in the New England
Colonies because there is rocky soil and if the farmers could find
more water then the soil might become more useable.
(Reason based on geography)
- PERUKER:
If you were a wigmaker then you might decide to settle in the Middle
Colonies because of the affluent population as the people in the New
England Colonies were very religious and did not dress up. (Reason
based on culture)
- VULCAN: If
you were a blacksmith you might decide to settle in the Southern
Colonies because of the large plantation will have more horses and
they have farther to travel take sell their crops. So horses become
very important in helping to farm the land and transport
goods. (Reason based on geography and economics)
Be sure that the students can generate three reasons why
the Colonial area that they selected would be the most beneficial to their
family occupation. Have teams fill out a research summary sheet.
Each sheet lists the area selected and reasons for selection. Make sure
each team can support their choice with a reason from each concept area:
Geographic, economic, and cultural. If teams cannot support their reasons,
have them revisit their retrieval chart or go back and find more
information.
Teams also need to be able to support with at least one
reason why the other Colonial areas were not selected..
Evaluating Lesson Suggestions
Discuss the Process
Rubric (or Project
Rubric depending upon which one you’ve chosen to use with your class.)with
the students and give examples of how a team can use the rubric to evaluate
their work.
Reporting Lesson Suggestions
Final letter:
Select the method in which the letter will be written and
presented to the class. This will vary depending on time and equipment.
Provide students with scoring rubrics before, during, and after the writing
process.
Make an example Rubric specific to this assignment
PowerPoint:
Persuasive presentations are assessed each year at the 5th
grade level by the district. Currently, Library Media Specialists pull a
small group of students near the end of the year and give them an online
research module to complete. The final PowerPoint is assessed for teamwork,
presentation skills, persuasiveness, and content clarity. This online
research module has been designed to support necessary skills and promote
the technology standards used throughout classrooms district-wide.
PowerPoint presentations should be created much like a
persuasive essay goes through the writing process. Start with a plan, draft
it out, revise for content, edit for conventions, and then put the
finishing touches (font, clipart, and minimal animations) on it for
publishing. Part of final revisions would include making sure that every
finishing touch has a particular purpose or matches the content in a
specific way. (Special Note: Text type-the annoying letter by letter visual
and sound effect-was not yet invented in colonial times—whew!)
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