5th Grade Colonial Life Classroom Book Project

Unit 2 in our 5th grade social studies (which covers basically all of American history, as you can see in the 9 week plans HERE) is titled The Discovery and Founding of North America. It is a fairly quick unit, because I like to spend a lot of time researching the American Revolutionary War era, so I have to borrow time from other places. In the unit, I reference a classroom project called Colonial Living, a research book that the class collaborates on.

Student research took place in groups, and covered the following topics:

• Colonial Towns: Buildings, layout, variety of towns, defenses.
• Journey by Sea: How the colonists / pilgrims reached the America's, including challenges, living conditions, etc.
• The 13 Colonies: A quick research on the original colonies, including founding dates, and a map of the original 13.
• Crime & Punishment: The crimes that were most common, and their punishments.
• Native Tribes: A quick research on the native tribes of the area, and their interactions with the colonists.
• Religion in the Colonies: How religion influenced life and politics in the colonies. Also, what religion meant on a day-by-day basis to the colonists.
• Colonial Food: How they grew food, and what the typical colonial meal looked like.
• The Lost Colony of Roanoke: This topic fascinates many students, so I have a group take a look at its history and present some pages on it.

It was a frantic week of research and producing work. I would like to point out that it's not always about producing a fantastic, amazing work. In this case, the book came out pretty well, but some students are great artists, others not so much. There was a lot of variety in the book, and it's gotten a good response from passers by. The images below show some of the finished book. It's a great project, simple, easy, and it really promotes group synergy and team work:

This first image shows our book hanging out in the hallway by a lanyard that I looped around a metal brad. It's a simple setup, but it works. 

A closeup of the cover of the book. It was "laminated" using tape.

The rest of these pictures show various pages from the book. Click any photo to view it larger:

 

 

 

The Giver End of Book Collaborative Class Projects

The Giver, by Lois Lowry, is a book I have posted about before, in a book review I did in 2008, and just a few months ago on the pages of this blog, in a post shrewdly titled The Giver, by Lois Lowry: Some Great Ideas for Teachers. 

As of today, September 28th, my class is nearly done with the book. In fact, we will finish the story in just a few more days. When that time comes, I plan on having my class complete a series of projects. The big push in my school district right now is collaborative learning / cooperative learning (something I've always used consistently in my classroom). It is harder to find opportunities for collaboration in reading class, especially as it relates to literature, but I've come up with a little something that is appropriate for the 5th grade classroom, and I call it simply the end of book collaboration projects.

In this, there are five projects that students can participate in. There is a mega triorama display, a collection of art work based on the story, a classroom imagining of the book of rules, advertisements to visit the community we know as "sameness," and the opportunity to re-imagine the ending, or expand upon the ending of the book. 

These projects give students the opportunity to work in their strengths, be it art, writing, or simply thinking creatively. The pdf document that I have created for this project includes a self-check for students to use, and a scoring rubric.

One word of caution here, if your students haven't finished the book, do not show them this document, it includes spoilers that would ruin the ending. This also holds true for you, the teacher. If you're reading this book for the first time, stay away from the document until you're done, I'd hate to ruin the ending for anyone. 

OK, so now for what you came for. To download this document in pdf format, simply click HERE. 

My Classrooms Student Generated Alphabet

I have done a few posts about student generated alphabets (we're using the Gomez and Gomez model of dual language instruction, with some components in the non-dual language classrooms as well). Those two posts are Getting Started With Labeling Your Classroom and Making A Student Generated Alphabet and Using Word Walls and Student Generated Alphabets in the 5th Grade Classroom. In those posts, I linked to a template I had come up with for student generated alphabets (you can access that document HERE).

I'll admit that I'm still not fully off the ground with my word wall stuff, but the student generated alphabet, a one time activity that stays up for viewing and reference all year, is complete. Students helped select the words (we worked on 5th grade appropriate words), and they worked in cooperative pairs (another hallmark of Gomez and Gomez) to get this done. Here are some photos of the student generated alphabet up in the classroom:

Our Completed Pre-Columbian History (Maya, Inca, Aztec, Navajo) Project Posters

My class just finished our major Unit 1 Social Studies project on Thursday, and have placed the posters out in the hallway. Unit 1 is on Pre-Columbian history, and it is entirely student driven, with a project based learning project that is done in groups. Just a short 13 days into the school year, my entire class is loving Social Studies, because they get to determine their own learning within the topic of study.

Here are the guidelines and links for Unit 1, which is highlighted mainly by information on the Maya, Inca, Aztec, Navajo.

The posters themselves are great, because they're simple in nature, yet get students to work together according to the project guidelines (that document is available HERE).

Check out their great posters that are now available for viewing in the hallway outside our classroom: