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 Collaboration Project Completed

A few weeks ago my class completed their end of book collaboration projects based on the Lois Lowry book The Giver. The Giver End of Book Collaboration Project is a class project I came up with to get students working together to produce different products that show their understanding of this fantastic book. You can also download the project specifications in pdf format HERE.

I took some pictures of the things that I decided to hang up on one of our bulletin boards in the classroom:


The first two images show the bulletin board in its entirety:

These next two images show some of the art work close up.

These last two images show the triorama timeline that was made.

Completed 50 State Project State Strips

My class just finished their state projects, called State Strips. You can find the information on this great research project on two posts I've done, both Teaching the 50 States, and 5th Grade State Research Project: State Strips. You can access the project guidelines for this great research project here (pdf format or docx format). 

Now that the project is completed, students have also taken the time to present their posters in class. I had students prepare a 1-2 minute long speech in which they taught other students about their state. The exemplary posters were then posted in the hallway. My students love seeing their work in the hallway (and on this blog), so I'm going to show some of the great examples below. Click on any image to see a larger version. 

 

 

 

 

Update On Social Studies State Strips Project

I recently posted about our current project in social studies (as of September 10th) in a post titled 5th Grade State Research Project: State Strips. Our state strips are off and running. The due date for them in next Wednesday, which means students will have had 10 in class days to finish these projects. We're still fairly early on, but I'm seeing some great progress. Here are some photos of this great project based learning project in action:

Hard at work on Rhode Island. You can see that this student has gotten the title, and is working on facts using one of the classroom atlas books.

This picture shows how we really have to spread out to accommodate for 24 students making posters. We're using every inch of desk and floor space during social studies time, and the kids love it!

Hard at work on Texas. Notice the detail, I'm having students trace their states off of the projector.

More students hard at work with the big map in the background to reinforce the idea of where these states are located.

A great free hand drawing of Colorado's state flag.

A fantastic job so far on the state of Hawaii.

Book Report Project Idea: Book Brochures

There are numerous, practically infinite, ways to do book reports. But, I would definitely argue that they are very important in the classroom. We want our students to read, and we want them to know that they're accountable to what they read. For me, the absolute back bone of my literacy instruction is the daily read aloud. We read books together all year, as a shared experience, and much of the reading instruction is themed around the book. For example, we just completed our first read aloud this year, The Castle in the Attic, by Elizabeth Winthrop (a fantastic choice for 4th or 5th grade read alouds, especially early in the year, HERE is a short post I did many years ago on this book).  So a lot of instruction was themed around the knights of the round table, chivalry, and castles.

But that's somewhat beside the point. At the end of each read aloud, I ask students to produce some sort of a project. One of my favorites is the book brochure. The following images will show how this brochure was assigned (there are so many ways to individualize this that it's ridiculous to even start mentioning some of those ways), and the finished products hanging on the wall.

It's simple, start with a sheet of construction paper, and fold it in thirds to look like a brochure. When you unfold the brochure, you have an inside (the inside of the flaps) and an outside. It's a great project, and students really are starting to understand that I'm asking them to step up to a higher level of quality. This is the first go around, on only the third week of school. So next time around, I'll see a sharp improvement in the quality of their brochures.

This first image shows what I assigned this go around. It includes a short opinion, a comic strip (of their favorite scene), and the students own cover art for the book. On the inside, I asked for a summary (and found out that numerous students had no idea what this was (they were putting their opinion instead of summarizing), which was good information to know and discuss), as well as four major settings, and three major themes (which is our skill for this week). Finally, they had to complete a short character file for two major characters.

This second image is the view of the cover of an exemplary brochure.

This final image shows the inside of that same brochure. 

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: