Subject: History Social Studies
Grade: 4th
Time Frame to complete: 1 - 2 months
Stage 2 - Evidence
Evaluative Criteria:
- Participation in collaboration
- Accuracy
- Quality of products
- Clear explanations
- Historicity
PERFORMANCE TASK(S)
These tasks will show understanding through collaborative and social interactions through:
- engaging in teacher prompted blog posts relating to the impacts the California Gold Rush had on both the people and land of California, and how those legacies are still impacting life today. Performance will be determined via rubric.
- students writing letters (either physically or via digital means) to other 4th grade students studying By the Great Horn Spoon and the Gold Rush while they are in character as either a character in the novel, or by taking on the persona of a person during the Gold Rush (i.e. a miner, a shopkeeper, a Chinese immigrant miner, a native american, a californio, a former slave, etc.) Performance will be determined via rubric.
- students engaging in a staged historical debate regarding the essential questions:
- Why would people leave their lives behind to seek Gold?
- Is it right for people to leave their lives to go to California to seek gold?
- Do you think people intend to stay in California after they get their share of the rocks?
- students will throughout the unit create and contribute to a project wiki that will demonstrate the knowledge goals articulated in stage 1. This will serve as a project portfolio and performance will be determined via rubric.
OTHER EVIDENCE
- artwork and or artifacts included for the wiki
- vocabulary quizzes throughout the unit
- participation (physically and “getting into character”) in a Gold Rush simulation cumulative experience following the unit
I am loving your lesson more and more! I really like the idea about writing letters in character to other fourth graders. Your debate questions are very thought provoking as well. For the wiki, will each student have his/her own space to contribute on, or will they all contribute bits and pieces to different areas? Great job! We might have to swap lessons with each other when we are finished ;).
ReplyDeleteI think for the wiki, I will have specific spaces and they will contribute expert facts or opinions as the assignment dictates. I find that with 4th graders they need to have some concrete boundaries or you never know what you are going to get. But you already know this.
ReplyDeleteI love your essential questions and think it will spark some fascinating classroom debates. The letters written in character sound inspiring too- I've read that making personal connections to material learned is a powerful way to engage and help students transfer meaning!
ReplyDeleteThat is my hope. I really think that this will be a powerful project. It is hard to keep it all together in my mind and make Learning activities that will drive these good ideas. I keep trying to think of it all from the students point of view and create activities that won't have them saying "Why do we have to do this?" This is the first time I have really come at lesson planning with this in mind.
Deleteoops, I mean they well spark some fascinating debates
ReplyDeletewill not well. oops I can't type.
ReplyDelete