Geography:
GLE 3.2.2: Understands the cultural universals of place, time, family life, economics, communication, arts, recreation, food, clothing, shelter, transportation, government, and education.
Learning Target: Students will become experts on a specific assigned culture in a group through research (books, internet, other expert people).
Students will present on their culture in a 10-20 minute group presentation
Students will make passport books and "travel" around the world by viewing and learning about other cultures through presentations
Warm up on individual white-boards each day (this activity should only take 3 minutes):
Europe is 8 hours ahead of us. What time would it be right now in Europe?
China is.... What time would it be in China? What may children your age be doing?
Mexico is … what time would it be?
Hawaii is …. what time would it be?
Australia is... what time would it be?
Do 1 new place a day and explain why places are ahead or behind us in time zones quickly the first day to give children context.
Split class into groups of 3-4 people and have them randomly pick a culture from a hat.
Here are the options:
Art project 1st day of unit for this GLE: make passport books.
Have stamps from each country bought and ready to go. The students will get a stamp for the country they are assigned since they will become experts and "travel" there. On the presentation days, all students will get the stamp from the country presented after "travelling to the country".
Tell students the goal is to become experts on their country and culture. The sky is the limit for presenting but they need to address all of the following in a meaningful, accurate way through research:
Students will have 4 one-hour sessions to research in a computer lab with their teams. They will have another computer lab afternoon to put together their presentation if they choose to do a power point or anything with technology. Students are asked to be creative, respectful, and embrace "traveling" to their different culture.
Students will present on their countries over the course of 3 days with an average of two presentations a day. Students are encouraged to "teach" the class for 10-20 minutes about the culture.
Scaffolding: If students or groups are having trouble with research, I will assist them in finding websites that are kid-friendly and help them pinpoint things they need to present from their culture. I can also pull groups and prepare mini lessons each day to help them understand their culture better.
Extensions: Ask students to build a makeshift representative shelter from their country and culture in science class. I will provide groups with sets of materials and students can bring materials from home if they ask their parents first.
How does this relate to the theme(s)? This project is literally centered around people, places, and the environment and it is a culture research project. This specific project is inspired by my themes completely :)
Economics:
GLE: 2.2.1 Understands how the economic systems of groups are influenced by laws, values, and customs.
Learning Targets:
Students will play two engaging games that will teach them more about collaboration, greed, and our capitalist economy
Students will have a better understanding on how money and the economy works through the brown paper capitalism game
Students will collaborate with a team about the best way to split up the wealth in a community.
Students will reflect after the two games on our economic systems more through a discussion and an exit slip.
The Salary Team Game:
The goal of this activity is to get students thinking about how their economics choices can affect others.
Split class up into 4 groups.
In each group, there will be a discussion mediator, a vote counter, a white board scribe, a time keeper, and two peace keepers.
Explain to the class that the team with the most points at the end gets a prize (candy bars or fresh fruit) as an incentive to take this game seriously and strategize.
I will split teams randomly so students can mingle and get to know their peers better.
As the first round begins, teams will split up into the four different corners of the class with their whiteboards.
I will propose a question to the entire class. The question will be:
"Would your team rather distribute the money in your community evenly, or keep all the money for yourselves?"
I will explain that if everyone wants to spread the wealth evenly, each of you will earn 200 points. If one of the teams wants all the money for themselves, they will take 400 points and all the other teams will be at -100. If multiple teams take the wealth, each of those teams have to split the wealth and the other two teams lose out for the round. If everyone says they want all the wealth themselves, each group will only get 100 points.
Students will have 5 minutes in their team to secretly discuss what they want to do and why. An explanation must be included. The scribe will write on the white board the official answer and when I signal for whiteboards to go up, all teams must have a solid answer and explanation down. Groups are allowed to talk among themselves, but not to other groups.
The team with the most points wins. If everyone earns the same amount of points, each group will earn two small candies. If one group wins, each team member will get a king size candy bar. If someone has health concerns, I can pick up toys instead.
After the game wraps up, we will have a class discussion about how economic choices may affect others and what challenges we had in this game.
Exit slip: Students will complete an exit slip on a "takeaway" from either one of the games.
Scaffolding: Students will probably not need much scaffolding since this is a team discussion-based game. If students need help understanding the game, I will explain it again and have written and oral directions ready to go.
Extensions: Students will have the opportunity to write up what they would have done differently/ or the same/ challenges they faced in the game/ what the game means to our broader economic system as an optional extra credit assignment.
2nd big curriculum strategy for economics:
Capitalism in a brown paper bag
Each student will get one brown paper bag with a different amount of tokens in it. Most bags will have between 4-8 tokens, but a few bags will have fewer and a few bags will have more than 8 tokens. One bag will have 20 tokens (to represent the very wealthy). The bags are completely randomly assigned to each student. This shows that some people are born rice, most are born somewhere in the middle class, and some people are born with less money.
Students will get to work on a math worksheet for more tokens (2 tokens for every 5 problems completed).
I will warn the students there will be a tax at the end and I will be taking two of their tokens.
Each student is given a math question worksheet and is given the class
period to work on it. Every 5 questions finished, the student gets
another token. This is supposed to represent getting paid for doing work. The students can either choose to work to get more tokens or not if they are satisfied with what they have they don’t have
to (capitalism) .This represents working limits. There are only 20
questions on the worksheet. After students are done with 5 questions, they can raise their hand and have me check their work. If they get the questions correct, they get 2 more tokens. At the end, everyone has to give up two candy tokens for tax. Students will count up all their tokens to see who has the most and then report how many total tokens they have to the class. This will show inherent inequality in our economy.
At the end, I will give each and every kid one smarty candy because all my kids are smart and I want everyone to enjoy the lesson and learn something from it about capitalism. I want to show how capitalism works in a basic way so children will understand it well, but I also want to make sure all of my kids are happy so each kid will eventually get a candy after the game wraps up.
Scaffolding: Explain the game in both oral and written language ahead of time and prepare students the day before. Send a slip home to parents explaining the game in case they want to talk to their kids about it or exclude their kids from the game.
Extensions: This game is an extension already. It is real world stuff. To make this even more challenging, students can write up why they think this game is fair or unfair, and what they would do to improve the game/ our economic system.
How does this relate to my theme(s)?
These two games relate to civic ideals and practices, since we are talking about how we handle money and economic systems which is a huge part of civic practices. These two games also touch on our culture, since our economy is a big part of the culture we live in in the United States.
History:
GLE 4.2.2: Understands how contributions made by various cultural groups have shaped the history of the community and world
Learning Targets: Students will pick a culture that has some meaning and research their culture looking for 3 unique contributions that culture brings to the table.
Students will present in a show-and-tell fashion informal style on a few contributions of their culture.
I will present a lesson with plenty of visuals to my students giving at least 5 examples of what specific cultural groups have contributed to our world and how we live. I will then ask students to think about a cultural group they feel associated to.
They will have one day and evening to talk to their family about a specific cultural group that means a lot to them. They will choose a culture. I will reserve a computer lab and students will have one hour to research more about their culture. Students are encouraged to talk to their family and community members who associate themselves with the cultural group for more information and ideas.
This is essentially an extension of the passport travel expert project. Students will be asked to research three unique things that their culture/country has contributed to their community or the world. Students will then have creative freedom to either create an art piece, painting, sculpture, poster board, book, comic, or bring in food/ something that has to do with that specific culture's contribution to our world.
Everyone will show-and-tell style about their culture quickly on a Friday and we will have an informal potluck with foods from around the world celebrating diversity.
This will lead really well into our final, important social studies lesson on diversity and unity!
Scaffolding: Students can get help with researching or typing from the librarian, reading specialists, or me. We can guide them in appropriate reading texts.
Extension: Students can report on more than one culture from each side of their family
How does this relate to my themes? This portion of the unit is on cultural contributions and looking at how different cultures have shaped how we live today. This project hits all 3 themes of culture, civic ideals, and people, places, and the environment.
Civics:
GLE: 1.1.1 Understands the key ideals of unity and diversity.
Learning Target:
Students will learn what diversity and unity means
Students will look at zoo books and figure out their spirit animal and then use art materials to draw/paint their spirit animal onto a mini canvas. The canvases will be molded together into a big, class mural representing diversity and unity.
Students will write a thoughtful artist statement describing how their spirit animal represents them.
Students will write a closing journal entry about diversity, unity, and our classroom.
We will write on a big community whiteboard definitions for unity and diversity. Then, we will do a think-pair-share of what diversity and unity mean to us as individuals. This will lead to a 5 minute write. I will play some classical music in the background while students write their responses.
This is a basic activity to get their brain thinking and creative juices flowing on what diversity means to them and why diversity and unity are taught together.
The journal entry question will be:
What does diversity mean to you? How are you different than others? Why is being different important?
Students will have 5 minutes to free-response in their writing journals. I will monitor by walking around and helping any student out who may feel stuck.
My big idea for the diversity and unity project:
We will do our big diversity and unity activity in an art room with the help of an art specialist teacher. She will ask the students to draw something "draw your spirit animal." Essentially, if you were an animal which animal would you be?
Students will be able to make up their own animals, too. However, they must justify their invented animal by telling me why they invented it/ and what parts it has from other animals/ why those parts represent them?
I will have plenty of zoo books and national geographic animal edition magazines to pass around to the kids so they can spend some time thinking about their spirit animal.
Students will make a rough draft of their creation, run it past the art specialist and their idea past me, and then have access to all sorts of paints and art materials to make their official piece. The spirit animal pieces will be made on cut up cloth or canvas and then officially put together into a diversity mural called "Room 12's Zoo"
I will hang the mural up for the rest of the school year in a prominent position in the classroom.
Students will then write an artist statement reflecting on why they drew their spirit animal. They will also need to write about why diversity makes a community stronger in their statement. The statements will go around the mural and we will have time to read each other's statements and view the mural one afternoon as a diversity and unity celebration day.
The main goal of this unit is to get my students to deeply reflect on how they are different from their peers and to get to know themselves better so we can work together even better as a unified and diverse team.
Scaffolding: Students will be able to get a lot of assistance from me and the art teacher. For students who do not feel comfortable with art, I will take the pressure off of them trying to relate it to my artistic abilities. It is not about artistic skills at all, I will explain. It is about being you. If you are messy, make your piece about what family looks like look messy. Make it intentional and have fun with it. Make it yours. I can help type or brainstorm, and provide outlines for students artist statements.
Extensions: I will ask authorities, but if I can make it possible, I would love to extend the art piece to this diversity and unity unit into doing a mural on the walls outdoor near the playground. This way, students will be able to see their work in a variety of cool settings. I would theme the outdoor mural to "unity," and after student's have a good understanding of what unity means and looks like, they will have free reigns to make a mural outside of unity with the help of an art teacher. They will have to run the idea and sketch past me and the art specialist first for guidance, but we want this to be very student-directed.
How does this relate to my theme(s)? This diversity art project, statement, and mural relates to civic ideals, culture (culture is all about diversity and more about unity), and people interacting with their environment. It is a hands-on art project that I hope students will remember fondly 10 years down the road; I want students to embrace the diversity and understand how important unity and togetherness is as we move forward to higher grade levels. These are all very important civic ideals to instill as students grow up.
GLE 3.2.2: Understands the cultural universals of place, time, family life, economics, communication, arts, recreation, food, clothing, shelter, transportation, government, and education.
Learning Target: Students will become experts on a specific assigned culture in a group through research (books, internet, other expert people).
Students will present on their culture in a 10-20 minute group presentation
Students will make passport books and "travel" around the world by viewing and learning about other cultures through presentations
Warm up on individual white-boards each day (this activity should only take 3 minutes):
Europe is 8 hours ahead of us. What time would it be right now in Europe?
China is.... What time would it be in China? What may children your age be doing?
Mexico is … what time would it be?
Hawaii is …. what time would it be?
Australia is... what time would it be?
Do 1 new place a day and explain why places are ahead or behind us in time zones quickly the first day to give children context.
Split class into groups of 3-4 people and have them randomly pick a culture from a hat.
Here are the options:
- Kenya
- Washington
- Mexico
- China
- Australia
- India
- France
Art project 1st day of unit for this GLE: make passport books.
Have stamps from each country bought and ready to go. The students will get a stamp for the country they are assigned since they will become experts and "travel" there. On the presentation days, all students will get the stamp from the country presented after "travelling to the country".
Tell students the goal is to become experts on their country and culture. The sky is the limit for presenting but they need to address all of the following in a meaningful, accurate way through research:
- government
- clothing
- food
- economics
- education
- communication
- arts
- recreation
- shelter
Students will have 4 one-hour sessions to research in a computer lab with their teams. They will have another computer lab afternoon to put together their presentation if they choose to do a power point or anything with technology. Students are asked to be creative, respectful, and embrace "traveling" to their different culture.
Students will present on their countries over the course of 3 days with an average of two presentations a day. Students are encouraged to "teach" the class for 10-20 minutes about the culture.
Scaffolding: If students or groups are having trouble with research, I will assist them in finding websites that are kid-friendly and help them pinpoint things they need to present from their culture. I can also pull groups and prepare mini lessons each day to help them understand their culture better.
Extensions: Ask students to build a makeshift representative shelter from their country and culture in science class. I will provide groups with sets of materials and students can bring materials from home if they ask their parents first.
How does this relate to the theme(s)? This project is literally centered around people, places, and the environment and it is a culture research project. This specific project is inspired by my themes completely :)
Economics:
GLE: 2.2.1 Understands how the economic systems of groups are influenced by laws, values, and customs.
Learning Targets:
Students will play two engaging games that will teach them more about collaboration, greed, and our capitalist economy
Students will have a better understanding on how money and the economy works through the brown paper capitalism game
Students will collaborate with a team about the best way to split up the wealth in a community.
Students will reflect after the two games on our economic systems more through a discussion and an exit slip.
The Salary Team Game:
The goal of this activity is to get students thinking about how their economics choices can affect others.
Split class up into 4 groups.
In each group, there will be a discussion mediator, a vote counter, a white board scribe, a time keeper, and two peace keepers.
Explain to the class that the team with the most points at the end gets a prize (candy bars or fresh fruit) as an incentive to take this game seriously and strategize.
I will split teams randomly so students can mingle and get to know their peers better.
As the first round begins, teams will split up into the four different corners of the class with their whiteboards.
I will propose a question to the entire class. The question will be:
"Would your team rather distribute the money in your community evenly, or keep all the money for yourselves?"
I will explain that if everyone wants to spread the wealth evenly, each of you will earn 200 points. If one of the teams wants all the money for themselves, they will take 400 points and all the other teams will be at -100. If multiple teams take the wealth, each of those teams have to split the wealth and the other two teams lose out for the round. If everyone says they want all the wealth themselves, each group will only get 100 points.
Students will have 5 minutes in their team to secretly discuss what they want to do and why. An explanation must be included. The scribe will write on the white board the official answer and when I signal for whiteboards to go up, all teams must have a solid answer and explanation down. Groups are allowed to talk among themselves, but not to other groups.
The team with the most points wins. If everyone earns the same amount of points, each group will earn two small candies. If one group wins, each team member will get a king size candy bar. If someone has health concerns, I can pick up toys instead.
After the game wraps up, we will have a class discussion about how economic choices may affect others and what challenges we had in this game.
Exit slip: Students will complete an exit slip on a "takeaway" from either one of the games.
Scaffolding: Students will probably not need much scaffolding since this is a team discussion-based game. If students need help understanding the game, I will explain it again and have written and oral directions ready to go.
Extensions: Students will have the opportunity to write up what they would have done differently/ or the same/ challenges they faced in the game/ what the game means to our broader economic system as an optional extra credit assignment.
2nd big curriculum strategy for economics:
Capitalism in a brown paper bag
Each student will get one brown paper bag with a different amount of tokens in it. Most bags will have between 4-8 tokens, but a few bags will have fewer and a few bags will have more than 8 tokens. One bag will have 20 tokens (to represent the very wealthy). The bags are completely randomly assigned to each student. This shows that some people are born rice, most are born somewhere in the middle class, and some people are born with less money.
Students will get to work on a math worksheet for more tokens (2 tokens for every 5 problems completed).
I will warn the students there will be a tax at the end and I will be taking two of their tokens.
Each student is given a math question worksheet and is given the class
period to work on it. Every 5 questions finished, the student gets
another token. This is supposed to represent getting paid for doing work. The students can either choose to work to get more tokens or not if they are satisfied with what they have they don’t have
to (capitalism) .This represents working limits. There are only 20
questions on the worksheet. After students are done with 5 questions, they can raise their hand and have me check their work. If they get the questions correct, they get 2 more tokens. At the end, everyone has to give up two candy tokens for tax. Students will count up all their tokens to see who has the most and then report how many total tokens they have to the class. This will show inherent inequality in our economy.
At the end, I will give each and every kid one smarty candy because all my kids are smart and I want everyone to enjoy the lesson and learn something from it about capitalism. I want to show how capitalism works in a basic way so children will understand it well, but I also want to make sure all of my kids are happy so each kid will eventually get a candy after the game wraps up.
Scaffolding: Explain the game in both oral and written language ahead of time and prepare students the day before. Send a slip home to parents explaining the game in case they want to talk to their kids about it or exclude their kids from the game.
Extensions: This game is an extension already. It is real world stuff. To make this even more challenging, students can write up why they think this game is fair or unfair, and what they would do to improve the game/ our economic system.
How does this relate to my theme(s)?
These two games relate to civic ideals and practices, since we are talking about how we handle money and economic systems which is a huge part of civic practices. These two games also touch on our culture, since our economy is a big part of the culture we live in in the United States.
History:
GLE 4.2.2: Understands how contributions made by various cultural groups have shaped the history of the community and world
Learning Targets: Students will pick a culture that has some meaning and research their culture looking for 3 unique contributions that culture brings to the table.
Students will present in a show-and-tell fashion informal style on a few contributions of their culture.
I will present a lesson with plenty of visuals to my students giving at least 5 examples of what specific cultural groups have contributed to our world and how we live. I will then ask students to think about a cultural group they feel associated to.
They will have one day and evening to talk to their family about a specific cultural group that means a lot to them. They will choose a culture. I will reserve a computer lab and students will have one hour to research more about their culture. Students are encouraged to talk to their family and community members who associate themselves with the cultural group for more information and ideas.
This is essentially an extension of the passport travel expert project. Students will be asked to research three unique things that their culture/country has contributed to their community or the world. Students will then have creative freedom to either create an art piece, painting, sculpture, poster board, book, comic, or bring in food/ something that has to do with that specific culture's contribution to our world.
Everyone will show-and-tell style about their culture quickly on a Friday and we will have an informal potluck with foods from around the world celebrating diversity.
This will lead really well into our final, important social studies lesson on diversity and unity!
Scaffolding: Students can get help with researching or typing from the librarian, reading specialists, or me. We can guide them in appropriate reading texts.
Extension: Students can report on more than one culture from each side of their family
How does this relate to my themes? This portion of the unit is on cultural contributions and looking at how different cultures have shaped how we live today. This project hits all 3 themes of culture, civic ideals, and people, places, and the environment.
Civics:
GLE: 1.1.1 Understands the key ideals of unity and diversity.
Learning Target:
Students will learn what diversity and unity means
Students will look at zoo books and figure out their spirit animal and then use art materials to draw/paint their spirit animal onto a mini canvas. The canvases will be molded together into a big, class mural representing diversity and unity.
Students will write a thoughtful artist statement describing how their spirit animal represents them.
Students will write a closing journal entry about diversity, unity, and our classroom.
We will write on a big community whiteboard definitions for unity and diversity. Then, we will do a think-pair-share of what diversity and unity mean to us as individuals. This will lead to a 5 minute write. I will play some classical music in the background while students write their responses.
This is a basic activity to get their brain thinking and creative juices flowing on what diversity means to them and why diversity and unity are taught together.
The journal entry question will be:
What does diversity mean to you? How are you different than others? Why is being different important?
Students will have 5 minutes to free-response in their writing journals. I will monitor by walking around and helping any student out who may feel stuck.
My big idea for the diversity and unity project:
We will do our big diversity and unity activity in an art room with the help of an art specialist teacher. She will ask the students to draw something "draw your spirit animal." Essentially, if you were an animal which animal would you be?
Students will be able to make up their own animals, too. However, they must justify their invented animal by telling me why they invented it/ and what parts it has from other animals/ why those parts represent them?
I will have plenty of zoo books and national geographic animal edition magazines to pass around to the kids so they can spend some time thinking about their spirit animal.
Students will make a rough draft of their creation, run it past the art specialist and their idea past me, and then have access to all sorts of paints and art materials to make their official piece. The spirit animal pieces will be made on cut up cloth or canvas and then officially put together into a diversity mural called "Room 12's Zoo"
I will hang the mural up for the rest of the school year in a prominent position in the classroom.
Students will then write an artist statement reflecting on why they drew their spirit animal. They will also need to write about why diversity makes a community stronger in their statement. The statements will go around the mural and we will have time to read each other's statements and view the mural one afternoon as a diversity and unity celebration day.
The main goal of this unit is to get my students to deeply reflect on how they are different from their peers and to get to know themselves better so we can work together even better as a unified and diverse team.
Scaffolding: Students will be able to get a lot of assistance from me and the art teacher. For students who do not feel comfortable with art, I will take the pressure off of them trying to relate it to my artistic abilities. It is not about artistic skills at all, I will explain. It is about being you. If you are messy, make your piece about what family looks like look messy. Make it intentional and have fun with it. Make it yours. I can help type or brainstorm, and provide outlines for students artist statements.
Extensions: I will ask authorities, but if I can make it possible, I would love to extend the art piece to this diversity and unity unit into doing a mural on the walls outdoor near the playground. This way, students will be able to see their work in a variety of cool settings. I would theme the outdoor mural to "unity," and after student's have a good understanding of what unity means and looks like, they will have free reigns to make a mural outside of unity with the help of an art teacher. They will have to run the idea and sketch past me and the art specialist first for guidance, but we want this to be very student-directed.
How does this relate to my theme(s)? This diversity art project, statement, and mural relates to civic ideals, culture (culture is all about diversity and more about unity), and people interacting with their environment. It is a hands-on art project that I hope students will remember fondly 10 years down the road; I want students to embrace the diversity and understand how important unity and togetherness is as we move forward to higher grade levels. These are all very important civic ideals to instill as students grow up.