Our Nation is GROWING!

Group 3 is up and they taught about The Growing Nation!

To begin the lesson, they introduced the classroom rules to be followed and the game Emoji Slide that would be played to monitor their behavior. To get the students' attention, the teachers said "Holy Moly" and the students responded "Guacamole!" I really enjoyed both the game and the attention grabber and I could tell the students did too.

While the teachers taught slide by slide, they had "Park Your Wagon" slides. These were the slides that they stopped to review and make sure the students were following along. While the name is creative, the approach to asking the questions was too. They used Petunia the Panda to actually speak and ask the questions. This was a great idea to both give the students another voice to hear but it also grabbed their attention better.

To continue their learning, a bingo game was played! This is a very interactive game to play and an easy way for the students to practice their vocabulary words. You could tell that the students loved this and had fun while playing it!

Before leaving, each student was given a sticky note and were told to write either one thing they learned, one question they had or one thing they were still confused about. After filling theirs out, they stuck it to the emoji that matched what they wrote. The use of emojis was used throughout the entire lesson which was a cute idea!

For lesson two... Inquiry!

Oh noooooo! A flood! 

Petunia the Panda is back, but now she needs the fifth graders help! She wanted to write autobiographies about the important figures she learned about, but her books got ruined in a flood. Are the fifth graders ready to take on this challenge?!

Turns out, they are! The students were put into groups and assigned a person to research. Each student was given a History Hunt sheet to fill out and iPads with a webquest to follow on them.

Once the students completed their history hunt, they had another task. This task was to write a letter to Petunia the Panda and tell her all the information they learned about their important figure. They also shared their findings with the class so they were able to hear about all of the people instead of just the one they researched.

The students did great research and helped Petunia the Panda get the information she needed to write her autobiographies!

Now for their Cooperative Lesson...

During group 3's final lesson, the students were to stand up for a cause!

When the students arrived in the classroom, they sat down with their groups right away. From there, the teachers quickly reviewed the classroom rules and got right to the lesson. Every group was given a folder and every student in each group was assigned a job. Each group was then assigned a cause:

1. Abolitionists

2. Women's Rights Activist

3. Cherokee Native Americans

4. Factory Workers

5. Chickasaw Native Americans

With each cause, they were assigned a teacher who would be working with them. To present their information, they could do anything such as creating a poster, song, story, etc. After 20 minutes, each group got a chance to present their findings. While one group was presenting, the other groups were evaluating them. Once everyone got the chance to present, the students had one last task: to write a news article telling people why they are standing up for the cause that they researched.