Post your ideas
for an interdisciplinary, project or inquiry-based unit you might teach and why
your ideas meet the two criteria of interdisciplinary and project-based
learning.
For my unit, I am doing a country study with my 1st grade students. They each chose a country to study, based on a list (from books that I have that they can read). The unit covers the major parts of characteristics of a country: flag, language, map location, capital, food, clothing, both traditional and everyday. There is the option for students to write more about what interests them, and research and formulate their own questions or follow an extension question list.
The unit is interdisciplinary because it involves studying a social studies topic and also students are going to create a written product to show their learning. They are reading nonfiction texts and learning how to find an answer to their questions. It is project-based because the students are investigating through books and will create a visual display as a final project.
Will the display be done with the whole class? That would make it more project based. Also, could you bring in some math—maybe by counting stripes and stars on the country flags? Nancy
The kids were so excited about this Madeline! I heard them talking about their continent and country studies during breakfast, and their performance was wonderful at all school meeting.
Elizabeth Prior-2nd grade. For my Unit, I am doing a Magnets Interdisciplinary project-based unit. The unit covers 6 Centers focusing on 1. Magnetic vs Non-magnetic objects to predict, experiment and record. 2. Magnet Strengths using Paper clips and a worksheet. 3. Ring Magnets- using pencils and experimenting with Repelling and Attracting. 4. Magnets and Objects that magnets can attract through or not. 5. A magnet Writing Prompt. Students answer the Q: "If you were attracted/stuck on a magnet with a friend, what would be your plan of escape?" 6. Create a Magnet Creature and or Person using different types of magnets. There is a Journal for each student to write their answers/reflections/predictions/surprises in it. I also made a Folder for them to keep their magnet work with a small magnet and washer as the clasp of the folder. The unit covers Math, Science, Social Studies( I went over the Compass and the Earth being a giant magnetic force), Language Arts/Creative Writing. I am assessing with a test asking 6 basic essential magnet questions to answer as well as going over all their Center's work with a check list. Also, as a fun review of the magnetic materials, I made up/invented a Jeopardy type of game to play with 26 questions to answer and compete against ME! We as a class have also read and looked through magnet books and coloring Mandalas converted into fancy compasses. The children loved playing and learning with magnets!
My unit is titled "Around the World" and focuses on explorers and travelers from and around the world. Students are first introduced to mapping via literature. As students have already had a brief introduction to mapping earlier in the year, this is to draw out prior learning. Once the students are familiar with the parts of maps, continents, countries, etc, they then begin learning about the people who have explored and helped create these maps.
Students will work in pairs to research different explorers and identify key and interesting explorer facts. Then they will be shared as a group. To bring the concepts closer to home, a picture journal of the adventures of Lewis and Clark with be a featured guided reading. To provide even greater exploration of our nation, a short film biography of John Muir will be show as will many magnificent photos of Yosemite National Park that I have taken myself. During this activity, students will also be drawing scenic depictions of nature and eating apples - John Muir took a break to run an apple orchard at one point in his life.
During these several days of lessons and work, students will also be partaking in a reading of a chapter book about Nellie Bly and her travels around the world to beat Phlieas Foog’s fictional journey in Around the World in 80 Days. In order to have students derive deeper thinking and understanding of such an adventure, they will partake in several activities. They will pack a suitcase like Nellie. They will create passports to be able to travel (and students will have their passports stamped at each port). They will partake in a guessing game to try and estimate/guess how long Nellie’s trip will take, as people in the Unites States did when she was actually traveling.
The final culminating activity will find students planning their own adventure. Students will be asked to select a place they would like to travel to and explore. They will need to use maps to plan their route and their modes of transportation. They will decide what they will need to take. They will figure out who they might see along the way. And they will create a journal to track part of their adventure - pictures encourage.
This unit is of course social studies based and cuts through biographies, mapping, geography, history, etc. There is a lot of reading and English language arts. Art is incorporated at several facets. Their final projects and trip plans will be the final capstone to all the work they had partaken in.
Seems like you could easily integrate Math into this, comparing how long it would take today given airtime and stops, as well as science, how a steamship worked then as compared to now...
When did you take your pictures at Yosemite National Park?
I actually also have included math with the kids using estimation in how long it will take Nellie on her trip and in using the map scale to estimate how many miles she has been traveling.
I was in Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks in 2009. My last real vacation. haha
For my interdisciplinary unit I merged ELA and social studies in the study of biographies. As a whole class we focused on timelines and sequencing, but in small group reading centers we focused on turning point evaluation. I wanted to include this as a critical thinking skill to have students recognize these big events/decisions and consider why they are important. They recorded their thinking on a chart and at the end of the unit they used their chart to develop a report on the person they chose. I produced a rubric for both the timeline and turning point report skills. Other centers included short biographies that students answered comprehension questions about by going back into the text; there was also a map and community center. After each biography we also discussed the person's character traits like determined, confident, etc. They used these traits to help introduce their biography person. As homework, students received a blank book that they transformed into their own autobiographies with their families. They had two weeks to complete the autobiographies and on "fun Friday" we shared them by sitting in a circle and having two minutes to look at each book before passing it to our neighbor.
For my inquiry project I am studying the benefits of Dragon Dictation for students who struggle with the physical mechanics of writing. Over the course of the year these students have become frustrated with writing tasks, often affecting their effort. The teacher has tried to support them by writing their ideas for first drafts, but with twenty other students to support it is challenging. For the next two weeks I will be training these children to use the iPad and Dragon Dictation. They are very excited about it and seem to be picking it up quickly. I'm starting out with having them use sentences/paragraphs and recording them on Dragon, making edits as necessary. The lessons will shift to having them identify the places in sentences that Dragon will need a spoken direction (like a punctuation mark). They will then begin recording their own thoughts on a Dragon, working toward internalizing the speech pattern with punctuation directions. It is my hope that their sentence structure and quality will improve when the pressure of writing is taken out of the drafting process. The students will print out their work and hand write their final draft to build those fine motor skills. I plan on comparing writing samples from before and after Dragon Dictation implementation.
what grade is this? great ideas. I was a 1:1 aid last year for a student who was legally blind in the general classroom. we started to use dragon at the end of the year but its a learning curve and there were some gliches with the program.
My unit, for 2nd grade, was called "What's Up... And Down with Weather." We began with temperature – how to read a thermometer (it’s basically a number line) and what temperatures mean in terms of weather. We did a writing activity where each student chose a temperature, numbered and colored a thermometer to show their temperature, wrote about their temperature in terms of what season it might be, what they would wear, how it would feel, what the precipitation might be, what outdoor activities they might do, etc. They illustrated with a drawing of themselves, dressed for their weather, in an appropriate outdoor context.
We spent two days on clouds. We began with a cloud classification activity – students worked in groups to sort cloud photos into categories based on observable characteristics. They used describing words to name their categories, then presented their ideas to the class. We read about how scientists classify and name clouds, matched our cloud photos to these names, talked about where the clouds are in the sky and what they mean in terms of weather, and went outdoors to observe clouds. Each student then chose a cloud to focus on, created it out of cotton glued to construction paper, and wrote an informational paragraph about it.
We began a study of water with a discussion focusing on two questions: Where does rain come from? Where do puddles go? We then did two simple science experiments. Each student got an ice cube, made a labeled, scientific drawing, and predicted what would happen to their ice cube during the 45 minutes they spent at lunch and recess. They then drew their ice cube (and puddle) again and wrote their observations. We placed the ice cubes/puddles (on plastic lids) on the window sill overnight – the next morning, the puddles were gone! Students hypothesized about what they thought had happened, based on their observations and what they knew about water outside. For the second experiment, each student received a cup with ½ inch of water and plastic wrap covering the top. The cups were placed on the heater overnight – in the morning, there was condensation on the plastic wrap and students could make it “rain” in their cup by tapping the plastic. Students made drawings and wrote observations, predictions, and hypotheses – all in a little book titled “Experimenting with Water and Ice.”
During Choice Time, students constructed rain gauges and wind socks, which we used to create a weather station on the patio outside our classroom and consulted while recording daily weather data throughout the unit (the line leader acts as the meteorologist of the day, noting temperature, wind conditions using the Beaufort Scale, rainfall in cm., precipitation, and cloud cover). After we’d collected data for a week, we used the data to create tables and bar graphs during math time. We also looked at extended local forecasts and data for record high and low temperatures – some students graphed that data as well and we talked about seasonal temperature trends.
I used weather-related literature (Cloudette by Tom Lichtenheld and Come On Rain by Karen Hesse) for mini-lessons during Writer’s Workshop and Journal time, and the kids loved using cotton batting to decorate the classroom with hanging cumulus clouds and making precipitation flip books during Choice.
Weather is such a good unit because there is so much to do. It seems like you need more than 2 weeks to fit it all. It seems like you touched base on all the project based activities and multiple subjects which is great! sometimes it can be tough to incorporate multiple standards for a unit. I am doing the life cycle which also has a ton of great project based learning activities.
This is a very comprehensive and well rounded unit. It's great how many hands on experiements were involved as well as time for student led inquiry and data examination.
grade 1: For my unit I am doing the life cycle. I am specifically going to look closer at the life cycle of the butterfly, plants, and frogs. I bought a few non fiction books of the butterfly life cycle, frog, and plant. For a fiction book, I am going to read the children A Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. The children are then going to write and illustrate their own books on the life cycle. I amalso going to purchase a butterfly kit. I have seen this done in another school and the children love it. It is a real hands on experience that gets them so excited. For another lesson to incorporate math, we are going to make butterfly glyphs and graphs of the comparison of data to the butterfly and the frog. We are currently discussing as a first grade team the possibility of taking a field trip to the butterfly conservatory in Deerfield, Ma. There are many videos on youtube and brainpop on the life cycle. We will also grow our own plants and then draw and label our life cycle of a plant drawings based on a seedling and an adult plant. I have also purchased small plastic diagrams of the plant life cycle that show how a seed goes through germination in stages. This unit of study is based on science but I am able to incorporate ELA, art and math into it all.This unit will take almost the entire two weeks of take over to complete.
All of the fourth grade classes study a unit on immigration at the same time each year. I am planning to create my interdisciplinary unit to work with this study. I plan on introducing what immigration is. Each student will then need to find out where his or her family is from. The student will then become an immigrant from that country. They will research his and her country, write about why they are leaving their country, what they are talking, etc. These journals will act as a passport for the students.
The students will then begin their travel overseas to America. They will continue to journal about their experience. At this time I will include math where we will learn to read maps and distance keys. Students will need to determine how far they are traveling from their country to Ellis Island.
The students will then learn about Ellis Island. We will read stories about immigrants’ travels to America and the history of Ellis Island.
When I arrived in my classroom in December, my students were in the middle of a persuasive letter writing unit. Many of them wrote letters asking for a class pet. They did not seem aware of appreciative of the fact that the classroom already had a pet. I believed this was because they had not had much information about the class pet and that if they learned more about it, they would come to appreciate it, be intrigued by it, take care of it, and include it in the classroom community.
My unit is centered around the class pet tarantula. It began with the children receiving a letter from Rosie meant to persuade the children why a tarantula is an interesting creature to have in the classroom. Each lesson in the unit has been introduced via the persona/voice of Rosie, and she uses phrases that the students have used in their own writing units.
Students have learned about the anatomy of a tarantula and its molting process. Movement was incorporated so that students could imagine what having an exoskeleton would feel like. Students also built an exoskeleton thumb to take home.
We studied Rosie's natural habitat and compared and contrasted it with her tank in the classroom. We have studied a map of the region of the world that Chilean Rose Hair tarantulas come from. We have studied how tarantulas drink fog and how people who inhabit desert regions have learned to harvest water from fog by studying the survival tactics of spiders and beetles in the desert. We did hands on experiments with water droplets to see how the drops react when placed on a variety of materials. This was done to investigate properties of water and to illustrate how a spider web captures dew drops.
We have measured Rosie's length and weight in comparison to other objects in the room. We have studied Rosie's senses and experimented with sound vibrations. We built instruments that work via vibrations.
Students have written letters to Rosie explaining the sounds that she hears as vibrations. Students have learned that Rosie has a way of perceiving the room that is different than a person's way, and students understand that Rosie is fragile and needs space and respect.
Students have created a vacation book for Rosie that recommends places she may like to travel and why, and what she would need to survive her journey. Some of these trips are unrealistic locations for a spider to survive, but the idea is that the students show their understanding of what Rosie needs and that the students show their ability to write coherently, persuasively, and imperatively.
Students have been charting observations of Rosie including when she is seen moving, sleeping, burrowing, drinking, or eating.
Rosie has a section of the classroom library and 'selects' books for the students (sometimes based on their requests). She does this at night because, as we've learned, she is nocturnal and active at night.
The final part of the unit that I would still like to do is to connect the tarantula to the tarantella and to folk tales and multi-cultural stories involving spiders.
i saw several of these lessons and each was excellent!! When you have your own classroom you will have to get a tarantella so you can use this unit again!
During my two week takeover, our Fourth Grade Team is completing a social studies unit learning about the 50 States. Each student has been assigned a state to research. They will write a persuasive letter to their parents convincing them to take a vacation in their assigned state. Students also ask family and friends to send postcards from every state and compete with the other classes to be the first to collect postcards from all 50 states. They have to create a model or project of something that represents their state and a poster that includes all their research data. This project started in late January and ends in late April with the “Celebrate America” night which all the parents are invited to view student work. In music we have been learning “The Rap of the States” song in which helps the students to memorize every state name and its capital. Students will perform the song on the parent night.
The unit takes an incredible amount of lesson time and cooperation from the “non-social studies” teachers, which means me. My thoughts for my interdisciplinary unit was to incorporate some other lessons that could be used on the student’s state posters and support the Celebrate America project and ultimately the social studies geography standards. In math, we are studying geometry and learning about perimeter and using different units of measure. My students will measure the perimeter of their states’ borders on a map using a piece of string 10 centimeters long and then using the scale on the map to convert the measurement to kilometers and miles. This lesson will incorporate work with both a geometry standard and a social studies map standard. In writing, we will be finishing the persuasive letter and also working on poetry. My students will write a haiku, a short poem usually about nature, describing their assigned state’s flower.
I've had several other ideas, but have to rethink those lessons since there isn't time to incorporate them into my two week takeover. If I could teach this unit earlier, I thought of several ELA lessons that could include writing a biography of either a famous person from the assigned state or of the current governor. Students could read historical fiction where the setting is in their assigned state and then summarize a historical event or review their book. I’m still working on a science lesson that correlates to the states project, but had an idea to find rocks and minerals as natural resources from each state and connect that to industry or products from that state.
For my unit, I am doing a country study with my 1st grade students. They each chose a country to study, based on a list (from books that I have that they can read). The unit covers the major parts of characteristics of a country: flag, language, map location, capital, food, clothing, both traditional and everyday. There is the option for students to write more about what interests them, and research and formulate their own questions or follow an extension question list.
ReplyDeleteThe unit is interdisciplinary because it involves studying a social studies topic and also students are going to create a written product to show their learning. They are reading nonfiction texts and learning how to find an answer to their questions. It is project-based because the students are investigating through books and will create a visual display as a final project.
Will the display be done with the whole class? That would make it more project based. Also, could you bring in some math—maybe by counting stripes and stars on the country flags?
DeleteNancy
The kids were so excited about this Madeline! I heard them talking about their continent and country studies during breakfast, and their performance was wonderful at all school meeting.
DeleteElizabeth Prior-2nd grade.
ReplyDeleteFor my Unit, I am doing a Magnets Interdisciplinary project-based unit. The unit covers 6 Centers focusing on 1. Magnetic vs Non-magnetic objects to predict, experiment and record. 2. Magnet Strengths using Paper clips and a worksheet. 3. Ring Magnets- using pencils and experimenting with Repelling and Attracting. 4. Magnets and Objects that magnets can attract through or not. 5. A magnet Writing Prompt. Students answer the Q: "If you were attracted/stuck on a magnet with a friend, what would be your plan of escape?"
6. Create a Magnet Creature and or Person using different types of magnets.
There is a Journal for each student to write their answers/reflections/predictions/surprises in it. I also made a Folder for them to keep their magnet work with a small magnet and washer as the clasp of the folder. The unit covers Math, Science, Social Studies( I went over the Compass and the Earth being a giant magnetic force), Language Arts/Creative Writing.
I am assessing with a test asking 6 basic essential magnet questions to answer as well as going over all their Center's work with a check list.
Also, as a fun review of the magnetic materials, I made up/invented a Jeopardy type of game to play with 26 questions to answer and compete against ME!
We as a class have also read and looked through magnet books and coloring Mandalas converted into fancy compasses.
The children loved playing and learning with magnets!
Sounds wonderful!!!
DeleteMy unit is titled "Around the World" and focuses on explorers and travelers from and around the world. Students are first introduced to mapping via literature. As students have already had a brief introduction to mapping earlier in the year, this is to draw out prior learning. Once the students are familiar with the parts of maps, continents, countries, etc, they then begin learning about the people who have explored and helped create these maps.
ReplyDeleteStudents will work in pairs to research different explorers and identify key and interesting explorer facts. Then they will be shared as a group. To bring the concepts closer to home, a picture journal of the adventures of Lewis and Clark with be a featured guided reading. To provide even greater exploration of our nation, a short film biography of John Muir will be show as will many magnificent photos of Yosemite National Park that I have taken myself. During this activity, students will also be drawing scenic depictions of nature and eating apples - John Muir took a break to run an apple orchard at one point in his life.
During these several days of lessons and work, students will also be partaking in a reading of a chapter book about Nellie Bly and her travels around the world to beat Phlieas Foog’s fictional journey in Around the World in 80 Days. In order to have students derive deeper thinking and understanding of such an adventure, they will partake in several activities. They will pack a suitcase like Nellie. They will create passports to be able to travel (and students will have their passports stamped at each port). They will partake in a guessing game to try and estimate/guess how long Nellie’s trip will take, as people in the Unites States did when she was actually traveling.
The final culminating activity will find students planning their own adventure. Students will be asked to select a place they would like to travel to and explore. They will need to use maps to plan their route and their modes of transportation. They will decide what they will need to take. They will figure out who they might see along the way. And they will create a journal to track part of their adventure - pictures encourage.
This unit is of course social studies based and cuts through biographies, mapping, geography, history, etc. There is a lot of reading and English language arts. Art is incorporated at several facets. Their final projects and trip plans will be the final capstone to all the work they had partaken in.
Seems like you could easily integrate Math into this, comparing how long it would take today given airtime and stops, as well as science, how a steamship worked then as compared to now...
DeleteWhen did you take your pictures at Yosemite National Park?
I actually also have included math with the kids using estimation in how long it will take Nellie on her trip and in using the map scale to estimate how many miles she has been traveling.
DeleteI was in Yosemite and Sequoia National Parks in 2009. My last real vacation. haha
This is really going to show students how much 'life' there is in the written word. I think they are going to love this experience.
DeleteFor my interdisciplinary unit I merged ELA and social studies in the study of biographies. As a whole class we focused on timelines and sequencing, but in small group reading centers we focused on turning point evaluation. I wanted to include this as a critical thinking skill to have students recognize these big events/decisions and consider why they are important. They recorded their thinking on a chart and at the end of the unit they used their chart to develop a report on the person they chose. I produced a rubric for both the timeline and turning point report skills. Other centers included short biographies that students answered comprehension questions about by going back into the text; there was also a map and community center. After each biography we also discussed the person's character traits like determined, confident, etc. They used these traits to help introduce their biography person. As homework, students received a blank book that they transformed into their own autobiographies with their families. They had two weeks to complete the autobiographies and on "fun Friday" we shared them by sitting in a circle and having two minutes to look at each book before passing it to our neighbor.
ReplyDeleteFor my inquiry project I am studying the benefits of Dragon Dictation for students who struggle with the physical mechanics of writing. Over the course of the year these students have become frustrated with writing tasks, often affecting their effort. The teacher has tried to support them by writing their ideas for first drafts, but with twenty other students to support it is challenging. For the next two weeks I will be training these children to use the iPad and Dragon Dictation. They are very excited about it and seem to be picking it up quickly. I'm starting out with having them use sentences/paragraphs and recording them on Dragon, making edits as necessary. The lessons will shift to having them identify the places in sentences that Dragon will need a spoken direction (like a punctuation mark). They will then begin recording their own thoughts on a Dragon, working toward internalizing the speech pattern with punctuation directions. It is my hope that their sentence structure and quality will improve when the pressure of writing is taken out of the drafting process. The students will print out their work and hand write their final draft to build those fine motor skills. I plan on comparing writing samples from before and after Dragon Dictation implementation.
what grade is this? great ideas. I was a 1:1 aid last year for a student who was legally blind in the general classroom. we started to use dragon at the end of the year but its a learning curve and there were some gliches with the program.
DeleteSounds like an interesting combination. Can you think of any way to integrate math and/or science into the unit?
DeleteMy unit, for 2nd grade, was called "What's Up... And Down with Weather." We began with temperature – how to read a thermometer (it’s basically a number line) and what temperatures mean in terms of weather. We did a writing activity where each student chose a temperature, numbered and colored a thermometer to show their temperature, wrote about their temperature in terms of what season it might be, what they would wear, how it would feel, what the precipitation might be, what outdoor activities they might do, etc. They illustrated with a drawing of themselves, dressed for their weather, in an appropriate outdoor context.
ReplyDeleteWe spent two days on clouds. We began with a cloud classification activity – students worked in groups to sort cloud photos into categories based on observable characteristics. They used describing words to name their categories, then presented their ideas to the class. We read about how scientists classify and name clouds, matched our cloud photos to these names, talked about where the clouds are in the sky and what they mean in terms of weather, and went outdoors to observe clouds. Each student then chose a cloud to focus on, created it out of cotton glued to construction paper, and wrote an informational paragraph about it.
We began a study of water with a discussion focusing on two questions: Where does rain come from? Where do puddles go? We then did two simple science experiments. Each student got an ice cube, made a labeled, scientific drawing, and predicted what would happen to their ice cube during the 45 minutes they spent at lunch and recess. They then drew their ice cube (and puddle) again and wrote their observations. We placed the ice cubes/puddles (on plastic lids) on the window sill overnight – the next morning, the puddles were gone! Students hypothesized about what they thought had happened, based on their observations and what they knew about water outside. For the second experiment, each student received a cup with ½ inch of water and plastic wrap covering the top. The cups were placed on the heater overnight – in the morning, there was condensation on the plastic wrap and students could make it “rain” in their cup by tapping the plastic. Students made drawings and wrote observations, predictions, and hypotheses – all in a little book titled “Experimenting with Water and Ice.”
During Choice Time, students constructed rain gauges and wind socks, which we used to create a weather station on the patio outside our classroom and consulted while recording daily weather data throughout the unit (the line leader acts as the meteorologist of the day, noting temperature, wind conditions using the Beaufort Scale, rainfall in cm., precipitation, and cloud cover). After we’d collected data for a week, we used the data to create tables and bar graphs during math time. We also looked at extended local forecasts and data for record high and low temperatures – some students graphed that data as well and we talked about seasonal temperature trends.
I used weather-related literature (Cloudette by Tom Lichtenheld and Come On Rain by Karen Hesse) for mini-lessons during Writer’s Workshop and Journal time, and the kids loved using cotton batting to decorate the classroom with hanging cumulus clouds and making precipitation flip books during Choice.
Weather is such a good unit because there is so much to do. It seems like you need more than 2 weeks to fit it all. It seems like you touched base on all the project based activities and multiple subjects which is great! sometimes it can be tough to incorporate multiple standards for a unit. I am doing the life cycle which also has a ton of great project based learning activities.
DeleteI saw one lesson from this unit and the kids were really enthralled!
DeleteThis is a very comprehensive and well rounded unit. It's great how many hands on experiements were involved as well as time for student led inquiry and data examination.
Deletegrade 1:
ReplyDeleteFor my unit I am doing the life cycle. I am specifically going to look closer at the life cycle of the butterfly, plants, and frogs. I bought a few non fiction books of the butterfly life cycle, frog, and plant. For a fiction book, I am going to read the children A Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. The children are then going to write and illustrate their own books on the life cycle.
I amalso going to purchase a butterfly kit. I have seen this done in another school and the children love it. It is a real hands on experience that gets them so excited. For another lesson to incorporate math, we are going to make butterfly glyphs and graphs of the comparison of data to the butterfly and the frog. We are currently discussing as a first grade team the possibility of taking a field trip to the butterfly conservatory in Deerfield, Ma. There are many videos on youtube and brainpop on the life cycle. We will also grow our own plants and then draw and label our life cycle of a plant drawings based on a seedling and an adult plant. I have also purchased small plastic diagrams of the plant life cycle that show how a seed goes through germination in stages.
This unit of study is based on science but I am able to incorporate ELA, art and math into it all.This unit will take almost the entire two weeks of take over to complete.
Sounds excellent. Let us know how it goes!
DeleteAll of the fourth grade classes study a unit on immigration at the same time each year. I am planning to create my interdisciplinary unit to work with this study. I plan on introducing what immigration is. Each student will then need to find out where his or her family is from. The student will then become an immigrant from that country. They will research his and her country, write about why they are leaving their country, what they are talking, etc. These journals will act as a passport for the students.
ReplyDeleteThe students will then begin their travel overseas to America. They will continue to journal about their experience. At this time I will include math where we will learn to read maps and distance keys. Students will need to determine how far they are traveling from their country to Ellis Island.
The students will then learn about Ellis Island. We will read stories about immigrants’ travels to America and the history of Ellis Island.
What if you have some students whose families came from South America? It would be very interesting to compare the 2 experiences!
DeleteWhen I arrived in my classroom in December, my students were in the middle of a persuasive letter writing unit. Many of them wrote letters asking for a class pet. They did not seem aware of appreciative of the fact that the classroom already had a pet. I believed this was because they had not had much information about the class pet and that if they learned more about it, they would come to appreciate it, be intrigued by it, take care of it, and include it in the classroom community.
ReplyDeleteMy unit is centered around the class pet tarantula. It began with the children receiving a letter from Rosie meant to persuade the children why a tarantula is an interesting creature to have in the classroom. Each lesson in the unit has been introduced via the persona/voice of Rosie, and she uses phrases that the students have used in their own writing units.
Students have learned about the anatomy of a tarantula and its molting process. Movement was incorporated so that students could imagine what having an exoskeleton would feel like. Students also built an exoskeleton thumb to take home.
We studied Rosie's natural habitat and compared and contrasted it with her tank in the classroom. We have studied a map of the region of the world that Chilean Rose Hair tarantulas come from. We have studied how tarantulas drink fog and how people who inhabit desert regions have learned to harvest water from fog by studying the survival tactics of spiders and beetles in the desert. We did hands on experiments with water droplets to see how the drops react when placed on a variety of materials. This was done to investigate properties of water and to illustrate how a spider web captures dew drops.
We have measured Rosie's length and weight in comparison to other objects in the room. We have studied Rosie's senses and experimented with sound vibrations. We built instruments that work via vibrations.
Students have written letters to Rosie explaining the sounds that she hears as vibrations. Students have learned that Rosie has a way of perceiving the room that is different than a person's way, and students understand that Rosie is fragile and needs space and respect.
Students have created a vacation book for Rosie that recommends places she may like to travel and why, and what she would need to survive her journey. Some of these trips are unrealistic locations for a spider to survive, but the idea is that the students show their understanding of what Rosie needs and that the students show their ability to write coherently, persuasively, and imperatively.
Students have been charting observations of Rosie including when she is seen moving, sleeping, burrowing, drinking, or eating.
Rosie has a section of the classroom library and 'selects' books for the students (sometimes based on their requests). She does this at night because, as we've learned, she is nocturnal and active at night.
The final part of the unit that I would still like to do is to connect the tarantula to the tarantella and to folk tales and multi-cultural stories involving spiders.
It's probably obvious by the end, but I should have stated in the second paragraph that the tarantula's name is Rosie ;)
ReplyDeletei saw several of these lessons and each was excellent!! When you have your own classroom you will have to get a tarantella so you can use this unit again!
DeleteDuring my two week takeover, our Fourth Grade Team is completing a social studies unit learning about the 50 States. Each student has been assigned a state to research. They will write a persuasive letter to their parents convincing them to take a vacation in their assigned state. Students also ask family and friends to send postcards from every state and compete with the other classes to be the first to collect postcards from all 50 states. They have to create a model or project of something that represents their state and a poster that includes all their research data. This project started in late January and ends in late April with the “Celebrate America” night which all the parents are invited to view student work. In music we have been learning “The Rap of the States” song in which helps the students to memorize every state name and its capital. Students will perform the song on the parent night.
ReplyDeleteThe unit takes an incredible amount of lesson time and cooperation from the “non-social studies” teachers, which means me. My thoughts for my interdisciplinary unit was to incorporate some other lessons that could be used on the student’s state posters and support the Celebrate America project and ultimately the social studies geography standards. In math, we are studying geometry and learning about perimeter and using different units of measure. My students will measure the perimeter of their states’ borders on a map using a piece of string 10 centimeters long and then using the scale on the map to convert the measurement to kilometers and miles. This lesson will incorporate work with both a geometry standard and a social studies map standard. In writing, we will be finishing the persuasive letter and also working on poetry. My students will write a haiku, a short poem usually about nature, describing their assigned state’s flower.
I've had several other ideas, but have to rethink those lessons since there isn't time to incorporate them into my two week takeover. If I could teach this unit earlier, I thought of several ELA lessons that could include writing a biography of either a famous person from the assigned state or of the current governor. Students could read historical fiction where the setting is in their assigned state and then summarize a historical event or review their book. I’m still working on a science lesson that correlates to the states project, but had an idea to find rocks and minerals as natural resources from each state and connect that to industry or products from that state.
Kathy Volpone
Sounds like a wonderful, interdisciplinary unit! I particularly like how you brought in math!
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