Mayflower Voyage

Last week my class set sail on the Mayflower! We had a blast. While they were at specials, I assembled our "Mayflower." It was nothing fancy, but I still think it was memorable!

I bought plastic tablecloths for $1 at Walmart, some candle night lights from the Dollar Tree, and used tape to tape up the sides of the "ship." Once again, nothing fancy, but with the lights out, it was pretty convincing.

I did a search on You Tube for creaking ship sounds and found some great ones! With the lights out, candles on, and the ship sounds in the background, it was very realistic I think. I had the class cram into the small space so they could feel how they would have been very close on such a small ship with 102 passengers! I read them some of the conditions and scenarios that occurred on the Mayflower. We stayed "onboard" for about 15 minutes to talk about conditions and such. I have made them hardtack when I have done this in the past, but forgot this year!

When we disembarked from the ship, we conducted a detective mystery case that I got from a teaching book. The case was a clue left on the Mayflower, which was a note about the Mayflower Compact and how not everyone wanted to sign it. We then discussed the Mayflower Compact and did a Reader's Theater together. The kids loved it and I think it was a memorable lesson!

Jamestown Lesson: Fear Factor

I am wrapping up my teaching of Jamestown this week. It is always one of my students' favorite topics! There is just so many interesting parts to it! We are almost finished reading "Blood on the River." If you haven't read this book, you should! It is awesome! My class gets so into it and it is very close to actuality (based on primary sources.) 

I am always looking for ways to hook my students into history! I will do anything to get them to buy into my lesson.

Yesterday we did a fun lesson that I call Fear Factor: Jamestown Style! Have you seen the show "Fear Factor"? The idea is that contestants have to face their fears to win big money! I think Jamestown would be like that in that the colonists were all facing very real fears, but instead of a monetary reward, they were trying to save their own lives! 

I start the lesson with looking at some primary sources and having students analyze them together with their table groups. Students present their findings and earn points for their groups.

Then, I have a food portion of the game! I go to the store and buy the most disgusting foods that I can find... like baby food, canned meat, sardines, picked pigs feet, etc. (YUCK)

The students eat it up! (literally) The student to eat the food the fastest and show me that there isn't any left in their mouth, gets a point for their team.

I didn't get any pictures of the food part because I was so involved in watching them compete for their teams by taking down the gross food! Needless to say, there are plenty of kids willing to eat some gross stuff for the sake of points for their team. 

I always make sure that the students don't have any food allergies before I buy anything and it is always optional to compete in the food portion.

Finally, we tally up all the team points and then I give some kind of reward for the winning team (like candy or Dojo Points.) 

I think next time I will pick up some mints for everyone to enjoy afterwards to get the nasty taste out of their mouth from whatever they had to eat in the challenge.

This is a lesson that students keep talking about for days afterwards! If you want to see more and get the whole lesson, here is a link.

What do you do to hook your students in?

Jamestown Ship Building Project

Yesterday was out annual ship building project! As a fifth grade, we recreate the 2 ships that came from England to start Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America. It is truly one of my favorite projects all year. My students look forward to it for weeks. I have been asking for streamers and masking tape donation for weeks too. Here are some pictures of the fun we had!

Once "built" we sit in the grass inside to do a reader's theater and journal from the perspective of an actual passenger aboard one of the ships.

For more information on this lesson, see this blog post about it a couple years ago.

Here is my lesson and more on TPT.

Primary Sources Center

I have been working through an online course lately that focuses on the use of Primary Sources in the classroom. After looking at a variety of primary sources for this class myself, I was inspired to open that up to my students as well. I know how valuable a primary source can be to children. They loved to look at, feel, and study "old" things. They want to know where it came from, who it belonged to, what it was used for, and how I got it. My class this year has been especially curious about the primary sources we have studied so far. They have even asked for copies of them to take home so they can look it it more closely. Some of the items I have used so far are a list of colonists aboard the Susan Constant, a map of Virginia drawn by John Smith, and directions given to the first colonists in Jamestown. In order to fit this into my already CRAZY packed-full schedule. 

The result.... a center for studying the objects. I keep my centers or stations in lime green tubs that were purchased form the Dollar Tree. Inside, I have the primary source (this week is a quill pen, wax, and seal.)

Some other primary source choices are picture cards:

Documents from history (I purchased mine at places like Mount Vernon, Williamsburg, Deer Field.)

Books from history (purchased from the same places).

Money from the past (also purchased from Williamsburg.)

 

Here is my printable center I created with the analysis sheet and "I Can" list for the center.

 

 

 I have the complete center available in printable form on Teachers pay Teachers. 

Some other primary source ideas are:

Games

Paintings

Newspapers from a past date

Pictures

 

I also have a primary versus secondary sources cheat sheet freebie for you and your students!

Jamestown Ship Build

Hello Blog World! Today I am sharing one of my favorite projects of the year. I got the idea from a friend who does it at her school. I loved it so much that I recreated it, and added a few aspects too. This is something that students look forward to for weeks and talk about for years to come!

We build the 3 ships that came to America to start the settlement of Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in America. We build them out of dowel rods, streamers, and masking tape. Once built, students get into the ships and do some journaling and a reader's theater that I wrote based on the book "Blood on the River" (a must-read for any Jamestown unit!)

So here's how we do it...

1. I don't have a picture, but the day before, I go out and step off the measurements for the ships and spray paint on the grass roughly an outline for the ships. The measurements are included in my lesson pack.

2. Assign students the name of an actual passenger on board one of the ships headed to America. This can be found online or in my lesson pack.

3. Break students into groups of 3-4 students and give them dowel rods, yard stick, and a hammer.

4. Let students lightly hammer the dowel rods into the ground about a yard apart.

5. Students then run paper streamers between the dowel rods, attaching the streamers with masking tape. This is especially important if it is windy!

6. Continue adding streamers until it is as full as you would like, or you run out.

7. Build all 3 ships and let students get "inside" the ships to do some activities. 

8. We do a journal prompt, asking students to put themselves in the place of the person on their name tag. They are asked to create a few journal entries telling about their journey to the New World.

9. We also do a reader's theater, assigning parts and reading it aloud. There is one based on the book "Blood on the River" in my lesson pack or you could find one online.

We let the kids dress "colonial" and so the teachers do too! This was my team last year: Mrs. Cejda, myself, and Mrs. Grace.

The kids created signs to label our ships too.

We build them in the morning, spend most of the morning out in them, eat lunch in them, then leave them up for other grade levels to come visit and see.

I make "Hardtack" or ship biscuits for the kids to eat onboard too. You can find the recipe here. 

Some helpful hints I have found after doing this a couple times:

-You need about 150 dowel rods (we got them donated from Home Depot)

-About 80 rolls of streamers is needed

-Spray painting the outline helps in controlling the chaos

-Invite other classes and grade levels to visit (our whole 5th grade does it together)

If you would like to purchase my Jamestown Ship Build Lesson Pack, click here. 

**This lesson pack does NOT have directions for building the ships with dowel rods and streamers. That is for my blog only. It suggests using chalk on concrete.**

9/11

I always find today to be a tough day to be a teacher. How do you explain to 10 year old's that there are awful people out there that want to hurt us? They just don't understand why anyone would want to hurt another country. I even had a boy tell me that "that is really emptying someone's bucket." How true that statement is. We just talked about being bucket fillers yesterday, so that really hit home to a lot of my class.

In trying to explain this awful tragedy to my class, I searched for the best ways of showing and explaining the day without being too depressing or graphic. I wanted it to be a serious lesson, but still give them hope and pride for their country. They were genuinely interested in the topic as well. I used the handout created by "What the Teacher Wants." You can find it here. It is a great, simple worksheet that students can fill out to reflect their thoughts and feelings about what we talked about.

I also used Brain Pop's video. The 9/11 video was the featured free video today. Here is a link.

In my searching, I also found myself at the 9/11 Memorial website. They have a lot of lessons and ideas for the classroom. Here is a link. They have so many great resources for children and adults alike!

What ideas did you implement in your classroom today?

George Washington Lapbook

I spent a week at Mount Vernon this summer for their Teacher Institute! It was a fabulous week back in time. I wrote more about it here. I then needed to write a lesson plan at the end of it all. I decided to create a Lap Book about all things Mr. Washington. I love how it turned out! It is now available at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Cover of the Lap Book: It is just a file folder with the openings folded into the middle. I then glued a piece of paper to the front and cut it up the middle along the opening.

 

This is the inside, before being filled in.

 

Here is the left side, filled in. 

 

Here is the right side, filled in.

 

 And.... the finished product! I have included Washington's jobs, major battles, timeline of his life, where we see him today, important figures in his life, facts, and roles that he had in history. You could change up some of them to suit your needs/wants.

I just love lap books and my students do too! They really get into making them and we especially love to use them as a review tool as we are approaching testing. I hope that you will go check it out!

Pilgrims

Today I introduced my students to Pilgrims, Thanksgiving, Wampanoags, and the Plymouth colony. We started the lesson with reading "The Pilgrims' First Thanksgiving" by Ann McGovern. It is a great intro book that covers the basics of what occured and what led to the first Thanksgiving.

Picture courtesy of amazon.com

We then went back in time to 1620, aboard the Mayflower. I showed my students the electronic field trips from the Plimoth Planation website. Here is the link. These 2 field trips show them what life was like for the Pilgrims, as well as the Indians. While watching the field trips, my students munched on Hardtack, ship's biscuits that I made them. You can Google to find many recipes... essentially they are dry, hard biscuits that have no flavor! My kiddos didn't enjoy them much! Haha.

It was a fun, quick lesson that introduced them to Plymouth.

Native American Dioramas

My class created diorama projects last week. I wanted to share with you how awesome that they turned out! We have been learning about the native people of America.

I split the class into five groups. Each group then drew a geographical region out of a hat to create a diorama on. The five groups that I used were: Northeastern Woodlands, Southeastern Woodlands, Pacific Northwest, and Western Great Plains.

The students were responsible for creating a diorama that depicted the type of house they would have lived in, as well as the surrounding land and culture that would have been seen in that region.

As well as the diorama, they created a folder with a map showing where their area was located and a couple of paragraphs telling some more facts and details about the specific tribes that lived there as well.

Here is the rubric that I used to grade their projects with:

Native American Diorama Rubric

I made the rubric using the rubric website, rubistar.4teacher.org. It is a great website for making individualized rubrics for a variety of activities!

George Washington Teacher Institute

I had the privilege to attend the George Washington Teacher Institute this summer at Mount Vernon. It a week-long program in which you stay on the grounds at Mount Vernon and learn about all things George Washington. We did all sorts of fun things like tour the mansion, meet Mrs. Washington, travel to the gristmill and distillery, as well as, walk around the grounds to see everything they have to offer there. If you have never been, I highly recommend it! It is such a neat experience, especially the teacher institute. I even got up early enough to see the sunrise over the Potomac River.

I tried to choose 5 things that I learned about that I would want to share with my colleagues and class. So, here they are:

1. George Washington had so many different jobs! He was a surveyor, farmer, president, general, owned a distillery and gristmill, as well as cared for his family and country!

2. He was quite the inventor! He constructed a 16-sided barn to aid in the process of threshing grain. It is a sight to see for sure!

3. Anyone who knows me, knows that I LOVE all things chocolate. Well, chocolate was apart of the Washington's life as well. We learned the process of how chocolate was made then, as well as having a taste test. (It was prepared much differently then.) I think I will turn this into a chocolate unit with my kids this year! Anyone have any great chocolate lessons? I think I will include a chocolate tasting party with a variety of different chocolates.

4. Math! Math is everywhere at Mount Vernon! I can tie in the 16-sided barn, the layout of the mansion, the fact that he was a surveyor, the crop rotation schedule, etc.

5. Martha Washington! She is one of my favorite women of history. She played such a role in the formation of our country. I want to bring her alive to my students! I especially respect all of the hardships that she lived through including the death of all of her children, as well as her husband.

So, as you can see, Mount Vernon has so much to offer! I just loved my time spent there.