Yesterday I was one of those huge nerds that work
super late on a Friday. When I was walking to my car that was in the
middle of an empty parking lot I was inventing a new meaning of the phrase
"walk of shame". But I did accomplish something that gave me a
pretty nice sense of satisfaction. I updated/revamped my personal unit
for Native Americans. A while back I created units (and by units I mean
rough day-by-day plans) for all of my Social Studies, Science and Math
units. Each year I use them again and add/edit a little, but this year we
got a new "textbook" which is an online textbook from Success Net
Plus. As a side note, I'm really excited about having this as a new
resource but I'm feeling a little bit of a learning curve because their little
PD introduction to the product wasn't as helpful as one would hope. Anyway.
. . I updated my unit to include this new resource and just revamped the whole
thing.
I'm kind of a create units kick because of chapter
2 in Never Work Harder than your Students, which we're reading for my school's
book club for teachers. It's ok. It's somewhat useful, somewhat
repetetive, a teeny condescending at times. We'll see how the rest goes.
So. . . back to Native Americans. Monday
we're starting off by reading Scholastic News about Columbus Day. I
know. It's a week late but we were wrapping up Life Cycles stuff for the end of the
quarter. And better, late than never, right? Plus I felt like it's
kind of a perfect way to launch into this unit and then I can let Thanksgiving
tie the unit up with a perfect little bow. :) I'm excited.
Can you tell?
We're also going to watch BrainpopJr's video on Columbus Day
(which is free, so you can watch it even if your district doesn't subscribe)
and, if we have time we'll watch another video from United
Streaming titled Holiday Facts & Fun: Columbus Day. It might
sound a little video-y, but I love letting my students watch videos for Social
Studies & Science both. They are so much more engaging than the
standard textbook (another reason to be excited for our online textbook!).
Speaking of videos we'll watch several more videos
from United Streaming throughout the unit. In my district the focus for
second grade is Woodland and Plains Indians. In addition to videos, I
plan on doing some group activities, creating tortilla teepees (or maybe
cupcake teepees), and doing the cute things I've whipped up in my Native
Americans pack which is on TPT. Here are some of the things we'll do:
Get these
activities for your classroom by clicking {HERE} or on the picture below.
I'm
thinking, too, of doing some craftivities, but I haven't figured out what to do
yet. I'm going to do some searching on Pinterest and TPT. If you find
anything cute online, leave the link to it in the comment, please. I'd
love that.
What
fun activities do you do for Native Americans? What fun things do you do
for Thanksgiving?
Just in case you're
wondering where I got all the cute clip art and fonts from for my Native
American things, here are the credits:
Clip art by:
Tales from Outside the Classroom
Fonts by:
