Social Studies Lesson/Unit Plan Template (precursor to Teacher Work Sample (TWS) in Internship II)
Teacher(s) Name: Jordan Williams
Thematic Unit Theme/Title/Grade Level: Native Americans/Fifth Grade
Wiki space address: http://ucfgr5nativeamericanssp12th.wikispaces.com/
Daily Lesson Plan Day/Title: Day Four/Westward Expansion: How did it Affect the Indians?
Learning Objectives
What will students accomplish / be
able to do at the end of this lesson?
Be sure to set significant (related to
SSS), challenging and appropriate
learning goals!
NCSS Theme/
NGSSS- Next Generation
Sunshine State Standards
List each standard. Cutting and
pasting from the website is
allowed. These can be downloaded
from the Florida Dept of Education
http://flstandards.org.
Depending on the topic, 4-5 objectives are ample. All should begin with:
The student will…
 Understand the importance of boundaries within the United States during the 1800s
(SS.5.A.6.4)
 Analyze the steps taken to move Indians from their native lands to reservations
(SS.5.A.6.6)
 Watch a video clip to assist in visualizing the horrors of the Indian Removal Act and
the Trail of Tears (SS.5.A.6.6)

Place themselves in the position of a Native American on the Trail of Tears and
construct a journal entry describing the hardships that they would have endured while
making the journey West (LA.5.4.1.1, LACC.5.W.1.3)
 Observe and analyze the physical and chemical reactions of burning cardstock to
depict the aging process of paper (SC.5.P.9.1)
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NCSS Themes: Culture; Time, Continuity, and Change, and Peoples, Places,
and Enviornments
SS.5.A.6.4: Explain the importance of the explorations west of the Mississippi River.
SS.5.A.6.6: Explain how westward expansion affected Native Americans.
LA.5.4.1.1: The student will write narratives that establish a situation and plot with
rising action, conflict, and resolution; and (Social Studies and Language Arts)
LACC.5.W.1.3: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events
using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences. (Social
Studies and Language Arts)

Assessment
 How will student learning be
assessed? Authentic/Alternative
assessments?
 Does your assessment align with
your objectives, standards and
procedures?
 Informal assessment (multiple
modes): participation rubrics,
journal entries, collaborative
planning/presentation notes
SC.5.P.9.1: Investigate and describe that many physical and chemical changes are aff
ected by temperature. (Social Studies and Science)
Unit Pre-Assessment: Multiple choice quiz- The students will complete a
brief multiple choice quiz regarding basic facts about the Native Americans.
Unit Post-Assessment: Multiple choice quiz- The students will be given the
same multiple choice quiz and will answer the questions that have since been
covered by the lessons throughout the week.
On-going Assessment:
1. Journal entry including details and facts from actual accounts from the
Trail of Tears
2. Class Discussion on how the Indian Removal Act drastically altered the
lives of many Native Americans
3. Participation in regards to following the expected guidelines for the day
(moving from one location to another, being engaged in the discussions, etc)
Social Studies Lesson/Unit Plan Template (precursor to Teacher Work Sample (TWS) in Internship II)
Design for Instruction
1. Review the concepts covered in the previous day’s lesson (cultures, backgrounds, etc)
Student Activities & Procedures
 What best practice strategies will be
implemented?
 How will you communicate student
expectations?
 What products will be developed
and created by students?
 Consider Contextual Factors
(learning differences/learning
environment/learning styles) that
may be in place in your future
classroom.
Exceptionalities
What accommodations or
modifications do you make for
ESOL, Gifted/Talented students,
Learning/Reading disabilities (SLD),
etc.
2. The teacher will probe the students to recall information from the previous day
 “What have you learned about the different cultures?”
 “Which traditions did the different tribes have?”
 “Do you think that the American settlers were accepting of the different lifestyles and
rituals that the Native American tribes? Why or why not?”
3. Explain that the Americans were trying to rid the Native Americans of their culture and
heritage…Americanize them.
4. Ask the students questions to get them thinking about the motives of the settlers
 “Why do you think that the settlers would want to stop the Native Americans from
practicing their own culture?”
 “What do you think was so intimidating about the Native Americans that frightened
the settlers?”
 “Do we see similar situations in the world today? If so, where and why do you think
it occurs?”
5. Anticipatory Set: Engage the students in the lesson that you are about to present by asking
them questions that they can easily relate to that directly links to the Westward Expansion
content. Follow these guiding questions:
 “How many of you have ever felt forced to do something? Is it usually something that
you don’t want to do? What are some examples (chores, not missing school, finishing
homework before playing, etc)?”
 “Usually, when you are forced into doing something that you do not want to, you
might have a sense of resentment or ill-feelings against the person that forced you to
do it. Could this present to be an issue when you have to interact with the person
later?”
 “What do you think would happen if your country’s government forced you to do
something that you did not feel was fair or just? How would you feel if you were
forced to leave the place where you grew up, your entire family was from, and move
hundreds of miles away to an unknown place? What if this entire situation happened
just due to your ethnicity and cultural background?”
6. Explain that the questions that you just posed were what actually happened to many Native
American tribes, in particular the Creek, Seminoles, Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Choctaws.
These tribes were forced onto Indian reservations in the west to “clear out” land in the east and
make it available for American settlers.
7. On the desk, there will be handouts titled “Westward Expansion”. These are to be handed
out to the students before the information is presented in the PowerPoint presentation. Tell the
students that they must pay attention to the PowerPoint in order to fill in the blanks on their
worksheet. Explain that the worksheet is a time-order chart and that the removal of the Indians
to the west was an entire process that took place in a certain order, not just one swift
movement. Ensure that there are no other questions, then begin the presentation.
8. Show a PowerPoint presentation giving the details of the Indian Removal Act and how it
was implemented throughout the country. Guide the students in filling out their handouts as
needed. Probe them for answers; do not simply give them the correct responses.
9. Continue through the PowerPoint, presenting the information on the Trail of Tears: what is
was, who it affected, and any related statistics. Tell the students that the Trail of Tears was an
effect of the Indian Removal Act, thus it is further along in their time-order chart worksheet.
10. Once the PowerPoint material has been covered, tell the students to put their worksheets in
their folders/binders with their other materials related to Native Americans. While in their
binders, have them take out their map of the United States worksheet that they had been using
earlier in the week (during the region and culture lessons).
11. At this time, the teacher would close out the PowerPoint presentation and visit the
Social Studies Lesson/Unit Plan Template (precursor to Teacher Work Sample (TWS) in Internship II)
following website http://www.cherokeemuseum.org/html/collections_tot.html
to view the Trail of Tears route. Tell the students that although there were five major tribes
associated with the Trail of Tears, they are going to just focus on the Cherokees for this
activity. Once the map is displayed on the Interactive White Board, explain to the students that
the lines on the map represent the path that the Cherokee Indians took when traveling west and
that the path on land was known as the Trail of Tears itself.
12. Have one student at a time (determined by who has been the most motivated and focused
throughout the lesson) come up to the Interactive White Board and, with their finger, follow
the trail along to the first stop. The student will hover over that location, read the name of that
place, and what specifically happened there. These individual locations or what happened
there do not necessarily need to be memorized due to the rather in-depth content.
However, it is important that the students understand the progress of the Indian removal
and how they made it to the west.
12. After the first student has done his/her job, he/she will call on another student to go up to
the Interactive White Board and follow the trail to the next shaded location. This “popcorn”
style participation will continue until every location has been covered.
13. Once every location has been covered on the interactive map, all students are to have
returned to their seats. The teacher will then access a short video clip on YouTube depicting
the horrors of the Trail of Tears. The video can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUILURVoPhw&feature=related. The students will watch
the video on the Interactive White Board and gain another visual perspective on the harsh
mistreatment of Native Americans.
14. The teacher will take the letter off of her desk and show it to the students. Explain that she
wrote a journal entry as if she was a Cherokee Indian being forced to travel on the Trail of
Tears and she was recording her experience. Tell the students that they will have the
opportunity to do the same; give each student a piece of cardstock that is in the right hand
drawer of the teacher’s desk and explain that this paper represents the journal of their own
Indian “character”. Encourage the students to include as many details and facts from the lesson
as they can. (This exercise helps the students learn about the experience as if they had
experienced it themselves: “first-person point of view”) THIS CAN ALSO SERVE AS THE
WRITING BLOCK/WRITER’S WORKSHOP.
15. While the students are completing their journal entries, the teacher will let three tea bags
soak in a bowl of water. Then she will set up a candle at the front of the classroom, along with
the bowl of tea.
16. Once the students are done with their journal entries, the teacher will demonstrate with her
own journal article how to “age” a piece of paper. First, she will light the candle and carefully
burn the edges (one at a time, then extinguishing the flames on the paper) to make the paper
appear worn. Then, she will use a paintbrush to cover the rest of the cardstock in tea, making it
look aged and brown. EXPLAIN THATTHESE ARE PHYSICAL AND
CHEMICALCHANGES AND IT REPRESENTS A CONNECTION TO SCIENCE
(SCIENCE EXTENSION ACTIVITY).
17. At the end of the day, explain to the students that there were many important Native
American individuals that fought for the freedom of their people and that they will be learning
about those heroic people in tomorrow’s lesson.
ESOL/ESE Accommodations: ESOL and ESE students will be able to orally present
their journal article that they brainstorm rather than writing out the entire piece.
Another alternative is to allow the ESOL and ESE students to use a Native American
“picture writing” alphabet to draw out or describe the feelings that they are trying to
portray in their article.
Talented Students (Students that finish early): The students that are able to complete
the journal entry quickly will be allowed to begin working on their assigned homework
for that section.
Social Studies Lesson/Unit Plan Template (precursor to Teacher Work Sample (TWS) in Internship II)
Resources/Materials
Resources:
http://www.cherokeemuseum.org/html/collections_tot.html (Interactive online
map of the Trail of Tears)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUILURVoPhw&feature=related (Trail of
Tears video clip)
http://www.teachervision.fen.com/tv/printables/0876287887_43_44.pdf
(ESOL strategy “picture writing” handout)
http://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/pdf/timeorder.pdf (Time-Order
chart)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2959.html (information used in the
PowerPoint)
Indian Treaties by Susan Dudley Gold
Materials:
Cardstock (1 piece per student)
tea bags (3 bags)
water
bowl
paintbrush
pens/fine point Sharpies (1 per student)
candle (1)
lighter (1)
Interactive White Board
Classroom Phone
PowerPoint presentation
Discussion Notes: Make comments here related to ideas for assessment measures, homework, parent
involvement, field trips, or extension to the unit plan ideas.
Assessment Measures: The student’s assessment will be graded largely on their journal entry that they
create, their overall participation in group discussions, behavior during class, and completion of the
class handouts.
Social Studies Lesson/Unit Plan Template (precursor to Teacher Work Sample (TWS) in Internship II)
Homework: The students will take their journal entries home to have their parents help “age” them
with instructions provided by the teacher. Additionally, students will write another journal entry, this
one from the viewpoint of a young American settler who is going to live on the land that the Indians
are being forced to leave. Express their feelings, emotions, and concerns within the journal article.
Parent Involvement: The parents can assist the children at home in “aging” their own journal entries
with the instructions provided by the teacher. Additionally, the students should be able to approach
their parents with any questions regarding the forced Native American removal westward or related
events.
Field Trips: Depending on the location of your particular school, there are several historical areas
along the Trail of Tears with memorials and information about the Native American removal. A visit
to one of these locations (if travel time permits) could be extremely beneficial to the students.
Extension: Keep the discussion flowing about the Indian Removal Act by asking the students if they
see this happening in the modern day world. Ask the students to bring in current events about an issue
that appears similar.