Cleland’s 5th Grade Project:
Project Title:
Tea Party Smarty
Project Idea:
Students will develop empathy for the early colonists of Boston as they read Johnny Tremain with the class. As we read the book together, students
will select a founding father which particularly interests them and will begin to “document” events from the perspective of that founding father as
they occur in the book. Students will supplement the novel with other print and electronic resources to fill in the gaps of their founding father’s life.
This research and understanding will be represented in an interactive timeline to be presented to members of the New Bern Historical Society. After
students complete presentations, members of the New Bern Historical Society will present to students how the events in Boston in
Johnny Tremain impacted the history of New Bern.
Driving Question:
How can we communicate the events that led to the American Revolution for an audience of members of the New Bern Historical Society?
Content:
Reference attached planning guide with content addressed from different subjects.
Major Student Product:
Students will create an interactive timeline of the events leading up to the American Revolution from the perspective of a founding father. Timelines
will include written journal entries, video journal entries, journal entries in the voki format, etc. Journal entries will reflect a sound understanding of
the voice/characterization of the selected founding father. Journal entries will also explain the reasons for immigrating to Boston and the political
strife surrounding the conflict between Whigs and Tories including the Boston Tea Party and the origin of the Sons of Liberty.
Resources: Johnny Tremain (1773 - ?)
-“Can’t you Make them Behave King George?” - read during lunch during second week of project
-student-selected and teacher-selected print resources
-student-selected and teacher-selected electronic resources
-Prezi, ppt, animoto, etc .(student-selected vehicle for timeline), voki, Google Earth
-rubistar.com
-class wiki
-http://www.easybib.com/
-http://citation.org/
Prior Reading:
-Witch of Blackbird Pond (1687-1688)
-“How Many days to America?” by Eve Bunting - Thanksgiving Story
Entry Event: -I’ll begin the day by allowing students the opportunity to earn money from me for completing the task of cleaning assigned areas of the
classroom or playground. Students will oblige and earn money for their hard work. Students will look forward to spending the money and I’ll discuss
the concept of capitalism. A member of the New Bern Historical Society will visit the class and require us to pay a tax on a good they’ll bring to us,
whether or not we choose to partake in the good. The students will see this as something unfair and discussion of this will ensue. The member of the
New Bern Historical Society will explain that, as the students live on the property of Craven County, students are required to pay. Students will, then,
be invited to join them on a field trip to the NC History Museum to learn more about New Bern’s colonial history. I’ll promise them that we’ll go on
the trip and we’ll read Johnny Tremain as a method of learning more about this unfair treatment of collecting taxes on something we don’t want.
Fieldtrip to Support Project:
-Tryon Palace
-NC History Museum
Assessment:
-Summative Assessment –
~Students will collaborate to design the rubric for the summative evaluation at the beginning of the project following the Entry Event and reveal of
the Driving Question. (Source for Rubric: rubistar.com)
~At the conclusion of the project, prior to presenting, students self-assess on their copy of the rubric. This gets submitted to the teacher so that
teacher evaluation can be documented on the same form. Students will add evidence of their reasons for evaluation.
~Students reference a copy of the rubric as they document peer evaluation on a spreadsheet to be submitted after presentations.
-Formative Assessment–
~Students will visibly visit the agreed-upon rubric daily prior to beginning work. This will be posted permanently in the classroom and will be
expected to be out on students’ desks as they work.
~Students discuss and create the project requirements based upon the teacher guidelines and expectations. These requirements will be organized into
a supplemental checklist which students will check off as they’ve completed each aspect.
~Students will rotate plugging in to the projector each day during our work session so that peers can view their work and share tech tips.
~Students will complete a Quick Critique daily at the end of each work session. Students will trade places with a peer, review their product, and then
provide them with one praise and one suggestion for improvement. These will be discussed orally with each other before concluding the Quick
Critique.
~A project progress report will be submitted to parents at the end of two weeks based upon the checklist of requirements. An invitation to parents to
check out their child’s work on their wiki will be included in the progress report.
~Students will upload their drafts, or a link to their draft, to the wiki at the end of each week. Students will be assigned a group for the week(which
will change each week) and the members of the group will serve as audience members as each person presents their draft. Their audience members
will provide two likes and two suggestions for improvement in the discussion tab of the student’s page. Each person of the group will have their turn
as the presenter. Drafts will need to be renamed to avoid replacement on the students’ pages after revisions are made.
Project Debrief: Students will take a survey and feedback will be shared and discussed with the class. This may lead to completion of extra credit
and changes to/creation of a future project.
Project Celebration: The class will have a tea party and...? (Kids can help decide upon supplemental activity during tea party.)
Project Teaching and Learning Guide:
Knowledge and
Skills Needed by
Students:
Scaffolding/Materials/Lessons to be Provided:
Students will be
Pam and her husband from the New Bern Historical Society will visit the class and explain the
introduced to purpose of
purpose of the project.
the project.
Verbal/Written
Communication
Read and Think
Critically
Accepts Feedback
Coach
Date
Accomplished:
January 7, 2013
Students will collaborate to create a list of project requirements after a discussion of what we'll expect Project
Requirements:
to see in our final products.
January 9, 2013
Students will create a rubric which will be used to assess the final product after a disucssion of what
we'll expect to see in our final products. This rubric will include assessment of self-motivation and
work ethic, time management skills, and collaboration. This rubric will be used in the Project
Progress report and as an aspect of the final evaluation. The rubric will have a place to document
evidence of success and completion.
Project Rubric:
Centers/Mini-lessons with Mrs. Pearson and Mrs. Emmerich will serve to remind students of
importance of citing borrowed work and paraphrasing valuable information.
Quick Critiques: MTh of project
Students will provide feedback to one another at the end of the work session on specific dates. This
will be done through Quick Critiques and Focus Group Presentations to evaluate and support one
another's product and progress.
Focus Group
Presentations:
January 10, 2013
Evaluate
Self-Motivation/Work
Ethic
Time Management
Skills
Collaboration
January 25, 2012
Ethical Use of
Resources
February 1, 2012
Students will use their checklist of requirements to self-evaluate progress at our Project Progress
point. This will then be passed to Cleland and will be the same sheet used to document teacher
February 8, 2012
evaluation. This Project Progress report will be shared with parents in their red folder home along
with a link for parents to access to view progress of projects.This will be composed of the checklist of
requirements(content) and the student-created project rubric. This Project Progress report will not
count as a grade. A copy of each project progress report will be made to include/reference/share with Project Progress
parents that evening at Project Progress Parent night and in the final evaluation of the project.
report:
February 1, 2013
Project Progress
Parent Night:
February 1, 2013
from 5 - 6
Final Presentations:
February 14 &15,
2012
Knowledge of Google
Earth
Tech Tip: review of Google Earth features, uses, and purpose to chart path from England to Boston
(This will be used in presentations to feature path selected Founding Father took to arrive at events
covered in Johnny Tremain.)
-This will be supported throughout the reading of Johnny Tremain.
January 11, 2013
-Founding Fathers Presentations
jc-schools.net/dynamic/socst/socstppt/revolutionlexicon.ppt
Knowledge of Founding
Fathers
January 14, 2013
January 15, 2013
myweb.bloomu.edu/jrp59166/pplesson.ppt
Extension for advanced students to explore(or anyone interested):
media.bsusd.com/PowerPoint/Revolution_EQUAL.ppt
-Students will be exposed to an example of a journal entry written from the perspective of one of
these founding fathers to use as an example for their own journal entries.
-Mrs. Emmerich, Mrs. Pearson, and I will conduct lessons on available resources and how to find
appropriate and credible resources.
Mrs. Emmerich will conduct a mini-lesson/center on locating and evaluating electronic resources.
Knowledge of
Appropriate Research
Mrs. Pearson will conduct a mini-lesson/center on locating and evaluating print resources in the
Sources and Techniques
media center.
Knowledge of Aspects
of Colonial Life
Knowledge of
Embedding a Voki:
Knowledge of Prezi
Knowledge of
Hyperlinking sites and
slides within PPT
Mrs. Cleland will conduct a mini-lesson/center on locating and evaluating print resources in our
classroom library.
-Students will take a field trip to the NC History Center and Tryon Palace to learn more about the
daily activities and challenges of members of a colonial society.
January 16, 2013
January 17, 2013
-Tech Tip: review of embedding or linking to a voki
January22, 2013
-Tech Tip: review of Prezi.com features and uses
January 23, 2013
-Tech Tip: review of hyperlinking features of PPT and linking slides within a PPT presentation
January 24, 2013
-Tech Tip: review weatherunderground.com(review of previously completed activity from the
Knowledge of Creating
beginning of the year in which students created graphs to represent collected weather data), review
a Graph within
site referenced for population data, input sample data to correlate with journal entries and model
Presentation
linking to presentation
January 25, 2013
Knowledge of Windows
-Tech Tip: review movie maker features and uses
Movie Maker
January 28, 2013
Project Calendar:
Entry Event/Project begins on January 7th 2013. Advance calendar to January and February of 2013 to view calendar of project events.
http://30boxes.com/print.php?action=month&t=2013-01-20&hideAlert=1
Reference attached file for more detailed guidelines and activities.
1: Challenge:
I'm still struglling with what I need to post on the project wall for each project and whether or not I should leave up artifacts from past projects and
exemplars as they are completed. How fluid is the structure of this wall? Does it change with each project or is it simply added to with each project?
2. Changes:
I've added resources which will be used to faciliate the creation of bibliographies. This has always been difficult for students and has suffered from
year to year depending upon student comfort with citing resources. Several resources have been shared with me and will be visited throughout the
year from project to project.
3. Cheers:
I'm excited to pitch this to my colleagues, to excite students about the curriculum, and to weave our local community's history and members
throughout the project. I'm excited to have more structure to my projects in general based upon the strategies introduced in this workshop.
Language Arts:
Math:
RI.5.3. Explain the relationships or interactions between two or more
individuals, events, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or
technical text based on specific information in the text.
-Students will create a timeline of events of a founding father’s life
leading up to the American Revolution.
Maintained Skill: Selecting and creating an appropriate graph to
represent data.