Sunday, October 01, 2006

Native American Projects

Well, my first project has been assigned. It’s a simple affair focusing on Native American regions and how regional resources influenced their food, shelter, and clothing.

Each student has been assigned a region and Native American group that just happens to be mentioned in our old textbooks. Now I wonder how that happened?

Before our old textbooks were removed from the building I managed to save a class set. I plan to target research for students from the old textbooks from time and time. As of last Friday every student had been given an opportunity to take an old textbook home to complete their research. Students were told they could use media center books and the Internet as well.

I also presented a poster to students to show them what I’m looking for. It would not have been fair for me to actually complete a poster on one of the assigned regions because I would have been doing some lucky student’s work for them. I chose a U.S. region instead. Here’s my classroom example:

nativeAmericanproject2

I used Bar-B-Q and grits as part of choices for foods to get a chuckle from the kids.

I asked students to judge my poster based on the grading rubric I gave them. I asked students, “Would I receive an A once it as graded? Is there any requirement I failed to meet?”

The rubric states students must do the following in order to receive a grade from 90 to 100.
*project must cover the assigned topic
*information must be presented on poster board
*information cannot be printed from the Internet and glued to posterboard
*information should be evenly spaced on posterboard
*labels must be handwritten or can be typed using a word processing program
*pictures must be drawn by the student
*pictures cannot be printed from the Internet or copied from a book
*pictures should be outlined in black and utilize more than one color
*information is given regarding how the assigned tribe meets their basic needs for food, shelter, and clothing
*sources for food, shelter, and clothing include pictures and labels
*a physical map is colored and labeled indicating where the assigned region is located
*one or two sentences are provided giving information about the climate and physical description of the region

Most students agreed I could have done a better job labeling my resources. “Great,” I said, “Then you will remember to do that, won’t you?”

Projects are due October 13th. I anxious to see what they come up with.

2 comments:

CaliforniaTeacherGuy said...

So, according to the rubric, how did your students score you? ;-)

EHT said...

They felt I needed to label my pine and oak trees as well as my labels for food sources. I also didn't lable my cotton plant. So...it would seem since I only had one problem area I would earn approximately 95 points.

I was fairly surprised at the quality of my artwork if I do say so myself....though it does look like a primary grade child did it. Oh well....I can't do everything well, I guess. :)