CEP815: Six Factors that Influence Student Achievement According to John Hattie

Hattie 6 Factors that influence student achievement

CEP 800

Colonial Williamsburg Lesson Plan:

Colonial Williamsburg Webquest

Subject: 5^th Grade Social Studies

Learning Standards:

5- U2.3.2 Describe the daily life of people living in the New England, Middle, and Southern colonies.

5- U2.3.3 Describe colonial life in America from the perspectives of at least three different groups of people (e.g., wealthy landowners, farmers, merchants, indentured servants, laborers, and the poor, wolmen, enslaved peolple, free Africans, and American Indians).

Essential Question:

What was life like for people living in Colonial America/Williamsburg?

Describe some of the typical events that people went through on a daily basis in Colonial America.

Why was life different for the different groups of people?

Materials Needed:

Graphic Organizer, pencil, computer station for each student with internet access, access to the following webquest http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=134374

Lesson:

1.       Hand out Colonial Webquest graphic organizer to students.

2.       Review with students what a webquest is and show them how to get to the one they will be doing: http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=134374 Explain that they have a mission and the process will help them to complete there final mission project – which is to write a newspaper article from the perspective of students.

3.       Discuss with students what they already know about Colonial Williamsburg to get their prior knowledge flowing. Encourage them to search about what they don’t already know about since they will have options within their graphic organizer.

4.       Allow students ample time to complete the assignment. It should take approximately 3 hours for students to complete with quality work.

5.       Have them follow the directions in the webquest to submit their writing via google form.

Content: I am teaching students about the different roles of people within their colony in Colonial Williamsburg. They are taking the role of a child and writing from their perspective and telling about their life. The students are guided on a journey to learn about how the different groups of people lived, worked, played, etc.

Pedagogy: Students use interactive websites to follow a graphic organizer. It is a self-lead lesson which allows for students to be in control and discover on their own. They are given choices of what to look up at times and a choice in the end as they decided what role they want to take to write their article. As the teacher, I will be conferencing with students throughout their journey and watching over their shoulder, being there for guidance. Some students may need help reading or may have the assignment cut down to accommodate their special needs.

Content & Pedagogy: I chose a self-discovery approach to teaching this content to allow for students to be creative in their final writing projects. The graphic organizer is set up to review the different groups and to explore Colonial Williamsburg. There is more information than what any one student would need to know all of. So allowing for students to choose what interests them and creating their project based on that, is what drives this assignment.    

Technology: I chose to use a webquest to teach this lesson. Along with the webquest, students are directed to various interactive websites to gather information and learn about the different groups of people living in Williamsburg. Finally, they type their article and submit via a google form. This lesson would be able to teach without using technology, however the content found on the website would be difficult to find in textbooks. The depth of learning would not be as deep without using technology. They would be able to write articles from Colonial children perspectives, however they would not be able to gather as much information as they were able to from the websites.

Technology and Pedagogy: The webquest is a great tool for students to discover Williamsburg on their own. They are able to make their own choices following the graphic organizer and the links on the webquest to gather information to help them on their final mission of the webquest. The webquest works great because it allows for directions and links of the websites to be formatted easily for elementary students to follow. The students are in the beginning stages of learning to research, however in this case they are directed to pre-approved quality sites so that more learning of the content is encouraged.

Technology and Content: The Webquest and interactive sites allow students to explore the different groups of people within Colonial Williamsburg. It is structured enough to follow the essential questions by linking to the approved sites to gather information, but it also allows students to be creative in their articles by choosing what to write about and what perspective to choose.

Assessment: I want to students to know that their were different roles for people in Colonial Days. Life was much different for each of these groups, from the types of clothes they wore, to what they ate, to how they spent their free time. By having them explore and become one of these roles in their final project, I hope that they are able to identify the different types of hardships that people went through on a regular basis in order to survive. In the final project, students complete an article for a newspaper about their life or an event that happened from the perspective of a child from one of the different groups of people. Technologies role is to allow for exploration of the different groups of people, while using interactive sites. Textbooks don’t generally spend a lot of time focusing on this topic, but this assignment is something that they will hopefully have fun doing while learning the content. I will assess students based on the rubric posted in the Webquest.

Audio Interview:
I recently interviewed two recent high school graduates to ask them what they knew about living and non-living things. A concept that is taught heavily in elementary school, which is what I teach. I was curious to see what these high school graduates could remember.

Click here to hear my Audio Interview!