This was the last week before Spring Break and I needed to finish the westward expansion unit. The main focus of this unit was having students understand how we acquired territories, the implications of manifest destiny, and the motivations and legacies of groups that went west. A short and simple 3 week unit.
Monday – Explore Trail of Tears
Tuesday – Inspirations to Go West
Wednesday – Groups That Went West
Thursday – Dividing the Pie
Monday
Last Friday I left a lesson about the Trail of Tears while I was making my way to Madison, Wisconsin. The engagement level among all my classes was 85% – to me, this means 85% of students at least opened the assignment and attempted something with it. This does not mean they finished, and I didn’t expect them to finish everything.
As a result, Monday was used to finish the Number Mania about the Trail of Tears. For this activity, I provided a quote to students, “…the sufferings of the Cherokees were awful. The trail of the exiles was a trail of death,” and students had to find 4 numbers from the article to prove that quote true. I love using Number Mania numbers and facts as textual evidence as it gives the students a purpose for the numbers they share.
On Monday, I used a Dr. Scott Petri trick and asked the students to analyze their Number Mania infographics. I extracted all the numbers that could prove the quote true and had the students share the amount of numbers they had correct. I also asked the students to reflect, “How do your chosen statistics and information work together to paint a picture of the suffering endured by Native Americans during this period? Is the overall impact of your infographic powerful and thought-provoking?” I didn’t want this Number Mania to be a one and done activity. I love this extension that Scott does with his students. Overall, the reflections were okay. Considering I’ve only done this a few times this year, I need to make reflecting a regular aspect of my class for the future.
Tuesday
On Tuesday, I asked the question, “What inspired people to go west?” This is a lesson that I took from TCI and wrapped some Eduprotocols around it for more engagement. The materials for the lesson worked perfectly with a Frayer, 3xCER, and a Sketch and Tell comic or Netflix template.
This particular lesson has a combination of secondary source background information paired with primary sources. The sources include:
- Thomas Jefferson letter to Lewis and Clark to explore the Louisiana territory.
- Excerpts from Josiah Strong’s book, Our Country: Its Future and Its Present Crisis.
- An explanation of the Homestead Act and the song, I Will Go West, by JP Barrett.
I like the Thomas Jefferson source because it refers back to the Louisiana Purchase which we have discussed from the perspective of Federalists and Democratic Republicans. We also looked at it from the perspective of Lewis and Clark exploring from the Mr. Roughton Culture Shock lesson.
To begin this lesson, I had students Frayer the Homestead Act. I linked a brief reading that AI created and they had 4 minutes to define it, list 3 characteristics, use it in a sentence, and include a picture.
The next part of the lesson was the 3xCER. At first students struggled with pulling a claim from the Jefferson article and letter to Lewis and Clark. They struggles with this because it wasn’t directly stated – they had to process it themselves and figure it out. After noticing the struggles, we read the article and letter together and I mentioned that 4 possible claims could be pulled from the reading. We discussed as a class and this seemed to help with the other two readings.
The last piece of the lesson was creating a Netflix show description based on an inspiration or creating a Sketch and Tell comic using a Justin Unruh template. For the Sketch and Tell comic students could identify 4 inspirations or create a story about what inspired someone to go west. This was an awesome one day lesson.
Wednesday
Wednesday we built off of Tuesday’s lesson and focused on the groups that went west:
- Explorers because it mentioned Lewis and Clark.
- Pioneer Women because I like to include women’s history whenever I can.
- 49er’s because most students understand gold and people trying to strike it rich.
- Mormons because it’s a fascinating story.
- Missionaries – because it ties to the idea of manifest destiny and expanding religion and forcing natives to convert to christianity.
Students chose one group to read about and they used a Brianna Davis template for an Iron Chef – Archetype smash. Students had to list out the motivations, hardships, and legacies left by their chosen group. They had 20 minutes to read and make their slide – BUT there was a catch. I rolled 4 dice and that’s how many words they could use for their motivations, hardships, and legacies. I like this because it’s fun and the students end up paraphrasing the information. Some classes could use 24 words whereas other classes could only use 8 or 10.
After 20 minutes, students shared their slides through a Google Form. The next phase of the lesson was having the students read about the four other groups they didn’t make their slide about. The different word amounts ended up being a good thing because I mentioned to them, “When you are going through everyone’s slides, you need to be the judge and determine what’s good information versus not. A slide with 8 to 10 words might not be good so find a better source.” The different word amounts created this source analysis piece that I like.
Thursday
On Thursday, after the students read about the different groups, we finished up the lesson with an activity I saw on Twitter from Mr. Cline – Dividing the Pie. Lucas George did this activity for his westward expansion lesson as well.
Students had a pie chart and had to divide the pie chart up into sections based on the different motivations and inspirations for what drove people west. The options were: gold, adventure, new opportunity, spreading christianity, and escaping religious persecution. Based on their percentages, students then had to justify why they divided up the pie for the different motivations. I timed this 25 minutes and collected it after the timer ended.
After the timer ended, it was time to wrap up the unit. I like to do two-part assessments. I asked students if they wanted to begin part one (Quizizz) or part two (Bento Box) of the end of unit assessment. They chose the Quizizz – 28 questions and the same quiz they have been doing off and on for the last three weeks. All class averages combined were 92%.
Friday
Heading into Spring Break I thought an Amanda Sandoval creation, the Bento Box, would be a great way to finish the unit. With the Bento Box students find pictures of icons, artifacts, images, etc and relate the symbolism to things they learned in the unit. It’s like a mini museum curation of items with explanations. I thought this would be great because it would allow the students to share multiple artifacts and open ended enough for students to share anything they learned from our westward expansion unit. I gave the students the entire class period to finish the Bento Box and submit. These turned out awesome…
Moler's Musings 