Engaged Learning with Technology
Egyptian Brochure
Subject and Level: 6th Grade Social Studies
Learner Description - The student will create a brochure about the ancient Egyptian civilization, incorporating the five traits of Social Studies- Art, Architecture, and Entertainment, Government, Religion, Daily Life, Women, and Children, and Weapons and Warfare.
Overview -
What will be taught? Students will learn how to create a brochure using the Microsoft Word program. Students will also be learning how to use the program Inspiration to create a rubric for their project. This brochure stems from our Ancient Egypt unit while incorporating the five themes of Social Studies.
What will students do and learn? Students will learn about the characteristics of Ancient Egypt and showcase their findings in a travel brochure, trying to persuade others to come visit Ancient Egypt.
Rationale - Purpose for the unit as a whole. The WHY questions.
Why would you teach this unit? This unit comes as a part of the 6th grade curriculum, covering ancient civilizations and the 5 traits of Social Studies. For this unit, we wanted to integrate a project that would showcase the Ancient Egyptian civilization in an engaged learning style. This would differ from reading from the book and answering questions.
Why would this qualify as an Engaged Learning unit? This qualifies as an Engaged Learning unit because students are making the decisions about what will go into their brochure. They will also decide how their brochures will be graded. At the beginning of the project, students and teacher sat down and I discussed the project and how it was going to work. I informed students that they were going to create a brochure persuading tourists to visit Ancient Egypt. The only requirements were that each page had to cover a different component of the five themes of Social Studies. As a class, we then brainstormed on butcher paper possible ideas for each theme. Compiling all of the students’ ideas, I then typed their ideas up more formally into a hand-out. This is an engaged learning unit also, because students also brainstormed ideas for how their brochure should be assessed. Students working in groups of two or three went into the computer lab and using the program Inspiration, brainstormed key ideas that they thought they should be assessed on. I once again compiled all of their ideas and included this information in their hand-out.
Why is technology an important component of this unit? Technology is important because instead of making the typical posterboard project or typing up a report, students are using creativity to include pictures and words in a computer based program. Students can do different things with the font, pictures, and the overall format of the brochure. Technology enforces creativity and thinking outside of the box.
Why is this project authentic/meaningful , and challenging for students? This project is challenging because most students are accustomed to having things spelled out for them and just following the guidelines. This forces students to step outside what may be their comfort zone and develop ideas on their own. Instead of the teacher informing them what should go into each page, students are instead given a list of possible ideas, but ultimately the decision is their own as to what should go into their brochure. Another challenging aspect of this project is technology. Not every student’s strong point is technology, so for some, this project was difficult. Students are forced to make some important decisions as to the lay-out, what information should be included, as well as what pictures are the most meaningful. Students will face many challenges throughout their lives and are going to find themselves making many important decisions. This project help students understand that things in life are not always going to be spelled out for them perfectly.
Goals - Content, Cognitive and Social - The WHAT questions
What new attributes (knowledge, skills, attitudes) do you expect students to gain? As mentioned above, I expect my students to gain more responsibility and make well thought out decisions. Engaging students in a project not only helps with the educational aspect of learning, but also in a way enforces life skills that students may carry with them throughout their lives. Students are going to find themselves in situations where it is up to them how they would like to present information to the class. By introducing students to different projects, opens students up to other possibilities besides book reports, posters, etc.
What school, district, state and national standards/benchmarks are addressed? This project addresses the following standards: 16.E.3b (W) Explain how expanded European and Asian contacts affected the environment of both continents, 1000 BCE - 1500 CE.; 16.B.3a (W) Compare the political characteristics of Greek and Roman civilizations with non-Western civilizations, including the early Han dynasty and Gupta empire, between 500 BCE and 500 CE. ; 16.B.3b (W) Identify causes and effects of the decline of the Roman empire and other major world political events (e.g., rise of the Islamic empire, rise and decline of the T’ang dynasty, establishment of the kingdom of Ghana) between 500 CE and 1500 CE.
Learning Activities - The activities required to achieve the goals.
The How questions.
Student Assessment- Enables student and teacher to measure student's attainment of goals.
What are my scoring characteristics? (What do I want to measure? What is an important outcome of this unit?) For assessment, students collaborated to discuss what would be some important characteristics to consider when assessing. Students worked in groups with a program called Inspiration, which helps students work on their note taking skills/organizing their information in an organized fashion. Based on what students turned in from that, I sat down and organized the information into a rubric. In conclusion, students felt that content-accuracy, graphics/pictures, attractiveness and organization, creativity, grammar, and knowledge gained were the most important.
What will indicate that students are novices, practitioners, or experts? My experts will be those students who gain all 4’s in each of the categories. These students should have accurate facts, a mix of hand drawn and computer pictures, a well-organized brochure, creativity, no grammatical errors, and equal participation. Those students who are practitioners have 90-99% of their facts accurate, a decent amount of pictures, some creativity, a few grammatical errors, and overall decent participation. Novices will be those students who have 89-80% of their facts accurate, little creativity, more than 3 grammatical errors, and little participation. All of this information will be evident in their rubric and given to them before the due date so that they know what is expected of them.
How will I measure and communicate student progress on the goals? After students decided on ideas for the project as well as assessment criteria, I typed all of the information into a hand-out. The 6th grade Social Studies teachers then sat down and mapped out how long this project should take with our objective to have it finished by Winter Break. Keeping this in mind, I created a calendar for students from Thanksgiving Break all the way to Winter Break, breaking down due dates and what would be happening each day in class. This gave students an idea of how long they would have to work on their project as well as due dates for everything. This helped those students who are more visual learners because they were able to actually see how many days they have for everything. On these due dates, I then checked students’ progress towards their goal and made adjustments as needed.
How can students be involved in establishing goals and criteria for the assessment? As mentioned above, students created this project. They decided what should go into the brochure and developed the rubric. With students’ collaboration, students are aware at all times what their expectations are. Once students developed their ideas, I sat down and formed an organized handout explaining the requirements.
How will the assessments be implemented to ensure that they are generative? Seamless and ongoing? Equitable for all students? An authentic task? As mentioned above, all students are aware of the assessment as they helped create it. It is ongoing because students are given deadlines for their notes, outline, and final project. As these due dates approach, I assess the work and make adjustments or suggestions as needed. In this class, I have students who are high and low achievers, as well as gifted students. No student should be assessed in the same exact format, so I take students’ abilities into consideration while grading.
How will students demonstrate their knowledge and skills? Students will demonstrate their knowledge and skills by presenting their completed brochures to the class at the end of the unit. I will also grade the final project using a rubric. While presenting to the class, I am looking for groups to share three of the most important facts related to their project. The idea when students present to the class is to persuade the class into coming to Ancient Egypt for their mentioned reasons. What I am looking for as a teacher, is that students’ brochures are accurate and depict Egypt with detailed facts.
Management
How will you manage student work individually and in groups? - What resources will you need to do this unit? Management becomes a crucial component of any group work performed in a classroom. Since students are allowed to choose their own partners, this tends to allow itself to more talking and at times slower progress. As a result, it is imperative that I make myself visible at all times and constantly check on students’ progress. At the end of this project, students will fill out a reflection, asking how the project went. One of the questions asks them how work with their partner went. This is an opportunity for them to explain to me if they think the group work went well, any problems that arose, etc.
How will the room(s) be arranged. For this project, areas such as the classroom, library, and computer lab will be used. The first portion of the project will be spent in the classroom and library. In the classroom, teachers and students will collaborate to share ideas about what should be in the brochure and to explain the project. When it comes time to research, the library will be used where the librarian has pulled books about Egypt. The computer lab will be used for online research as well as constructing the project with the program. The computer lab also is going to be used to create the rubric using Inspiration.
Where will equipment and materials be located to promote maximum use? Most materials will be located in the library for the brochure. The library has the books we will be using to research as well as the computer lab. The books are located on a book rack that can be easily transported so that if the library is not available, the rack can be rolled into the classroom. The library is also a productive place to work because there are tables in the library which may be easier to work on than the desks in the classroom. We have a class set of laptops that can be used if the computer lab is not available one day.
Where will students need to work and how can they be accommodated? The struggle with this project is that it does involve technology and technology can be unpredictable. There are days when the computer lab will not be available or perhaps the internet will be down. Most work will be done in the computer lab. If for some reason, the lab is closed down/the internet is not working then students can be doing their research in books or be organizing a hard copy of what they would like their brochure to look like.
How will students with special needs be helped? There are no students in this class that need specific special needs. This is a class that does have seven labeled gifted students. For these students, they are engaged in the same project, however they are creating their project without the use of a rubric and are being assessed more critically as to their use of creativity. They will be working with Mr. Wright, one of our gifted resource teachers.
Unit Evaluation
What will I need to do, be aware of, and/or gather while teaching the unit in order to answer these questions: I will need to constantly monitor my students’ work and with the use of a calendar complete with due dates, I will not be waiting until the day the entire project is due to assess my students’ progress. Periodic spot checks will also be effective so that if I need to make adjustments to due dates, I allow room for change. At the end of the project, I will also have students fill out a reflection, describing what they liked about the project, what they did not like, any problems, etc.
What was effective? What was effective was having students work in groups to create a work indicative of their learning. Instead of having students read pages and complete worksheets, students created a final project to showcase all of their findings. Students enjoyed researching things that interested them and having a say in how they should be created. What also turned out to be effective was them choosing their own partners. In some situations where students can choose their own partners, it lends itself to problems of too much talking and not getting enough work done. This has proved to be a class that even when they do choose their partners, it is effective.
What wasn't effective? What wasn’t effective was the amount of time we limited to the project. Many students in their reflection reported that they felt rushed at certain points and wished they would have had more time to work.
What will I do differently next time? If I were to do this again, I would maybe take it one step further and give students even more options. Students had options for this project but the options were within the five elements of social studies. For the next project, perhaps students would have to stay within the five elements but then could also include information that was not requested such as food, hobbies, etc. This may force even more students to step outside the box and take their research to another level. This project was a success and students reported back that they enjoyed it, so I do plan to repeat this project again next year.