What is the Strategy? Pioneer Journals are a great way to extend your students' thinking when learning about "The Oregon Trail". By creating their own journals, students will create stories and make connections as if they were there. Writing about their travels, trade, the landforms, native people, and the dangers they face everyday; students are able to learn about the importance of the Oregon Trails and the pioneers.
How to Does it work? Students will be learning about pioneer and "The Oregon Trail", so a great way to get students to extend their thinking is by telling their stories of this adventure as if they were actually there. When learning about the Oregon Trail, students will learn about the trail on the map and what the pioneers had to do. While students are learning about what the pioneers did, they would write down (create stories) in their journals about what they think they would be doing if they were there.
Scaffolding For students that may require an additional challenge, I would have them write their narratives in the language of the pioneers. This means, they would not only talk as the pioneers do, but they would write like them too. For students that may need a little extra supports, I would have prompts ready to help them know what they are going to write about that day. For example, I would have a questions asking the student 'What people did you meet today?" (natives). The student would answer the question and write about that.
2. Let's Make a Debate
What is the Strategy? By setting up a classroom debate, students will extend their thinking of a social studies topic and prove why they think one way is better than the other. Students will not only be learning and proving their ideas, but will be learning and creating new ideas about the other sides point of view.
How Does it Work? The students or the teacher would create a question or topic based on what we have been learning in our social studies unit and students would create a debate. Students choose a side (for example, is they agree or disagree with the topic/question) and then would create teams. Two students from each side of the debate (agree and disagree) would then create points and debate facts based on what they have researched. After about 5 minutes or so, the students debating would switch with classmates in their groups. Scaffolding For students that may require an additional challenge, I would have those students become team leaders and help their team find facts and create an argument. For students that may require a little extra support, I would create questions for them to ask and think about, as well as, direct instructions of what they should be researching.
3. Quiz Show
What is the Strategy? By creating and designing their own quiz show, students would be extending their thinking on the social studies content learned in their class. This is a creative and fun way for students to learn and review the content they are learning in class. How Does it Work? Students will go on the website, flippity.net to create questions and design their very own quiz show or more commonly known as jeopardy. Students will create six different topics based on the unit they have learned in class, and five questions for each content. Students will need to know that the higher the points are worth, the tougher the questions should be. Scaffolding For students that may require an additional challenge, I would have them take other students' quiz shows and try to get all of their questions right. I could also pair students up and have them "friendly compete" against each other. For students that may require a little extra support, I would place them in teams and have them create questions together. This way it would help them bounce new thoughts and ideas off each other to create and answer questions based on the content they are learning in class.
4. Create a Newspaper
What is the Strategy? Students would extend their thinking about historical figures and their famous events by applying concepts learned in class to create a newspaper article. This is a great way for students to dig a little deeper and apply the information they know into a fun writing activity.
How Does it Work? Based on the concepts we are learning in class, students can create news article about historical figures. For example, if we were learning about Martin Luther King Jr., students create a news article by his "I Have a Dream" speech or other historical events of him. Scaffolding For students that may require an additional challenge, I would have them create realistic true and false articles. Once students have completed their assignment, they would then write a realistic event that didn't happen, but could have. For students that may require a little extra support, I would give that student a specific historical figure and event that happened and have them write a newspaper article based on that event.