Social Studies Sunday: Interactive Notebook - Native Americans

Welcome to Social Studies Sunday!  Every Sunday I will post something about social studies whether it be projects, lesson, pinterest ideas, read alouds, picture books, etc.  This Sunday is about our Social Studies Interactive Notebook and Native Americans!

I know this has been a long time coming and truth be told I just got caught up with so many other things in life and the blog world that I plain forgot to post it when we were studying Native Americans.  Better late than never I guess!

Here is our unit on Native Americans for our Social Studies Notebooks.  Since we did not have a lot of time to study this unit, it is not set up like my traditional interactive notebook with the learning on the left and reflection on the right.  Instead of me teaching the students about the four major Native American regions, I had the students teach the lessons!

We began our unit with a graphic organizer "Who Were the First Americans" and filled in our prior knowledge about Native Americans on the left side.  Then each table group was assigned a different region (Pacific Northwest Indians, Southwest Indians, Eastern Woodland Indians, and Great Plains Indians) and had to find information about the eight major topics for each (Tribes, Shelter, Music, Art, Food, Major Beliefs and Practices, Interaction with the Environment, and Interesting Facts).  I let the students use the textbook, Social Studies Weekly Newspaper, the computers and anything else they could find to help them with their research.  After all their research the students presented their information to the class.  Before each group presented we created a new graphic organizer in our notebook and the students even helped come up with some of the ideas for how they wanted their information presented.

Once all the presentations were over and graphic organizers filled in, we finished off our "Who Were The First Americans" graphic organizer by filling in the AFTER section.  It is the same categories as our prior knowledge, but now we should have more detailed descriptions :o)

On the left you'll see my example and the right is the student's final product.

 

You can really use any of these graphic organizers for any regions, tribes, or topics.  The kids really enjoyed getting to become the teachers for the day and did a pretty good job I must say!

Social Studies Interactive Notebook: Set Up/Sensory Figure

All summer long I have been researching interactive notebooks and a lot of people use them for math and science, which I love!  Except I don't teach math or science...  So my next best idea was social studies :o)  Now I have all good intentions of keeping this going and squeezing social studies into our reading block as much as possible but let's call it what it is, it's not always easy.  Our textbooks are a little outdated so a lot of the info we are compiling here is from a whole host of resources.

For those of you who are unsure of what an interactive notebook is, it is a notebook (composition, spiral, or even a binder - whatever you choose) that allows students to be independent and creative writers and thinkers.  Each notebook is specific to each teacher and there are many different ways to set it up. Take a look at some of these great websites for more ideas!

http://interactive-notebooks.wikispaces.com/

 



http://mrsgannon.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/settingupthenotebook/

 

I set mine up where the left side is for learning and the right side is for the student's response or reflection.  I know this is pretty backward from what most others do, but I'm too OCD and like things left to right how we learn them, lol, and the matching letters (L-L and R-R) seem to help my students remember.  On the left side is where my students write notes, vocabulary, video notes, fill in printed off guides, glue in foldables that we create in class, basic questions, etc.  The right side I use as their reflections.  I'm starting off by telling them which activity to do on the right side but with their own input and ideas.  As the year continues and they become more familiar with the different types of activities for the reflections, I will let them pick their own.  Here are some websites with great right side ideas!

http://www.mrroughton.com/assignments-new

 

http://sciencenotebooking.blogspot.com/search/label/Right%20Hand%20Ideas



I use this activity table and have even added a few more!  I cannot remember where I found this, during one of my many Google searches, but if anyone knows the creator please let me know so I can thank them profusely and give them credit!  If you click the picture below it will take you to six pages of wonderful activities. :o)

The first day I introduced the notebook the students and I created the Table of Contents and numbered pages 1-5.  I didn't want kids to get too comfortable with the numbering and go ahead without me, so I'm taking it a chunk at a time.



Our first page in our SSIN was a Personal Sensory Figure.  A Sensory Figure is one of the right side activities where students draw a character from a story or a historical figure and then write down what they sense: feel (can do actual touch and emotion), smell, see, hear, taste, and even something they have done/accomplished.  The example I used with my kids was Harriet Tubman: she can smell the damp earth when  hiding in the basements of homes on the underground railroad, she feels hope for the future, she hears peoples cries and concerns and wants to help them, etc.  This is a great way for students to show you that they truly understand their historical figure or character.  For the beginning of the year I thought they could each draw a personal sensory figure because who do they know better than themselves?!   Here is my personal sensory figure (don't judge the drawing, lol)!

There is the beginning of my SSIN!  I will be posting all the pages and creations as I go so if you have any ideas to help along the way I would LOVE to hear them.  As you can tell from the Table of Contents we have already begun our Geography Unit.  Those pages will be coming soon but next up is European Explorers!

Sabra