Guest Blogger Chelsea Lewis Presents a Brilliantly Artistic Cave Painting Project!!!

Have you ever had that feeling watching someone else teach and saying to yourself, "Man, I want to do that in my classroom!"  Well, I had that feeling talking to Chelsea about her Old Stone Age Cave Painting project.  I'll let Chelsea explain the project in her own words below, but let me highlight three reasons why I think this project is wonderful.

1. It requires DOK 3-4 knowledge.  Students are not sitting in their sits merely applying knowledge, but are rather out of their seats constructing something authentic.  I think project is one of those projects where kids will remember for years after middle school, because it is unique and it required students to be creative.

2. This project builds student investment.  I wasn't there to witness it but based off the pictures, it seemed students were deeply invested in the project.  That is the beauty of giving kids hands-on projects and letting them use unusual things like charcoal.

3. Chelsea gives very explicit instructions on how to use the materials.  The danger of these kind of projects is that your kids will damage your materials, your classroom, or be hurtful to their classmates.  Chelsea writes very clear instructions here on how to use the charcoal, for example.  Also, make sure you emphasize teamwork and respectfulness when students work together.  Give examples and non-examples of what good teamwork looks like, so your students understand what you expect out of them.  And if they decide to break those expectations, then don't feel bad when you consequence them immediately.  Now, here is Chelsea's description of her project:

"

On Friday, September 27, 2013 the 7^th grade students at D.M. Smith Middle School traveled back in time to the Old Stone Age. My students learned that families found shelter in caves and created cave art. During our Old Stone Age Unit we discussed the discovery of Lascaux Cave in Montignac, France. Students learned that this cave was discovered in 1940 by four French teenagers and their dog Robot. The cave was filled with 17,000 year old cave art. Students finished the unit by creating their own cave art. They also learned that cave artists created the large paintings of wild animals as a form of religious practice.

 That Friday, I turned my room into a cave because I wanted students to feel the conditions of the cave and emphasize with cave artists. I darkened the windows by covering the glass with dark butcher paper and turned down the air conditioning to make the room very cold. Students worked in groups of three and each member had a role in creating the art: the leader, the artists, and the detailer. Students used charcoal, chalk, an original Lascaux paining, brown butcher paper, and much creativity to create the cave art. The students did a fantastic job and were engaged with the project. Project-based learning in essential in the classroom, I hope my students never forget this project, I know I will not. In every endeavor I am proud of my students, but on Friday my students blew me away.

 Kentarius Ramsey and Larry Tyler were partners in my 1^st period class, and together they created a painting of large horses. Kentarius said that “I enjoyed the hands on activity and creating cave art was fun.” When asked why cave art was created by Old Stone Age people he recited that “It is a form of prayer asking the higher powers for a successful hunt.”  I loved watching my students create the art and challenged them to reflect on what the cave artists might have been thinking and feeling. In closing, Friday was a fantastic day at D.M. Smith, and the 7^th grade World History students expressed their skills in team work and creativity.

 

 

Things that went well

Things to improve on

1.       I really played up the project; I was excited about it so they were excited about it. 2.       GIVE EXPLICIT INSTRUCTIONS, explain everything that they should not do! Examples: write on the wall or draw on another student 3.       Every group member having a specific role in the creation of the cave art. 4.       I turned on a virtual tour of Lascaux Cave while they were creating the art, and that added to the atmosphere of the classroom. 5.       Finally, constantly asking students “Be reflective, what do you think the cave artists were feeling? What do you think they were feeling deep inside the cave?”

6.       This was a very messy project so cover your floor with butcher paper or complete the project outside. 7.       Provide aprons or old t shirts for your students to wear because they will get the charcoal and the chalk on their clothes. 8.       Have wet bath cloths and wipes available at all times. 9.       Make sure the students are incredibly calm before you begin and explain the directions at least three times. BE VERY SPECIFC AND ORGANIZED.

  

 

Here are some rules, directions, and expectations I included

Today we will use charcoal and chalk

These two materials can be very messy

The following behaviors are prohibited during this activity.

1. Your hands will get dirty, do not touch another student!

2. Throwing charcoal and chalk at another student.

3. Drawing on another student or Miss Lewis’ classroom materials.

 

 

 

In your group please chose a role.

•          1. Leader-This person is in charge of the charcoal! They will outline the animals with the black charcoal. They are also in charge of making sure each person has written their name and signed their cave art paper. First, write the names on the back. Once the animals are outlined you will have direct the other team members!

•          2. Artist-This person is in charge of the chalk. They will use the colors to paint the animals. Pay close attention to the colors on your paper. Try to match the Lascaux painting exactly.

•          Detailer-This person will also use the chalk to make sure the painting is detailed. Your painting should exactly match the photo of the Lascaux painting. Last, take your finger and slightly smudge the chalk and charcoal, it will give it a worn look.

 

 

Directions

1. Chose a role
2. Distribute materials to the leaders. Include details
3. Tape up the paper, Lascaux cave painting, and write your names on the back of the paper.
4. Now, Leader come and get the black charcoal and begin outlining your animal.
5. Artist and detailer come get the chalk and begin creating your cave art.
6. In the last ten minutes we will begin cleaning up. When I say be at a voice level zero PLEASE DO IT because we have to clean up and prepare for the next class.

 

 

 

DO YOU HAVE ANY AWESOME IDEAS TO SHARE LIKE CHELSEA'S PROJECT?  IF YOU WANT TO GUEST BLOG AND SHARE YOUR IDEA, THEN COMMENT ON THIS BLOG POST OR SHOOT ME AN EMAIL AT patrickkeithnewton@gmail.com 

 

Creative Writing in Social Studies Classroom part 2

In my first creative writing post I offered steps of how to teach your students to write a five paragraph essay using a free writing prompt.  Now, I'll provide another example of how implementing writing in non-essay form.

My Essential Question: Why do people choose to live in civilizations?

Essential Understanding: Civilization shapes and transforms society and peoples' lives.

Objective. Students will be able to explain the significance of the Neolithic Revolution and how it has impacted our lives today.

Students will be able to compare and contrast the Paleolithic and Neolithic Ages by synthesizing information in a brochure.  Students must receive an 80% or higher on the brochure rubric in order to master the objective.


Step One: Introduce your students to the content with a short video and have your students write a graphic organizer about the content.  Do not introduce the writing project as you are solely focusing on DOK 1 knowledge.  You want your students to identify key vocabulary and concepts.

Have your students read the textbook and answer guided questions about the text using again a graphic organizer.

 

 

Step 2: The next day introduce the writing project to the students by having them complete a bell-ringer by analyzing diagrams and pictures in the textbook.

 

 

Step 3: Have students read your objective, essential question, enduring understandings, and key words on the board.

 

Step 4: Have students read the instruction of the activity.

 

 Step 5: Randomly choose students (draw sticks) into pairs of partners to work on the prewriting together using the images, text, and graphics of the textbook to find answers to each client question.  Or place your high achieving students with the lower achieving students to help the lower students.

Step 6: Review your partner work procedures

 

 

Step 7: Have pairs work on answering the questions found on the prewrite.

 

 

Day 2

 

 

Step 1: Have pairs finish answering questions found on prewrite.

 

Step 2: Have students begin working on rough draft using the template provided.

 



 

 

Step  3: Have students peer edit each other's brochures using the rubric.

 

Day 3

 

Step 1: Have students make their brochures using colored paper, colored makers, and colored pencils.

 

Step 2: Have students turn in brochure for homework tomorrow (whatever they did not finish in class).

 

Step 3: Students present their brochures while doing their best impression of a real estate agent trying to sell me a house.

 

If you need these materials, then check this link. https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7TluIw2uWYFdGhwNEdIcmlPQWs&usp=sharing

 



Creative Writing in the Social Studies Classroom

As a social studies teacher we sometimes do not get the most respect from our administration, parents, or in general from the educational community.  As most of us are not teaching tested subjects, with the exception of high school U.S. history, it seems that we are relegated to minor importance while ELA and math are placed on a high pedestal.  However, there is a reason why so much emphasis is placed on reading, writing, and math.  Read the "High Performance in High Poverty Schools" attachment for more information on why placing an emphasis on reading, writing, and math are crucial to successful schools in high poverty school districts.

When teaching we should require our students to do a whole lot of reading and writing (and even math) to grasp essential understandings and answer essential questions about our world.  It is important that we do not merely teach our kids to memorize facts and have them take guided notes in class.  Classroom discussions, debates, and Q & A sessions are important, but actually having my kids read and write in the classroom is as important if not more.  My kids and I enjoy a good discussion about politics or about ancient Egyptians, but the reality is that my kids need to read and write about these subjects.

My students desperately need independent and guided practice with their reading strategies and especially their writing skills.  We need our kids to be reading and writing every day.  We need to help out our ELA teachers by providing our students supplementary instruction that aligns to their objectives.  It is definitely possible to teach your social studies objectives while also covering ELA objectives.  It is also possible to get your kids excited about writing and reading.

I  did one writing project in my classroom that my kids felt invested in, covered social studies objectives, and touched on skills/concepts taught in ELA.  The first example is a free writing exercise that I turned into a five paragraph essay.

Step 1.  Students do a free-write bell-ringer, where they write about a topic related to the day's objective.  In this example the objective was, "Students will be able to identify symbols on a map key and apply this knowledge on any real world map."



Step 2:

• Option A: have students take one or two days to create a map of their theme park using their map key
• Option B: have students share their map keys in class for five minutes and move on to instruction.
• Option C: have students write an essay about the free write.

For most my classes, I choose option B as I decided having my kids draw a map or do an essay about this free writing exercise did not warrant the time.  However, during my intervention hour, I had my kids write an essay about their free writes.  If you want your kids to write a good five paragraph essay then you'll need to provide plenty of scaffolding.  For example, teach your kids the structure of a 5 paragraph essay using Bing, Bang, and Bongo. See powerpoint attachment. Spend a day teaching your kids the structure of an essay

 Second, have your kids do a brainstorming graphic organizer  to organize their thoughts. Use an instructional day to have kids practice brainstorming.

Third, have your kids use their brainstorming graphic organizer to organize their ideas into sentence structure using another graphic organizer.  Make this a hw assignment.

Fourth, have your kids use this graphic organizer to write their first rough draft.

Fifth, have your kids peer edit and review each other rough drafts using a rubric.  This is the most difficult step in my opinion as you will have to norm yourself and your kids to the rubric.  It took my students and I about three days to understand what the difference is between a 5 and a 3 on the writing rubric.

Sixth, have students write their final drafts and turn them in.  Grade them using your rubric.

Tips: Be patient with your students as the writing process takes longer to teach than a week.  Give students continual practice writing, perhaps have your students write a series or shorter 1 to 2 paragraph responses before having them write a five paragraph essay.

Click the attachments for downloads are available at this link. https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B7TluIw2uWYFdGhwNEdIcmlPQWs&usp=sharing

Planning Upfront Saves a Lot of Stress in the Future

After I come home from a long day of work, the last thing I want to think about is planning future units.  Instead, I want to kick back, watch some Netflix, and eat popcorn.  A couple hours of pass and I come to grips with my situation...I need to plan tomorrow's lesson!  I know in my mind what I want to teach and usually plan a really engaging lesson, but I usually don't give myself enough time to plan long term for the unit.

It seems obvious to plan long term as we've all been taught that procrastination is a terrible thing (although some of us may have passively ignored that lesson for quite some time).  Personally, I am all for planning long term units, making classroom visions, and even attending professional developments on planning.  However, I've found the biggest challenge to unit planning is my perception that planning is of lesser importance to other more immediate needs.  Another challenge is that I perceive unit planning as too daunting of a task to complete.  Finally, I feel like I have no idea where to start when it comes to unit planning at times.

First, I make excuses to avoid unit planning.   I tell myself that grading papers, taking extra time to craft a really creative lesson for tomorrow, or taking the night off of work are more valuable uses of my time.  However, I've learned over time that just because you feel like something is more valuable, or more desirable for that matter, doesn't make it true.  Through experience tracking my data, I've found that the units I planned before I began teaching them actually resulted in positive outcomes for my students.   My students performed better on the summative assessments and qualitatively seemed to comprehend the underlying themes of the material much better than if I planned my lessons on a day to day basis.  My hypothesis is that my students do better on preplanned units, because I exactly pinpoint the concepts I want my students learn and intuitively focus on those concepts during instruction.  Without planning units I usually go on several different tangents during my instruction, and that information does not end up on the summative assessment.  Therefore, I test my students on knowledge that I neither adequately covered in instruction nor find of necessary importance.

Second, I've imagined in the past hours and hours of work when envisioning unit planning and consequently do not bother unit planning.   Unit planning is what you make of it.  I've learned that you can spend hours on a unit plan or make a decent outline in a hour and a half.  Unit planning is an ongoing process that can be modified, and probably should be, on a continual basis.  I've felt the pressure of having to complete a stellar, transformational unit plan before the unit begins, when in fact all I need is a good outline to build off on in the upcoming days.  Read your textbook, make some essential questions that you think your students should be able to answer at the end of the unit, and then make your summative assessment reflect those questions.  These steps are the bare bones of a good start to a unit plan.  Rather than overly concern yourselves with the intricate details of each lesson in the unit, focus on crafting a rigorous assessment that focuses on the most important concepts in your unit.  If you don't know how to generate good essential questions or make a rigorous assessment for a unit, then I recommend attending TFA's professional development class Understanding by Design.  It will give you a good framework on how to create these questions.

By generating these essential questions and crafting a rigorous summative assessment, you will have a sense of purpose in your unit.  You will have a starting point to build on with your day to day lessons.  Now as I've already written, unit planning can be easier said than done.  There are going to be road bumps along the way and you may feel that you still have no clue what you are doing when unit planning.  I've asked myself a thousand times: "Am I asking the right essential questions to my kids?", "Am I utilizing class time effectively by spending so much time on this unit?", "Is my planning actually leading to positive academic outcomes to my students?". I have, at times, let this uncertainty get the best of me and ditched solid unit planning.  Nevertheless, I advise you that unit plan as much as possible.

  It gives you a sense of purpose in your teaching.  It does not take as long as you think.  It really improves your students' academic outcomes.  So don't let perception get the best of you and ditch unit planning in favor of eating popcorn and watching Netflix.   In the end you'll be much happier with teaching your kids solid unit plans that you planned well in advance.