Artifacts, Trade Fairs, and Shoe boxes...oh my!

Teaching social studies can be difficult. Social studies is filled with abstract concepts and people and events that are long gone. Sometimes our students can have a hard time identifying with these concepts because they don't see them as relateable to their lives. In our social studies class we participated in activities that can make these weird, abstract, concepts more concrete in our students lives.

One of the activities we did was to find artifacts that relate to a standard from history. The standard I chose was:

5.1.13 Identify contributions of women and minorities during the American Revolution. Examples: Abigail Adams, Martha Washington, Mercy Otis Warren, Molly Pitcher, Phillis Wheatley, Deborah Sampson, James Armistead and Joseph Brant

It was awesome learning about some of the heroes of the revolutionary war period that are rarely talked about. The artifacts I chose are all things that could be printed out that the students could actually interact with or could be found using Google maps and visited by taking a virtual field trip. These are some of the artifacts I found:

Source

Source

Source

I also enjoyed writing the lesson for the trade fair. My lesson plan focused on this standard:

4.4.3 Explain how both parties can benefit from trade* and give examples of how people in Indiana engaged in trade in different time periods.

* trade: the voluntary exchange of goods or services

and specifically on the first part of the standard. My lesson would be focused on getting the students to understand that trade should benefit both parties involved. I would begin the lesson by tying to trade some useless item for something of importance. Hopefully this exercise will get the students thinking about why they wouldn't want to trade something of importance for something useless. I will then ask them questions to help cement the the point in their mind and then actually share with them the point of the lesson. After the students learn about trade being beneficial to both parties, the students will practice their trading skills through a trading game where each student is given different scenarios detailing who they are, what their needs are, and what they have to trade.

Lastly, we did a shoe box activity where we had to pick a social studies standard that focused on immigration or movement. The standard I chose was:

4.3.10 Identify immigration patterns and describe the impact diverse ethnic and cultural groups has had and has on Indiana.

·         E pluribus Unum (out of many, one) http://greatseal.com/mottoes/unum.html

·         Ellis Island was opened (January 1, 1892) during the administration of President Benjamin Harrison (Indiana’s only President) http://www.history.com/topics/ellis-island

If I was doing this with my students I would have them focus on two questions when packing their shoe boxes:

If you had to leave your home country what five things would you bring with you that represent your culture? What things would you leave behind?

For myself I chose: music, my favorite tv show, pictures of my family, a journal of my writings, and my favorite books. All of these tell about me as a person, and most of them tell about some aspect of Black American culture.

All of these activities I would integrate into my classroom to help my students make a more authentic connection to social studies content.

A great site with lessons on trade:
http://www.globalenvision.org/forteachers/27/1229