Wood_SS+Activity+1

__Social Studies Learning Activities__ Emily Wood 9/20/10   Objective 5.02: //The distance education has traveled from the antebellum period to your seat// Within this activity want my students to learn the major points that have affected educated and how those points have changed history. A few of the examples the students should remember are: the history of The Common School, the impact of “separate but equal”, the beginnings of women teachers, the evolution/devolution of religion in schools, Brown vs. Board of Education, immigration in education and other highlights that they find interesting through their research. Through this activity and the subject matter the students will be learning about the history of education. It is important for them to know the major issues that shape how their education is today. There are so many monumental dates in education that had a huge impact on how schooling is today. I want them to be able to recognize the importance of education in their lives and that education is constantly changing. If they can learn how far the classroom has come, they can be hopeful about where it is going. The activity that I have in mind for this objective is a two part activity. First, I would like for my students to create a timeline of the history of education. Depending on my classroom resources, they can either create a hard copy of the timeline or use on online tool to create the timeline. To find the information they can use a variety of resources including their textbooks and reliable sources on the internet. I want them to include at least 10 major historical points that they find through researching and make creative timeline to be posted in the classroom. Secondly, I would ask them to create a double-entry journal. For the first entry, they will pick a specific date that is particularly interesting to them and write as if they were a student in that time period. For example, the students can write what it was like going to school the day after Brown vs. Board. The second entry will be from their own perspective but they will write as if the day that they had previously wrote about had never happened. The student from the previous example would write a journal entry about what a typical school day would be like if Brown vs. Board never happened. This way they can visualize the impact that these events had on the history of education. To assess their knowledge, I will grade the timelines on accuracy and creativity. The timelines need to be visually appealing, historically accurate, and have a sufficient number of dates. For the journal entries, I will not grade these but I will read them and assign a mark on the check minus, check, check plus scale based on relevance and completion. I also will write a teacher response on their journal entries so they will know that I read them and care about the effort they put into them.