Lesson Plan : National Geographic Explorer
Teacher Name: | Maureen Dunbar |
Grade: | Grade 3 |
Subject: | Social Studies |
Topic: | "Who is Sacagawea" by Dana Jensen in National Geographic Explorer |
Content: | Cooperative Learning Structure: Information Sharing Structure. Rational for selecting this structure: It allows teams to share information and gives students practice in reporting. Vocabulary: Tribe Explorers History Discovery |
Goals: | TEKS: Social Studies 1-3 |
Objectives: | To have the students work together to gain information about Sacagawea. To have the students use their skills as reporters to gain information. To have the students be able to organize the information they gained in a tree graph. To have the students give an oral report of their findings. |
Materials: | National Geographic Explorer, March 2007 Pencil Paper |
Introduction: | -Read a short article from the National Geographic Explorer and create a tree graph from the information in the article together as a class. -Put the class into groups of four and have them read �Who Was Sacagawea� by Dana Jensen together as a team. |
Development: | -Explain the cooperative learning strategy "One Stray, Three Stray" |
Practice: | -Have them work together to create a tree graph using the information they found in the article and organize it into three main ideas, or branches in the tree graph. -Have one student from each group rotate to another group and observe what they have talked about and written. Have them stay there for 2 minutes then return to their group and report back any ideas that they thought would be helpful to their own group. |
Accommodations: | -If there is misunderstanding or trouble with the article or the information in it, the students will ask their teammates and peer tutor each other. |
Checking For Understanding: | -After they are all done, have the groups share their graphs. |
Closure: | -After sharing the graphs, show and explain how tree graphs can be helpful to organize main ideas and details. |
Evaluation: | The tree graphs and the reporter notes taken in their notebooks will be a physical example of what the students really know and can be graded on the information presented and their organizational skills |
Teacher Reflections: | This actually was a pretty good lesson. The kids came up with some great ideas and organized the information they learned in the article really well. They had some problems in sharing that information with the reporters from other groups; they wanted to hide their best information and keep it secret. I had to make sure that they were being fair to everyone. But they seemed to like the activity and took pride in their work. I really liked working with the National Geographic Explorer. It had a lot of great articles and tons of information! |
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