Discovery Through an Artifact Bag

An artifact bag is an interactive lesson that can be implemented with any subject across all grades. Artifact bags engage students and give them something to take pride in as they discover the evidence within the bags. Allowing the students to take charge and be a “historian” for a day will make their day, along with learning new content.  In Mollie Moore’s article (2013) she states, “…the brightening in every kid's eyes when you tell them that the artifact you've been holding in front of the class is going to be passed around. It's even better if you've been handling it, explaining it, giving it the care any historical relic deserves. There's just something about holding it, respecting it; first graders can take pride in this just as much as high school seniors. So, what’s stopping us from doing this more often in the classroom?” (p.1.) Artifact bags interest students and make them eager to learn about a new era or topic. Artifacts can be used in the beginning, middle, and end of a unit. 

During an artifact bag lesson, students should be "actively engaged in reading, writing and researching to find answers to questions generated by an authentic historical artifact and their resulting curiosity.” Students will work in groups as a method of indirect instruction, encouraging students to talk and work cooperatively. Before the lesson begins, students will be asked to make a prediction hypothesis, one of the research-teaching strategies by simply using the outside of the bag for clues (Fuhler, 2006). An example of this step would be "If the bag has a compass on it, then the mystery explorer must be Henry Hudson." As a teacher you will need to remind students of the inquiry process. Make this process as clear as possible so the lesson runs smoothly. The teacher should model a mock artifact bag and explain her thought process for each step out loud. Show students that for each item they should ask the questions: Who/What? When? Where? Why? and How? (the 5Ws). Model for students how to record their answers on a data organizer. Modeling is very important when teaching students, it clarifies any confusion before the lesson begins. Then it's time for the students to go, but this does not mean your job teaching is over. As a teacher you must walk around the classroom assisting groups that may be stuck. This is very important to make sure no students are not understanding or have trouble making connections between the artifacts. Make sure students are writing down the information they are unfolding. Once students have examined all artifacts, have them make another hypothesis. This hypothesis should have more information and evidence included then the previous one. After hypotheses are made hand out QR codes to have students scan and find out their mystery explorer. After this lesson you could have the students write a letter to another classroom explaining what they learned and different information about the artifacts they discovered.

In class this week we were each assigned to create our own artifact bag lesson based on a person from our unit plan topic. My unit plan topic is Early Travelers, so I immediately thought of doing Christopher Columbus. For this project we were required to use technology. Therefore, I created an Artifact Bag Presentation to teach students the basics when using an artifact bag. Deciding what artifacts I wanted to include in my bag was the most difficult process. I kept thinking of different objects and then I would think of an even better one to use. I decided to use a map, a globe, 3 ships and a pin. This lesson excites me to become a teacher and teach a lesson just like this one!


The Map
I chose to do a map because my theme is Early Travelers and every explorer needs a map. The trick was where is this a map of? The students would be required to examine the entire map, notice that some information is in a different language hinting towards the place. This is a map of Hispaniola. Hispaniola is the first European settlement in the Americas founded by Christopher Columbus on his voyages. I burned the edges of the map and a spot in the middle to make it look more authentic and realistic for the students.


The Globe
The next artifact I chose was a foam globe. During the age of exploration no one knew the Earth was round, they thought it was flat and to travel West would lead to falling off the face of Earth. Christopher Columbus thought differently. He thought that by traveling West he would find a quicker trade rout to Asia. Although he was right that the Earth was round and not flat, he soon realized there was more land than just the European, African and Asian continents. This globe has an arrow from Spain to the Caribbean, because that is where Columbus departed and landed on his voyages.


The Three Ships
I chose to do three ship artifacts because Christopher Columbus traveled on three ships. His three ships were the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María. Students know this fact about Columbus so I though having the three ships would be a helpful piece of information to decode their explorer.



The Pin
This pin has two flags, the Italian flag and the Spanish flag. This pin symbolizes Christopher Columbus' home country and the country that gave him the opportunity to fulfill his dream of sailing West. This pin is made out of card stock with a pin glued to the back. Students should be able to make the connection between the flags and realize that their explorer is Christopher Columbus. If students do not know the two flags shown they will be encouraged to look them up on a computer.

In addition to the artifacts I included two other sources of information for my students. The first source was a website. This website has information about many different early travelers and explorers. The website encourages students to search for the pieces of evidence they have to match up with the correct explorer. I decided to use a website about many different explorers rather than just one because I thought that would be more of a challenge. This reasoning also applies for the book I chose. This book is filled with information and stories about explorers, but not too difficult for students to read. Each chapter is designated to an explorer with tons of information about his journeys. This book is "Around the World in a Hundred Years: From Henry the Navigator to Magellan" by Jean Fritz.

Sources

Creating Historians Part Two: The Grab Bag. (n.d.). Retrieved April 16, 2015, from http://community.lessonplanet.com/t/creating-historians-part-two-the-grab-bag/136

Farris, P. J., & Nelson, P. A. (2006). Building literacy skills across the curriculum: Forging connections with the past through artifacts. In C. J. Fuhler (Author), The Reading Teacher (Vol. 59, Ser. 7, pp. 646-659).

Why use Sources?

Using both primary and secondary sources as a teacher is useful and can help students learn about the past. Teachers should make sure to implement both types of sources into their lessons daily. Any and every history lesson can be taught using primary and secondary sources, it's the teachers job to provide students with the resources to find the sources and provide sources for students.

What is a primary source?
Primary sources are materials directly related to a topic by time or participation. Often times people think primary sources are only personal letters, diaries, records or other documents created during the period under study, but they can also be photographs, jewelry, works of art, architecture, literature, music, clothing, and other artifacts (Otis College of Art and Design). These different objects and documents were created during the time period you are researching. To introduce primary sources to students you can start by analyzing materials that the students or yourself possess (birth certificates, social security cards, drivers license, passports). You can ask students different questions how people could use these sources to find out information. The next step would be to show students primary sources that relate to what they are learning about in Social Studies. As a class model to your students how to examine the primary sources to find out important information. When working with primary sources promote student inquiry. 

What is a secondary source? 

Secondary sources are works of combination and interpretation based upon primary sources and the work of other authors. These sources are written ABOUT events in the past. encyclopedias, special historical dictionaries, and historical atlases, popular magazines, history textbooks and journal articles are all examples of secondary sources. It is important to emphasize to students that secondary sources were not written during the time of the event it is written about. 

A fun way to teach about both sources! 

Take your class on a field trip to an art gallery and have them look at an original painting. The painting gives students an example of a primary source as does the information about the painting written by the artist. At the gallery there will also be information about the author written and articles about the painting or a podcast which are all examples of secondary sources. The students can examine the difference and give their opinion on which type of source gives them more information.

Works Cited

Using Primary and Secondary Sources. (n.d.). Retrieved April 13, 2016, from http://www.otis.edu/library/using-primary-secondary-sources

History in the Raw. (n.d.). Retrieved April 13, 2016, from http://www.archives.gov/education/research/history-in-the-raw.html

Teaching History.org, home of the National History Education Clearinghouse. (n.d.). Retrieved April 13, 2016, from http://teachinghistory.org/best-practices/using-primary-sources/19080

Using Primary Sources. (n.d.). Retrieved April 13, 2016, from http://www.loc.gov/teachers/usingprimarysources/

Teaching Current Events

Last week my group and I presented a current events lesson to my fellow colleagues. We decided with the help of our teacher to do a debate as our lesson. A debate is an example of interactive instruction which involves two-way communication and rely heavily on discussion and sharing among participants allowing for a range of groupings. According to the New York State K-12 Social Studies Field Guide "As students discuss their findings and debate potential responses to compelling questions, they have the opportunity to speak and listen in the context of the social sciences," this enhances students' conceptual knowledge within social studies. Debates also encourage students to think critically and build presentation skills.  

First we had to decide what current event we wanted to class to debate. Finding the perfect article took a lot of time. With the help of Dr. Smirnova, we chose the article "PRO/CON: The world's getting warmer, can nuclear power help us?." This article is good because it is only 2 months old and is a hot topic in politics. We had our classmates read the article before coming to class so that they were already familiar with the topic. We also designated our colleagues to either side of the argument, that way they could take notes on which side they would be defending. Once we had our topic it was time to create a presentation for our class. The presentation can be viewed here. We included questions to access prior knowledge and see what they already knew about debates. Then we included rules so that they knew what behaviors we were expecting from them. Adding a slide for the parts of a debate helped because the groups were able to organize their ideas accordingly. On this same slide we gave an example of a debate so that they were able to see an actual debate modeled for them. At the end of the presentation we attached a link to our evaluation sheet which we created with google forms. We wanted to know what our classmates took away from our lesson and if they would use this method in their own classroom one day. 

We gave the teams a brief 2 minutes to collect all of their thoughts and put them into order. Each team chose a candidate to present the statements. Once we realized this we encouraged other colleagues to take a turn as well. This gave everyone the opportunity to participate which we believe is very important when working with elementary students. Our class went back and fourth battling to prove their argument. After the debate, we had the class vote as if they were viewing this debate on television. The results can be seen here.  One thing that I would do differently if I was teaching a debate lesson to younger students is to have more then one argument with smaller group sizes that way you can guarantee everyone's participation. Also, as two groups are debating I would have the rest of the students evaluating them on their performance. Overall, I think our lesson was very effective and my colleagues enjoyed it.

Let's Teach Geography!

In class we have been learning all about geography! One activity we did as a class was called "Hug the Earth." To do this activity you need to have your class stand up in a spread out circle. Then with a plush or blow up Earth have students pass it to one another first giving the Earth a big squeeze and then explaining how they can help the Earth or in our case how we can teach geography. This activity was engaging and let my classmates express their own ideas on teaching geography. Some of the ideas I will be "borrowing" for my own classroom one day!

Many of the ideas and examples of how we can teach geography were from the presentation "103 Creative Simple Ways to Teach Geography." I definitely had my fair share of favorites from this slide show, but agree that there are so many different ways to teach geography and all 103 are great! Below I will describe my favorites and how I would implement them into my social studies classroom.

Google Earth Trip
This is just simply a box or other container filled with different destinations across the globe in which students can pick a slip and then together as a class we can fly to our new stop! I like this idea because it is random and gives students the chance to experience places they probably have never even heard of. Also on Google Earth there is a new feature in which you can take a tour or major cities and it shows the different landmarks and attractions at these cities. After you take a trip to your destination you can have students separate into groups to do research on different topics for the place. Students can come back together as a whole and discuss their findings. I think it would be an interesting idea to make paper passports for each student, so that when they travel to a different destination that day they can get a new stamp in their passport. This is something I could relate to other subjects and have done once a week. 

Go Local
This activity can be given as a weekend homework assignment or small project. Just ask students to walk for five minutes in different directions from their homes and take a picture of what they can see at their 'destination'. On the following monday students can produce a simple photomontage and have them explain what they saw and where it was. Students will be able to relate their photos with their classmates to see nay similarities or differences!

Wordle Stereotypes
Before teaching a topic use wordle or another word cloud creating tool to gather views on a place, group of people, company or organization. Have each student contribute one or two words that come to mind when they hear the given topic. Afterwards, you can display the word cloud for students to look back on when they have learned more information. This is a way to pre-assess students' knowledge.

Before, Before, After, After
This activity will encourage students to use their imagination and prediction skills. Choose an image and ask pupils to consider what happened before the picture was taken and what will happen in the future. This image can be one after a natural disaster or over a long period of time. This can be linked to ELA and students can write their own stories about the image.

Flat Stanley 
This idea was not given in the slideshow presentation, but one that I remember from elementary school myself and thought it would be a good idea to share with you all! Flat Stanley is a way to get students and families involved all year long! Flat Stanley is a cardboard cutout of a boy who will be asked to travel to many different places. A student will send or give Flat Stanley and his travel log to a family or friend who does not live with him or her.  Flat Stanley will spend a short amount of time with them.  They will record where Flat Stanley went and what he saw. The child will bring it back to school and share it with the class.  Then, have the child choose someone else to send it to.  Each time you get a response, mark it on a classroom map to see what towns, cities, states, and countries Flat Stanley visits throughout the year! Pictures of Flat Stanley on his adventures are encouraged and give students great visuals and connections to different places.

Get Jiggy!

This week in class we did a jigsaw activity. Until now I have never heard of a jigsaw activity, but i'm glad now that I know. This activity is good for breaking up a broad topic. Each classmate is put into a group and this is called a base group. From the base group, each group member is given another group to work in called their expert group. The expert groups are separated by subtopics to split up the work. The expert group works together on their given topic to learn as much as they can. Once they feel that they have mastered the topic, each classmate returns to their base group to teach them about their expertise. In our class, the main topic was cooperative learning. Each expert group had a different aspect of one of the 5 PIGS of cooperative learning.

I really enjoyed this activity because it taught me the information I needed to know without being overloaded and having to go in-depth for each subtopic. Every group did a great job teaching the class about their expertise and some groups used great online tools that I will definitely be using in my future classroom.  One of these tools was Socrative. This is an online tool to assess students, there are many different forms that include competitive and noncompetitive assessments. The best part is that it's FREE and EASY to use! Another tool that I was unfamiliar with is ClassTools. This website allows teachers to create many different projects that are easy enough for students to do as well. There are FREE games, quizzes, diagrams and so much more on this great website! I need to start checking out more technological games to impress my colleagues the way they impressed me this week!