Artifact Bag Presentations

In class, we were assigned to create an artifact bag based off of an explorer from our own unit plans. Since me and my group taught about Christopher Columbus, I had to find artifacts that pertained to him. Along with a literal artifact bag, we were required to used technology, which is how I came up with my Presentation for the lesson. Thinking about which three artifacts I can put in my bag was difficult. Also, since I don't have a car on campus it was difficult to arrange time to buy any tangible items I can put into the bag. I came up with including a birth certificate, a map of Columbus' voyages, and sugar to represent goods that were exchanged. This hands-on activity/lesson is a great way to engage students and gets me excited to come up with great ideas like this for my own future class!

Birth Certificate

The first item I chose to incorporate in my artifact bag was a birth certificate. I created this on my own and put the words in Italian. For the lesson, I would have the students decode the words from italian to english and have them share their findings. For some, they may know right away what this document was, but certain students may not have a clue about the italian language. I thought that this was an important artifact to include because it proves when and where Christopher Columbus was born. It shows his own culture but also gives an opportunity for the students to use technology as a resource to look up translations. I tried to give the birth certificate an older, burnt out looking background in order for it to seem more authentic. 

Map of Four Voyages

The second item I included in my artifact bag was a map of Columbus' four voyages. This map showed exactly where he departed from, where he landed, and the specific routes he took. It also showed the accurate start and end dates for all four voyages. Some students don't know that he took four different voyages, so looking at this map can really help the students grasp that idea. This map was a very good clue to guess who the explorer was because it showed a picture of a boat with the year 1492, which is a very important date for students to remember.

Sugar

The last item I included in my artifact bag was sugar. The sugar was meant to represent all of the goods that were exchanged during Columbus' infamous Columbian Exchange. Sugar is one, but it represents everything that was brought to and from Europe and the Americas. Food, animals, diseases, and plants were also brought back and forth, this creating the Columbian Exchange. This was the only tangible item I could find on such short notice but I thought that this was something important to incorporate because the Columbian Exchange was so important and is still widely known. 

In addition to my artifacts, I included two other sources of information for my students. The first one was a website. This website has information all about Christopher Columbus, quizzes, games, timelines, photos and much more for the students to explore as an extra resource. This websites encourages the students to explore facts about Columbus and become an "expert!" My second resource was a book a chose called Columbus Day by Dennis Brindell Fradin. This book discusses how the achievements of the man credited with discovering America led to the present-day celebration of his landing in the New World. This book shares a lot of important information about how Columbus first discovered America, how he got his funding for his voyages, and much more. It also explains how Columbus Day is important in our country now, which is something a lot of students may not be aware of. 

Creating an artifact bag was really fun! I think that this is such a great way to engage students. If I were to do this lesson incorporated into my unit plan, I would have done it as an introduction to get students to guess who the explorer is! A lot of my classmates also did an incredible job with their own bags/presentations and you can check them out here: 

Kristen's Presentation Alexis' Presentation Rachel's Presentation Michaela's Presentation

Cassandra's Presentation Aimee's Presentation Cierra's Presentation Ganny's Presentation

Amanda's Presentation Marie's Presentation

Teaching Strategies to Make History Alive

One important teaching strategy for teaching history is using hands-on activities.

"Using hands-on activities can add interest and meaning to lessons because students are engaged in visually and kinesthetically with hands on materials (like artifact bags). Hands-on activities make a lesson more concrete and meaningful, especially for learners who are less skilled with abstract ideas. They can promote critical thinking skills as the students observe, speculate, and interpret. Using artifacts as part of a hands-on activity can add experiences with another kind of primary source to the student's study of history" (Chapter 12, Section 10). Incorporating artifacts into the lesson is a great tactic when using this hands-on activities teaching strategy.

Here is a link that shows 15 ways to make elementary social studies lessons more exciting: https://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/social-studies/

Other strategies include:

Body Sculpting

Role playing

EPIC Strategy

Local History

What Am I

Mysteries in History

Learning about all of these teaching strategies really puts a positive aspect to teaching social studies. Even though not every student enjoys social studies, they can become more engaged through strategies like these. If strategies like these are constantly used, students will learn to enjoy learning social studies material. To make students engaged, you have to relate the strategies to them. Putting their own opinions into certain activities makes a lesson all the better!
During fieldwork, you could tell that some of the students didn't necessarily enjoy learning about social studies. The only way to keep them engaged was to provide activities that every student will enjoy and become interested in. Standing in front of the classroom is not the proper strategy to use. Having students work together and build off of each other's knowledge was the proper way for us to enhance the students knowledge. Me and the rest of the teachers all used hands-on activities which really engaged all of the students. We also incorporated role playing a little bit into our cooperative learning lessons. You read about all of these strategies and keep them in the back of your mind when creating a lesson. Once you come up with good ideas, incorporating these strategies to make history come alive is a great way to engage all students and really get them interested in learning more!!

Engaging Students in Learning History

Historians interpret the evidence, deciding on the degree of its importance and accuracy and examine written records to understand the past.

Students should be able to:
-Think chronologically
-Understand historical events

In order to practice being a history detective, our task is to find out who the person is based on the artifacts we find in the artifact bags. We will study the artifacts, think and make predictions, who are in the pictures, when/where did this event happen?


The artifact bag we were given contained three items. The first item (pictured to the right) is a Matryoshka. It is a Russian nesting doll that is a set of wooden dolls of decreasing size placed inside one another. The first model of this doll was made in 1890. These dolls are typically used for decoration and entertainment and it was in the artifact bag because it is a very popular item in Russian culture.




The second item that was in the artifact bag was a Russian diploma. After decoding the Russian language, we figured out that this is Dr. Smirnova's diploma! It is from November 29th, 2005 and was used as a certificate to commemorate her training in the academy of science. This item represents the Russian language and it was fun to decode the words and figure out exactly what we were reading. At first we were very intimidated but after we found out what this item was, we were intrigued.

The third and last item in our artifact bag was Gzhel Pottery. It is from the 19th century and Ghzel is actually a city located in Southeast Moscow, Russia. This type of pottery is used for decoration, vases, figurines, boxes, candlesticks, clocks, tea, coffee, dinner sets and much more. It was in the artifact bag because it is an important aspect of Russian art and culture.









We concluded that everything in our artifact bag came from our professor and her culture, which was very interesting to be a part of. If we were confused about a certain Russian word, she would tell us its meaning and give us a little background information. I thought that this hands-on activity was a great way to learn all new information. We got to use the internet as a resource which was extremely helpful but also cooperating with one another was even better. At first we looked at the diploma and was very confused as to what it could be. Then one of my group members realized it said our professors named so we put our heads together and figured out that it was a diploma. I really love the idea of an artifact bag because of how engaging you can make it. I enjoyed researching details about the items in the bag and learning more in such a short amount of time. Using a hands-on teaching strategy is incredibly important and one of the best ways to learn a new topic!

Celebration of Learning

The day has finally come..it was my last day of integrated fieldwork! Instead of teaching a lesson, me and the rest of my classmates had a 'Celebration of Learning' for the 5th grade class we taught. We took this time to celebrate them and all that they have achieved within the 18 hours of us teaching them. To prepare, us teachers worked together to create a post-test for the students to take. This was to test their knowledge and have us be able to assess what they do or do not know. We aren't grading this test, but it was for them to independently work on it and think back to the previous lessons that were taught. Each group added in four questions from our lesson plans and they could be multiple choice or short answer. For example, my group added questions like, "What year did Christopher Columbus go on his first voyage? Was Columbus of Spanish decent?" After creating the post-test, we decided as a class that the students would enjoy a Kahoot! game since they get so excited whenever we incorporate those into the lesson. We came up with all new questions for them and we thought that this was another great way to test their knowledge, but in a fun way.

We started the Celebration of Learning off with a quick powerpoint. This powerpoint showed pictures of us working with the students and teaching our lessons. We asked them what they learned about, what they enjoyed, and then we gave them their post-tests. I thought that they did a fantastic job with taking the post-test. When the students heard us say 'test' they were obviously not excited, but they kept quiet and finished up the test pretty quickly. After we collected their papers, we all passed out iPads for the students. We instructed them to keep them locked until every student was finished with their post-test. After all the papers were collected, we introduced our Kahoot! game. The students were so excited, as usual. This was the perfect way to keep them engaged but also review information that all of us teachers have taught them within the past few weeks. At times, the class got extremely loud but it was only because they were so excited which is understandable. We had to quiet them down at times but overall, I think it was a great idea on our end to incorporate this game into the Celebration of Learning. After they completed the Kahoot!, Miss Marie spoke to the students on behalf of all of us and thanked them for being so cooperative and helpful during our lessons. In order to celebrate and congratulate them, we had certificates made for each student. We called out their names one by one and handed the student their certificate. This was a great way to celebrate our students. We all gave them a round of applause and gave them a special gift. We provided the class with two informational textbook sets about Christoper Columbus. We thought that this was the perfect way to sum up our lessons and have the students get an opportunity to learn even more on their own time!

The Last Observation

The last observation I did for my Social Studies Methods course was of a cooperative learning lesson on life in New Spain. Group four had the students form into four different groups are were given a specific topic they were going to present on. But the catch was, these topics were top secret! I thought that this was a very interesting tactic to use. Even though us as the observers didn't know what the students were doing at their tables, the students seemed to enjoy that no other group had a clue what they were presenting. By observing groups around me, I noticed that one group was creating an illustration on a Christian missionary. Students drew a large church as the focus of the poster and different images to help back up their ideas. Students were all given a specific role in their group and got the opportunity to switch roles throughout the lesson. Each group had a their own "captain" which consisted of one of the teachers. The groups definitely needed someone to keep them in line because at times they got too rowdy or would argue over something. Enough time was given for each group to finish their overall project to present but there definitely could have been more dedicated to have the students practice what they were going to say in front of the entire class.

Before the students presented, the teachers reiterated what a proper presentation should be like. They displayed on the smart board that their voices should be clear, they shouldn't be covering their faces and other students should be active listeners while the presentations are going on. Some groups did well with presenting, but others had difficulty remembering what to say when they got to the front of the room. Also, many students started to laugh and skip over important information they were supposed to say because they got nervous. If this happens consistently, than these students need to practice their presentation skills. The purpose of this lesson was to work in groups but to improve themselves, I feel as though the students should present projects on their own before working in a large group. The students shared their topics and what they were presenting as they got to the front of the room which was helpful for all of us listeners. Overall, the idea was very cute and I think that the students enjoyed their tasks. The students definitely do need to improve their presentation skills but I think they did well with their tasks. Group four did a great job and it was a great way to wrap up all of the lessons and to introduce celebration of learning!