Purpose

The purpose of this website is to assist Ohio’s fourth grade teachers in teaching the standard of “People in Societies” which concerns the impact of various cultural, ethnic and social groups on today’s world. This is a concept required in the state standards but lacking in available teaching materials. Rather than being an objective that will be taught in the form of lecture, which is never very effective with nine and ten year olds, hopefully this website will be a good vehicle to engage students and make them active learners. It will also provide teachers with materials and information to assist them in effectively teaching this state standard.

This project contains a research component, an asynchronous discussion board, a writing component, and a real world tour designed to connect the information to the students "real world" environment. It was my intention not only to implement technology in this unit but also cooperative learning, higher level thinking skills, and writing. I also wanted specific work to be produced for the purpose of grades.

Goals and Objectives

The students will describe the cultural practices and products of groups that have settled in Ohio over time. These will include various Native American groups, as well as European Immigrants, Amish, African Americans, and more recent immigrants from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The students will be able to work collaboratively at computer stations to gain and record information concerning a specific list of cultural, social, and ethnic groups.
The students will be able to use the knowledge of perspectives, practices, and products of these various groups to analyze their impact on their own current social environment.
The students will be able to use asynchronous communication to assist one another throughout the course of the project.
The students will be able to respond to a prompt and follow the writing process to produce a report based on facts gathered in the investigation.

Activities

There are several activities involved in this unit.

1. The first is the investigative phase in which the students will travel to the various pages gathering the information.

2. The second is the application phase in which the students will examine photographs from their own surroundings and use the knowledge they have gained in the investigations to determine which cultural/ethnic group is represented in the photo. Some of these are rather obvious and some are rather abstract and will take somewhat higher level thinking.

3. The third is the use of asynchronous communication in the form of the discussion board in order to apply technology to cooperative learning. This will be ongoing throughout the project.

4. Finally the students will write about their findings by responding to a writing prompt. This will take place in the form of a final report, which is a printable packet. There are also links to a checklist and rubric for the purpose of grading.

Helpful Hints

*** There are several printable sheets designed to go along with this site. They are contained within the site and can be printed and run off by the teacher if you have no printer availability or do not want your students to print without your permission.

***The students will need a folder in which to keep their "Time Detective Notebooks."

***This project is designed to be done primarily with the teacher as a facilitator and will take anywhere from two weeks to a month of instructional time. Depending on availability of Internet accessible computers.

If you have any questions or want the answers to the printable quiz you can contact me at...

teachm306@yahoo.com

My Name is Robert McClelland and I teach fourth grade At McKinley Elementary School, in the Cleveland Municipal School District.

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