Lessons from the Classroom

4th Grade Inquiry Unit

The classrooms are buzzing with inquiry lessons and units. I will be using this blog to share some of the inquiries that are happening at the Elementary School. Hopefully, some of these units will give you ideas of tools, resources, or inquiries that you can do within your classroom. In 4th grade students worked on a 1 1/2 week inquiry on Native American settlement.

Start with the Standard

Standard 4.2a states that Geographic factors often influenced locations of early settlements. People made use of resources and the lands around them to meet their basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. 

Essential Question

We took the standard, played with the words and developed an essential question. The essential question we developed was: "What led the Native Americans to settle where they did in NYS?"

Wonder:

We then tasked the students to determine what they would need to know in order to answer the EQ. They came up with: "Who were the Native Americans who settled in NYS?" and "What resources did they use?"

Investigate:

Graphic Organizer

I was able to go in as the librarian and model the different resources for investigation such as ebooks, maps, and primary resources. I also modeled how to analyze and gather information that is pertinent to answering the EQ. The students used the graphic organizer (shown on right) to record their information.

*The following electronic resources were used:
Rosen ebooks: Social Studies ebooks
Library of Congress: Primary Documents
Google Images: New York State Maps

*All of these resources can be used with multiple Social Studies topics. I highly suggest looking them over to see if they can be used within your curricular content.


Synthesize:

ThingLink

Once students gathered and collected their information it was time to begin creating (21st Century Skill) an interactive map with their information. Students used an app (also available for desktop computers) called ThingLink. ThingLink allows students to take an image and place hotspots on it that lead to further information.

Students took a picture of a blank New York State map and used their notes to place hot spots in the correct locations where the Native Americans settled in NYS. Then they added information identifying the location and explaining why they settled in that particular location (identifying the resources that were there). It was at this point that many students realized that they didn't have enough information to answer the EQ completely, and they went back through the inquiry process again, by first identifying what they still needed to know (wonder) and investigating the answer.

Express: 

Inquiry Rubric

Once students interactive maps were created they shared each of their presentations in front of the class. Students reflected their screens onto the SmartBoard using "Reflector."

During that time the classroom teacher and I each completed a rubric evaluating both the presentation and the research. The rubric was created by directly pulling skills and practices from the NYS ELA Standards and the Social Studied Framework. To view the rubric in full click on the link below the image.