Westward Expansion

When I first started teaching out of college, I was lucky enough to work in a small private school that gave me a lot of freedom with the curriculum.  In addition to that, the middle school teachers were a close knit group that worked together well, all of which allowed for some wonderful opportunities for cross curricular activities.  One of my favorite projects we created involved reading the book "Arundel" by the Pulitzer Prize winning, Maine author, Kenneth Roberts.  The book chronicles Benedict Arnold's march on Quebec City during the Revolutionary War.  The 6th and 7th grade students would read the book in LA, while the Math, Science, and History teachers would create lessons around the text as well.  The culminating activity would be a 3 day trip that roughly followed the "Arnold Trail" through Maine until finally reaching Quebec City.

Throughout this Blog, I intend to record my thoughts and plans for my different Social Studies units and lesson, as well as my interest in developing curriculum that focuses on current events as a way to connect the different subject areas.  I am a huge geography nut as well as a news junkie.  I am not ashamed to admit to subscribing to numerous online and print news publications.  I am always marking articles or facts that pertain to science and math topics that we are covering in class and I would love to find a way to incorporate this high interest area into the classroom.


I have met with the 5th/6th grade Social Studies teacher that I will be working with this term and based on the schedule, it was decided that I would cover the topic of Westward Expansion.  I seem to have lost myself down the "rabit hole" this week while hunting for ideas and activities to use for this unit, as well as creating this Blog.  I can't help but want to create an activity similar to the "Oregon Trail" game that I remember playing as a student, where I divide the students into teams and have them "relive" the journey with daily activities and projects.  At the same time, I was very much inspired by the video from this week's module, and love the idea of having the class conduct an interview using Skype with one of the many museums that focus on the history of the Oregon Trail and/or Westward Expansion such as: http://www.windriver.org/page/oregon-trail and http://www.historicoregoncity.org/

In addition, I've been experimenting with Google Tour Builder.  I'm thinking it would be a very effective way to illustrate the span of the "trip" the settlers took, or as a way to simply organize my lessons.  I could tag all of the different topics/spots I want to make sure I cover and use the map as
a constant throughout the entire unit.  I have also have been playing around with Thinglink.com which is a site that allows you to take a picture and add tags to it.  The tags link to additional information, pictures, and/or videos.  I've created a rough draft of one already (see below) and can't help but think of ways I can use it as a final project for students, or as a way to build my daily lesson around a central theme and use the tags as details or instructions throughout the lesson.


Example of Westward Expansion Thinglink


Google Tour Builder: