Our Special Families
Unit Created by: Tiffany Olsaver; Modified by: Beth Rayl and John McCarthy
| UNIT PLAN | ||||||||||
| Title: Our Special Families | Duration: 2-3 weeks | |||||||||
| Content Area(s): Social Studies | Additional Content Area(s): Math | Grade Level: 1st | ||||||||
| Summary of Unit: Our classroom is a multicultural environment, but within that environment each student has a unique family and family history. Students will investigate, learn, and share information about their own families and heritages including family traditions, cultural traditions, languages, and generational family history (past two generations). | ||||||||||
| Driving Question: How does your family and heritage make you a unique person? | ||||||||||
| Content Standards or Student Learning Outcomes | H2.0.1 Demonstrate chronological thinking by distinguishing among past, present, and future using family or school events.H2.0.3 Investigate a family history for at least two generations, identifying various members and their connections in order to tell a narrative about family life. | |||||||||
| MITECs | 3a. With guidance from an educator, students use digital tools and resources, contained within a classroom platform or otherwise provided by the teacher, to find information on topics of interest.3b. With guidance from an educator, students become familiar with age-appropriate criteria for evaluating digital content.3c. With guidance from an educator, students explore a variety of teacher-selected tools to organize information and make connections to their learning.3d. With guidance from an educator, students explore real-world issues and problems and share their ideas about them with others. | 5a. With guidance from an educator, students identify a problem and select appropriate technology tools to explore and find solutions.5b. With guidance from an educator, students analyze age-appropriate data and look for similarities in order to identify patterns and categories.5c. With guidance from an educator, students break a problem into parts and identify ways to solve the problem.5d. Students understand how technology is used to make a task easier or repeatable and can identify real-world examples. | ||||||||
| 21st Century Skills | Collaboration | x | Creativity | |||||||
| Communication | Other: | |||||||||
| Critical Thinking | x | |||||||||
| Launch | The teacher will engage in a read-aloud with the picture book "Me and My Family Tree" by Joan Sweeney or a similar text chosen by the teacher. As the teacher reads through the story, they will share information about their own family and allow students to share short stories about their families. This project will be done in the Fall while the students are just starting to get to know each other. | |||||||||
| Authentic Learning Experiences | Students will interview their families to complete a family questionnaire, a family tree template, and an interactive family timeline. | |||||||||
| Authentic Audience(s) | ClassmatesFamiliesPatrons of the school library | |||||||||
| Student Products and Learning Artifacts (ongoing within unit and final product) | Family questionnaireFamily treeInteractive timeline using Timeline from ReadWriteThinkFinal Products:
| |||||||||
| Scaffolded Supports for Students with Exceptional Needs (both accelerated and those needing additional support) | ||||||||||
| Resources Needed | Onsite (people, facilities, etc): | |||||||||
| Equipment: Devices equipped with Google slides, laminator, book binding | ||||||||||
| Materials: Paper, crayons, pencils, colored pencils | ||||||||||
| Community Resources: Student families (including parents, siblings, and grandparents) | ||||||||||
| Reflection Methods(Individual, Team, and/or Whole Class) | Journal/Learning Log | x | Focus Group | |||||||
| Whole-Class Discussion | x | Fishbowl Discussion | ||||||||
| Survey | Other: | |||||||||
| Additional Notes: | ||||||||||