Students will look at data showing how the “millennial” generation differs from other generations. They will analyze and evaluate social changes evident in the data. Then they will work with a partner to compose a newsletter.
The teacher will facilitate a class discussion for students to share their opinions about young adulthood before they start the activity. After some teacher modeling, students will read, annotate, and answer questions about a technical document—including tables and graphs—to gather evidence to support conversations with their classmates about young adulthood. Then, students will write a paragraph about how their generation defines young adulthood.
Classroom environments can have diversity culturally and socially. Within the 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).
After this unit, students will be able to:
- Demonstrate chronological thinking by distinguishing among past, present, and future using family or school events.
- Investigate a family history for at least two generations, identifying various members and their connections in order to tell a narrative about family life.
The teacher will engage in a read-aloud with the picture book "Me and My Family Tree" by Joan Sweeney or a similar text. 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.
Students will interview their families to complete a family questionnaire, a family tree template, and an interactive family timeline. The final product will be a family tree digital book.
The tools that could be used are Google Slides, Padlet, Book Creator, or a Google Docs page with the student work imported. They can also use Powtoons or Adobe Spark to include sound with storytelling.