Moving People: Part 1
Lesson #: 9
Grade: 4th
Subject Area: Social Studies
Context
Materials
Introduction/Investment
Have the students get back into the groups that they were in for the simulation from yesterday. In those groups, re-cap about the simulation and how it went the previous day.
In today’s simulation, we are going to look at the next 2-3 hundred years of American Indian history in terms of the number of people that are American Indians and the sheer loss of life.
The next step as the teacher is to walk the students through the next 200 years by removing students from the European side and putting them in America. This is meant to show the students how the influx of people impacted America and predict what they might know.
For this simulation, have the students sitting in their desks and give them either a blue piece of construction paper or a green piece. The instructions will be that the blue pieces will have to listen to everything that the green says.
Once the students understand their role, tell some of the greens that they want more space and want some of the desks. You can tell them that they can either kick the blues off the desk, share the desk with you (co-habitation). Tell the blues to then think about where they will end up if the green comes and kicks them off.
Content
In order for the students to take away the key concepts in this lesson, they must understand what happened once these people came to America and ‘demanded’ more land.
Whole-Class Activity
The whole group instruction for this lesson would be based around thinking about the information you give out as a teacher. The content offers the aspects that you want the students to understand at the end of the day.
To give the students this information, have the students close their eyes and just listen to the story below (or create a narrative that you think is relevant):
Practice
For this part, the students have been doing a great deal of writing for the unit so offer the students the option to represent their feelings in any way they see fit. Allow the students to create something to represent their feelings.
It is very important to check in with each student to make sure that the proper feelings are coming out of these feelings
Assessment
Have the student fill out an exit slip and add to the large KWL chart.
Grade: 4th
Subject Area: Social Studies
Context
Materials
- Blue pieces of construction paper
- Green pieces of construction paper
- Paper
- Writing Utensil
- Exit slip
Introduction/Investment
Have the students get back into the groups that they were in for the simulation from yesterday. In those groups, re-cap about the simulation and how it went the previous day.
In today’s simulation, we are going to look at the next 2-3 hundred years of American Indian history in terms of the number of people that are American Indians and the sheer loss of life.
The next step as the teacher is to walk the students through the next 200 years by removing students from the European side and putting them in America. This is meant to show the students how the influx of people impacted America and predict what they might know.
For this simulation, have the students sitting in their desks and give them either a blue piece of construction paper or a green piece. The instructions will be that the blue pieces will have to listen to everything that the green says.
Once the students understand their role, tell some of the greens that they want more space and want some of the desks. You can tell them that they can either kick the blues off the desk, share the desk with you (co-habitation). Tell the blues to then think about where they will end up if the green comes and kicks them off.
Content
In order for the students to take away the key concepts in this lesson, they must understand what happened once these people came to America and ‘demanded’ more land.
- As more Europeans came to America, they wanted more land
- Europeans introduced the Ho-Chunk to disease, religion, economic systems
- Europeans pitted American Indians against each other
- The French intermingled with the Ho-Chunk
- Intermarriage
- Relations between Europeans and Ho-Chunk were not always the best.
- British and Americans were more towards removal and assimilation than co-habitation
Whole-Class Activity
The whole group instruction for this lesson would be based around thinking about the information you give out as a teacher. The content offers the aspects that you want the students to understand at the end of the day.
To give the students this information, have the students close their eyes and just listen to the story below (or create a narrative that you think is relevant):
- Once Columbus came, it was over. I woke up to chaos in my own tribe as the women who were once our leaders are no longer that way and many people have died from this “yellow sickness” and other things I have never seen. These white men bring brought more than anything I could have imagined. We now use the things we hunt and farm to trade for furs, and guns but this doesn’t change anything. They still look at us like savages and try to push their religion on us. What are we supposed to do? What will happen with us?
Practice
For this part, the students have been doing a great deal of writing for the unit so offer the students the option to represent their feelings in any way they see fit. Allow the students to create something to represent their feelings.
It is very important to check in with each student to make sure that the proper feelings are coming out of these feelings
- It is important to cultivate empathy but not to create the idea of ‘white guilt’ and go to the reservation to just help because they feel they should
- This would be a great time to push the social justice of the reservations and what our role is to help right these prejudices.
Assessment
Have the student fill out an exit slip and add to the large KWL chart.
