I divided my two classes into five Florida Native American Tribes. Each tribe had about a month to collect the information for the research paper. Each student presented a diorama about the tribe he or she was assigned to. I also worked with the students on the essay about their tribe. The whole project was fascinating!!!!! Our last Thursday before Thanksgiving we celebrated with the great Native American Gathering, where the students presented their dioramas and we danced with the Native American Indians in a circle of "PEACE" :0)
Since I also wanted to model how to really conduct a research to my class, I was working on a DBQ "Seminole's Resistance" together with both classes during my reading block at the same time as the students were working on theirs at home. I made the documents into large colorful posters that the students could relate to and see clear details. I also modeled the process of a DBQ study. As a final product, we wrote an informational essay about Seminole resistance. This way the students were exposed to the proper way of writing an informational essay prior to submitting their own. We worked on good introduction, evidence and elaboration, and also strong conclusion. I also focused this time on encouraging the class to refer to the documents that they were drawing the evidence from. Well... we still need to improve in this area :0).
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