Jamestown 1607

Have I mentioned how much I am LOVING teaching US History?!? My two Social Studies classes are my favorite part of the day. I think half of it is just that is something new but the other half is that I am having SO much fun learning all this too. {yes, I'm a victim of coaches SS teachers} I wanted to share what we've been doing...

We've been learning all about Jamestown this week. My number one goal was to make history so exciting to my kids... and I knew the only way to achieve that is to teach it with so much passion they didn't have any choice but to be hooked. This isn't too hard because I am so into it myself! :)  

After learning all about John Smith, John Rolfe, Pocahontas, Powhatan and all the events that took place, I let my little journalists go and create a newspaper, entitled "Jamestown 1607 News" They had to take everything we'd learned and put it into four articles: Breaking News, What's New, Someone You Should Know and Classifieds. 

I let them research facts and questions around the room. I am so thankful we have access to classroom computers, iPads and NOW....

A set of Chrome books!!! We just got a whole cart of them! The cart is the perfect height for my kids so I just set four of them up as a research station. I had kids researching the day John Rolfe and Pocahontas got married, details of the Spanish tobacco seeds, The House of Burgesses, etc.

I measure the success of a lesson by how engaged my kids are and how much they can tell me about what we've learned...and I would say {minus the one girl who spent her class time searching for Justin Bieber pictures} this was successful!

And I'll leave you with one last thing. Our Student Council came up with a Thankful Tree this year. We've had the whole school write what they were thankful for on a hand and cut it out...I think it's turned out pretty cute!