5th Grade Anti-Slavery Unit!

I'm really starting to get excited about teaching 5th grade. You can do so MANY neat and fun things with this age. First of all, they have a better comprehension of abstract ideas. Secondly, they can express their own thoughts about controversial topics, such as "slavery".

Here is how my Social Studies unit went this week:

First, students acted out a real-life scenario with me in a common day of a slave. I crumpled up paper and stuck taped "seeds" inside of them. Next, I threw them all over the front of the room. I called on students to be my slaves and "pick my cotton", while I explained the life of a slave.For their activity, they read a chapter about Frederick Douglass (slave and abolitionist) in groups of 3, and completed a web organizer about accomplishments, beliefs, and biographical information on him.

Day Two, the students learned about the Underground Railroad and the vocabulary that slaves used. To introduce the vocabulary (conductor, station, passenger, catcher), students had to figure out the words using homophones, analogies, and word plays. They used mini whiteboards to show me their guesses, and they were super engaged and excited to figure out the words. I explained that these words were actually "code" for other things, and it didn't really mean that they would be traveling by train. To demonstrate this more in detail, they watched a short cartoon version about Harriet Tubman from Discovery Education. Finally, they wrote their own narrative about escaping on the Underground Railroad using all of these vocabulary words.

For Day 3, students prepared for a Classroom Court . They had resources to build cases FOR and AGAINST abolishing slavery (books, pages, and Antelope Wiki links). I asked them several questions that matched up with an abolitionist and a slave master. They would go to front if it was an abolitionist type question they agreed with, and to the South if it was a pro-slavery type question they agreed with. This is how they were divided into what they would be debating. I provided them with a graphic organizer to help them find the information they would need to debate.

On Day 4, we turned our classroom into the courtroom. The students divided their desks so that they made one long table on each side of the room, and providing an isle. It was so great to see students have an emotional tie, teach their classmates, and express themselves!! It was one of the best days I had this week! You would have thought you were watching Law and Order :)

Tomorrow, we will go through a PowerPoint using games to review the unit. They will take their Summative Assessment, and then we will do the culminating activity: Pickin' at Starlight! I bought a package of cotton bolls. We're going to decorate the room with white Christmas lights and play "Follow the Drinking Gourd", while we pick the seeds from the cotton.