WESTWARD HO, THE CHILDREN Pioneering Children on the Move By
PORTFOLIO COVER SHEET AUTHOR: MARILYN MARSHMAN TITLE: WESTWARD HO, THE CHILDREN HISTORICAL TOPIC: Pioneering CHILDREN ON THE MOVE: NEVADA STANDARDS Nevada History Standards: Nevada Reading and English Language Arts Standards English as a Second Language Standards 1.0 Students use reading process skills and strategies to build comprehension in English.
BACKGROUND On every side now the prairie stretched away to a far, clear skyline. The wind never stopped blowing, waving the tall prairie grasses… and all the afternoon, while Pa kept driving onward, he was merrily whistling or singing. The song he sang oftenest was: Oh come to the country, Laura Ingalls Wilder During the 1800’s hundreds of thousands of pioneers and emigrant families were headed to California to seek their fortunes in gold, to Oregon for lavish landscapes of trees and fruit, to Utah, following the founder of a new religion, or just anywhere for a better and more prosperous life. It must have seemed like our whole newly established country was on the move. According to John Dr. Unruh, Jr. from THE PLAINS ACROSS, overland emigration to Oregon, California, and Utah for the years 1840 – 1860 totaled 296,259 people. Trails were clogged with covered wagons. These pioneering families and adventurers were leaving families, disease, heartbreak or disappointment behind, hoping for a better life on the road ahead. Life was exciting, fun, dangerous and difficult for pioneering children. Children on overland journeys often kept journals or wrote memoirs of their travels many years after the journey was completed. For one fifteen year old boy, he wrote, “...for me a lad of fifteen, it was… the most interesting six months’ period in my life,” said DB. Ward, sixty years after his overland journey west in 1853. For children on the frontier, life was a combination of hard work and adventure. Boys and girls learned from their parents the skills they needed. Children had lots of chores that included milking cows, fetching water from streams, helping cook food, washing dishes, collecting buffalo chips or wood for fires, shaking out dusty blankets, watching or caring for younger children, doing the family laundry, tending the stock (oxen, cows and horses), mending clothing, and gathering berries, nuts and seeds. Pioneer life for children was not all hard work. The frontier was a whole new world to explore. Children played games like skipping rope, chasing hoops, tag, and hide and seek. They would skip rocks in streams. On hot days, if steams were near, children would wade or splash in cool waters. Children often sang songs along the trail. Most children except for the very young walked alongside the wagons with a parent or siblings. Since there was not much space in wagons, toys were at a minimum. Most of childrens’ toys were homemade. These toys included apple dolls, carved wooden toys, corn husk dolls, beanbags, and rag dolls and balls. Often the best time for children was after the evening meal when other families would gather around the fire to sing songs, share a desert and tell stories. PREFACE/AUTHOR’S NOTE: I teach ESL to students in grades K through 6th grades. After taking the summer institute, In Search of the West: Communities on the Move, I shared information from that institute with several teachers from my school. Many of the teachers were excited to try WORDLE in their classrooms, either with a writing activity or as a vocabulary/spelling activity. I also shared Dinah Zikes, NOTEBOOK FOLDABLES, with several teachers (my copy is now on loan). One teacher is buying new notebooks to initiate new science and reading journals. Since I teach many grade levels, I created an activity for different grade levels in my portfolio. Even though I created the lessons for a specific grade level, I feel that I can adapt most of those activities for most grade levels.
PORTFOLIO TABLE OF CONTENTS Activities and Learning Goals Activity 1—Primary Source---Who Are They? Activity 2—Wordle—“Word Clouds” Activity 3—Literature Connection—YAO’S WILD RIDE Activity 4—Foldable—The Long Road Trip Activity 5—Internet/ Technology—OREGON TRAIL Activity 6—Art Piece/Writing –Making a Covered Wagon
ACTIVITY 1—PRIMARY SOURCE: Who Are They? Learning Goal: Students will analyze primary sources, photographs of pioneering children. Students will work in groups of four to discuss what is seen in the different photographs. Each student in the group will write one fact about what was seen in the photograph. Each student will also write an opinion (prediction) about the lives of the children in the photo. Each group will then share their photos, facts and opinions with the entire class. Link: http://www.archives.gov/research/american-west/index.html#earth Procedure: Have students work in groups of four (or five, depending on class size). Each group will be given a photograph of pioneering children (or a child) as depicted in the Western movement. The students will discuss and analyze the picture together, asking what they see, where the image might be from, what time period it was taken from, etc. Have the group give the photograph a title. Such as: “No shoes for Jenny and her little brother”, or “Hold-On Tight to the Reigns”. After the discussion, the students will be given an index card. Each student will write in one or two sentences each, one fact about the children in the photograph and one opinion (prediction) about the lives of the children in their photograph. Each group will then share with the class, their photograph, the title of the photograph and each student’s written response of a fact and an opinion about the pioneer children. Evaluation: Students will be evaluated on their written fact and opinion responses, i.e., creativity and written accuracy. Students will also be evaluated on their participation and involvement in their groups.
ACTIVITY 2—WORDLE: “Word Clouds” Learning Goal: Students will each be given their own Wordle which was created from text of the book, DAILY LIFE IN A COVERED WAGON, by Paul Erickson. They students will then read the story in their reading groups. The students will keep their “word clouds” to use as a reference tool for “key” vocabulary words from the story. Students will also create and write a poem from a Wordle they create. The poems and Wordles will be shared with the class and presented on a bulletin board in the classroom. Procedure: During computer time, the students will create their own Wordles from text found in passages about life in covered wagons, childrens’ lives on the overland trail, the Oregon Trail, children of the Donner Party, or other related computer generated passages. The computer assistant and the classroom teacher will assist the students in finding passages on the computer and in creating a Wordle. In reading groups, the students will share, compare and analyze the different Wordles that were created in the computer lab. During “seat work” assignments, the students will each create a poem from the “word clouds” (vocabulary) in their Wordle. The students will then share their poems and associated Wordles with the class. Samples of Wordles are included at the end of the lesson plan. Link: www.wordle.net/ Evaluation: Students will be evaluated on the creativity of the poem and its relationship to the Wordle they created. Both the poem and the Wordle will be displayed on a bulletin board in the classroom.
ACTIVITY 3—LITERATURE CONNECTION: Yao’s Wild Ride Preface/Teacher Note: YAO’S WILD RIDE, is one of the ESL Leveled Readers (6th grade) from the Houghton Mifflin Reading Series. (Houghton Mifflin is the reading series (curriculum) we use in school.) The theme for the unit is historical fiction. The characters are young people who must overcome obstacles and show courage and strength. Learning Goal: Students will read YAO’S WILD RIDE, by Rebecca Motil in a small ESL pull-out reading group. The students and the teacher will then discuss the story. After the discussion the students will write a short response to the literary selection that demonstrates an understanding of the main character’s personal development as he experiences the West as an emigrant child. Procedure: After reading the text, the students will discuss and answer questions from the “Think About the Selection” questions from the story, as well as:
The students will then write a paragraph about one of the discussion questions Evaluation: The students will be evaluated on their oral reading improvements, their comprehension of the text and the completeness and , accuracy and of the writing assignment.
ACTIVITY4—Foldable: The Long Road Trip Learning Goal: Foldables stimulate ideas and represent information in a format more familiar and useful to students. Students will create a Trifold Ven Diagram Foldable that will incorporate basic facts about what to take on The Long Road Trip. Students will then compare and contrast items that they need to pack with the items that pioneer children needed to pack on The Long Road Trip some 150 years ago. Reference: NOTEBOOK FOLDABLES, by Dinah Zike M.Ed. Procedure: Students will be given the task to plan to pack for a long road trip. The road trip will be from Independence, Missouri to Sacramento, California. Students will be given a template to make their Trifold Ven Diagram. If the teacher wishes she can copy the diagram for immediate use. Students will record their responses on the Trifold Ven Diagram. The top portion of the diagram will be what they plan to pack for the trip. How many days by car? How much food, money, clothes, toys, etc. will be needed to pack. How much room will be available in the car. How many people will be traveling with them. On the bottom section of the diagram, the students will speculate what pioneering children needed to pack on the same trip. The difference being they had to pack their belongings in a covered wagon. The same distance will be traveled. In the middle section, the students are to record what are the same items both they and their counterparts from 150 year ago had in common. Students will then attach the foldable in their writing journal for a future writing assignment. A sample foldable and instructions are included at the end of the lesson plan. Evaluation: Students will be evaluated on their creativity, imagination and completion of facts and detail on the diagram.
ACTIVITY 5 - INTERNET/TECHNOLOGY: OREGON TRAIL---Video Game The Oregon Trail is an educational computer game developed in 1971 by three student teachers at Carleton College in Minnesota. The game was inspired by the real-life Oregon Trail and was designed to teach school children about the realities of 19th century pioneer life on the trail. The player assumes the role of a wagon leader guiding his party of settlers from Independence Missouri, to Oregon’s Willamette Valley by way of the Oregon Trail via a Conestoga wagon in 1848. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oregon_Trail_(video_game) Preface/Author’s Note: Learning Goal: Students will learn about Westward expansionism and the Oregon Trail while making decisions about what to take on the Oregon Trail, how much to spend (math objective), and possible consequences and life threatening decisions along the way. Points are awarded according to a formula weighted by the profession chosen, the number and health of surviving family members, remaining possessions, and cash on hand. Activity: *Our computer lab has THE OREGON TRAIL (video game) on all the computers in the lab. Many of the classrooms also have the game on the classroom computers. If your school does not subscribe to, or has purchased THE OREGON TRAI, it can be purchased online. I found it for $5.00 at Amazon.com. Basic information on THE OREGON TRAIL can be obtained at: *Students can work independently or during classroom computer time on the game. *Students keep track of their scores. Each time the game is played different obstacles arise and decisions have to be made according to the obstacle or activity chosen. Evaluation: students will keep records of their scores. These scores can be shared as a class or individually with the teacher. Teacher Note: I will continue to teach the afterschool mentoring program this year. THE OREGON TRAIL, video game will continue to be one of the math (educational) video games that my students will use. It is an excellent history source as well as a math source. Even my “cool” sixth graders love to play the game.
ACTIVITY 6 - Art Piece/Writing: Making a Covered Wagon "Father met us here with two yoke of oxen and an ox wagon. We brought very little besides our bedding and clothing, but it was necessary to pile box on top of box. We left room in front for Mother and for the eight children under seven years of age. The rest walked the hundred miles to the Neosho Valley. We were two weeks making the trip. The oxen were slow; we were heavily loaded; and when it rained we would not break camp." ---Melissa Genett Moore, Kansas Territory circa 1860 Learning Goal: The student will create a covered wagon that was typical of the ones the pioneer children rode in on their journeys to the West. The student will also create a “backdrop” for their covered wagon. This “backdrop” will be a panorama scene of somewhere along the overland trail to the West. On the back of the panorama the students will write a short response stating where their wagon is on the overland trail, who is riding in the wagon and where the wagon and its occupants are going. Reference: Teach Social Studies with Craft Activities—Classfunbook III Materials:
Templates are included at the end of the lesson plan Procedure: This is a two day (two-segment) project. After the panorama has dried, the students will write about where the scene is on the overland trail. Where the wagon is going and who is riding in the wagon. Part two: Students will be given the pre-printed wagon and wagon cover construction papers. They will carefully cut out the pieces and assembly the wagon and its cover. Small wooden dowels will help support the wagon’s wheels. Evaluation: The projects will be displayed in the classroom for the class and other teachers and classes to view. The projects will be evaluated on completeness of project, creativity of landscape, and written explanation of their overland wagon scene.
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