Lesson 2: Questions about schools in the past                        Time Needed: 1 hour

Grade: 4                                                                                Unit: Schooling

 

What was school like in the past?


Materials:
Paper
Writing Utensils
Chalkboard
Yesterday’s list

NCSS Standards:
Standard B: History: Time, Continuity, and Change
Time, Continuity, and Change: Help learners apply key concepts such as time, chronology, causality, change, conflict, and complexity to explain, analyze, and show connections among patterns of historical change and continuity.
Standard E: Individuals, groups, and Institutions
Help learners to understand the various forms institutions take, their functions, their relationships to one another and how they develop and change over time.

Wisconsin State Standards:
Standard E: Behavioral Science: E.4.5 Identify and describe institutions such as school, church, police, and family and describe their contributions to the well being of the community, state, nation, and global society.

MMSD Standards:
Social Studies Standards:
Compare and contrast individual perspectives and differences.
Language Arts Standards:
Inquiry/Research:
Construct questions about a topic and narrow the focus.
Language/Communication:
Contribute to group discussions.
Seek and respond to the ideas and opinions of others.
Use evidence to support opinions. 

Elementary Education Standards:
Standard 7: Understands and adapts to multiple forms of communication- Students have the opportunity to express ideas and their own experiences throughout the lesson such as discussing with their peers what a day looks like in their lives.
Standard 6: Connects school and community- In this lesson the students are creating questions to ask on our field trip tomorrow at a retirement home located in the community.
 
Objectives:
SWBAT compile a list of questions to ask community members.
SWBAT distinguish between appropriate behavior for an interview and inappropriate behavior. 

Context:
This is the second lesson in the unit on schooling.  The students will begin to create questions they might have about what school used to be like in the past.  These questions will then be answered when the students go to a retirement home that is located in the community.

Opening:
Gather the students on the carpet and come back to the list they compiled the day before.  Start the day by posing a question to the students, do you think that school has changed over the years and if so how?  Have the student’s think, pair, and share with a partner.

Procedure:
1. Once the students have had a chance to discuss and share ideas with a partner ask if anyone would like to share what they talked about with their peer. 
2. Once every group has had a chance to share with the class the teacher will then take pairs and make groups of four.  The teacher will then pass out sheets of paper for the students to write questions on.  Tell the students that we will be going on a fieldtrip to a retirement home to help get our questions answered.
3. Tell the students that they can ask these community members anything they want about what it was like when they went to elementary school.  Again return to the list from the previous day that discussed a typical day in their lives and how we can use what happens in our day to form questions about what school used to be like. 
4. The teacher will then model this by taking something from the list and making up a question she can ask during the interview tomorrow.  For example, a typical day for the teacher starts with morning meeting.  A question could be as simple as, did you have morning meetings when you were in elementary school? What did you do during those morning meetings?
5. Remind the students to look at the list they compiled the day before if they are having trouble brainstorming questions.  Give the students about 10-15 minutes.
6. Once the students have had time to brainstorm, bring them back to the carpet to go over interviewing skills. 
7. Have a student come up to help you demonstrate what appropriate behavior looks like during an interview.  The main ideas you want to touch on are: the students are the ones writing the answers, the students make eye contact with the person they are interviewing, the students are not playing around during the interview, the students are listening to the person speaking, the students face the person, the students are engaged throughout the interview. 
8. The teacher can demonstrate improper behavior for an interview as she pretends to interview the student.  The teacher can walk away, look bored, ask the student to write the answer, look down at the paper while interviewing, and/ or throw something at another student to get their attention.  The students would then deem these actions inappropriate and the teacher will then show what someone looks like when interviewing a person.
 
Closing:
Tell the students that tomorrow we will be taking these questions and going on a field trip to interview someone in the community.  Tell them also that you will be typing up the questions tonight so that they have them tomorrow.

Assessment:
SWBAT compile a list of questions to ask community members.
The teacher will formally assess the students by looking over the questions they turn in. The teacher will informally assess the students by observing them while they work in groups.
SWBAT distinguish between appropriate behavior for an interview and inappropriate behavior. 
The teacher will informally assess the students by observing them during the class discussion on this focus.