10bestthings - Journey Through Time

This project was created after a discussion during our photoessay project. When showing the students photo essays that depicted events like September 11th and JFK saluting his father, we realized the students had little or no connection to some of our nation's biggest moments. This realization sparked our creativity to combine a look into our past and the standards. We looked at the state standards for writing, research, and analysis of literature and created this project.
The students were responsible for analyzing primary and secondary sources (both print and non-print), writing a research paper on a chosen topic, reading a Newberry novel and analyzing via literature circles. In addition, the students were responsible for creating a timeline of their decade, educating their peers, and blogging (takes the place of journal entries).
This project really became an interdisciplinary unit because of the amount of information shared across the disciplines. The students learned about scientific inventions and laws passed for our country during their research.