Endorsement Subject Class Unit Lesson Resources Standard

Elementary Education Social Studies American History The Migration West Oregon Trail Print: Textbook Non-Print: Blogger Nebraska Standard SS 4.4.1: Students will examine chronological relationships and patterns, and describe the connections among them. Students will create a Blogger and write a new blog post every day as if they were traveling west on the Oregon Trail. Students will write about activities, struggles, and accomplishments that happen throughout their Oregon Trail experience. They will include important events throughout the Oregon Trail by using their textbooks to add information to their blog posts. To keep things exciting, students will draw out of a hat things such as: the death of a family member, a new child is born, broken wagon wheel, etc. Also, students will evaluate another classmates Blogger posts to judge their classmates decisionmaking process. Finally, the students will make a presentation about their experience on the Oregon Trail and explain the decisions they made. This activity will allow students to remember the struggles faced on the Oregon Trail and put it into a different perspective. Computers and an internet connection will be needed to write the blog posts. Students may also want to use textbooks to remember details about the trip. Objective 1: Understanding the Oregon Trail Objective 2: Work on typing and spelling skills Objective 3: Work on metacognition skills and decision-making process. Students would need to read the Oregon Trail to begin constructing a knowledge of what the move west was like for the settlers.

Introduction

Technology Uses/Materials Needed Objectives

Preparing the Student

Assessment of Student Learning

Students will be learning through all levels of Blooms Taxonomy: 1. Knowledge: Students will describe what it was like living on the Oregon Trail by posting to Blogger. 2. Understand: Students will demonstrate through Blogger that they understand what life was like while on the Oregon Trail. 3. Apply: Students will be able to experiment with the program while also writing their blogs. 4. Analyze: Students will explain what living on the Oregon Trail was like by updating their Blogger. 5. Evaluate: Students will assess another students blog to observe if they made the correct decisions along the Oregon Trail. 6. Create: Students will compose a presentation to generalize what life was like traveling down the Oregon Trail. 1. Students will gain knowledge about the Oregon Trail using textbooks and online resources. 2. Students will create a Blogger 3. Students will create a new blog post each day as if they were traveling west on the Oregon Trail. 4. They will include important information from the textbook to add information and recreate an average life as an Oregon Trail traveler. 5. Students will draw events out of a hat to include in their blog such as the death of a family member, death of an ox, the birth of a baby, broken wagon wheel, etc. 6. Students will be assigned another students blog to follow. They will observe and evaluate their classmates decisions. They will think about what they would have done and why they believed their classmate did well. 7. After the project is over, students will make a presentation over their journey on the Oregon Trail. Students will talk about their hardships, exciting events that occurred, their decisionmaking process, and what they would change now that the project is over. Measurement of success will be decided based on the accurateness of the information included in the blog, the evaluation of their classmates blog, and their final presentation. The grades will be based off of a rubric created for the project.

Lesson Sequence

Measurement of Success