Graphic+Organizers

1.

Tree Map: I would have my students use this map to help them organize their thoughts about what they are going to learn. They would use this map to get the main idea of the standard, as well as some important, supporting details. I would have my students write, "Turn of the Century" in the first bubble. In the next bubbles, they would write the main idea of each element. Finally, in the last bubbles I would have them write important people or ideas that go along with each element.

2. Wagon Map: I found this graphic organizer online and immeadiately wished that I had known about it while I was teaching my unit. This would have been perfect for the day that we studied westward expansion. I could have had my students write from the perspective of either a Native American that was being forced to move onto a reservation or from the perspective of a European who was moving west to look for land and gold. Students could have used this map during research to gain ideas for pre-writing. They would have written down ideas about how their character would have felt, eaten, or done.

3. Venn Diagram: My students would use a Venn Diagram to make connections. I would have them compare the lives of cowboys, inventors, Native Americans or Europeans in the past, to the lives of those people today. Students could also use this to compare America in general at the turn of the century to America today. This would be a great end of unit performance based assessment.