This Indigenous Americans research project has been designed to give your students research and writing practice.
This project was a helpful way for students to practice their research skills while learning about the impact Indigenous Americans continue to make on our country.
This is another free resource for teachers and homeschool families from The Curriculum Corner.
Completing your indigenous Americans research
I began by sharing a list of names with my students. I had each student choose a different Indigenous American. I make an effort to include names of people with a variety of talents so that every student could find a person that was interesting to them.
Since working through this project with my students, I have made some modifications to my original list. I found that some were very difficult to find information about and others had histories that were difficult for students to understand. For example, the work of a few scientists was difficult for students to fully grasp. It involved a lot of background building first. Since this was designed to be a quick project, in the future I plan on adjusting the list a little for next year. I will add that list here once I make some changes.
My students worked independently on this task but you could assign this as a partner or small group assignment.
In my class we have been talking a lot about how to research – emphasizing that you need to open and look at the whole article rather than just finding your answer in the search results.
This gave a good opportunity to discuss why this was important – some students wanted to find their own focus instead of one from the list I provided. I was happy to have them do this. However, some students saw the word indigenous in the search results and ended up with people who were indigenous to either Africa or Australia. This gave us a good chance to look at the results as a class and emphasize that opening and looking at the first paragraph of the article would have made this clear.
Completing the projects
Once students completed their research, they wrote a rough draft in their writing notebooks. After editing, I gave my students a flag shape to neatly share their writing and to add a picture of their person
I will be hanging up the final projects tomorrow and will come back and add some pictures of the final product.
Not only did this project give students some much needed practice building research skills, it also provided a time for students to use their writing to share what they learned.
Also, students learned a little more about a culture and history they were not familiar with. Some of the people students focused on had attended Indian boarding schools and so this led to more discussions.
Along with the pennant-shaped page, there are other pages you can provide your students for writing.
You will also find a rubric to use for grading. I left the total points out of blank so you can create these to fit your requirements.
I hope your students also enjoy this activity and learn a little more about Indigenous Americans.
You can download this free resource by clicking on the apples below:
As with all of our resources, The Curriculum Corner creates these for free classroom use. Our products may not be sold. You may print and copy for your personal classroom use. These are also great for home school families!
You may not modify and resell in any form. Please let us know if you have any questions.