Colony Virtual Field Trips Teacher Notes

This field trip is intended to be used as you study the American Colonization Period. If you use it in this form, it should take approximately 6 class periods. You are certainly welcome to use it in any manner, but here are just a few suggestions for management.

• Timing - I would use this AFTER you have introduced the American Colonization Period. It is essentially an opportunity to compare a southern colony, a middle colony, and a northern colony. I have chosen these 3 colonies because they all had very different experiences, and because there is a great deal of information about each of these.

• Group management of the online portion- with the mobile lab, the online portion of this trip could be done in approximately 3 45-minute periods. I would divide students into groups of 2-3 who would work together each time and would work to complete the final project.

• Teacher Support - I will be training parents in working with this activity. For the online part of this, I would recommend having 2-3 adults. I would be happy to be one. You would be there as well and possibly a paraprofessional. We can have at least one parent. Adults could help read parts that might be difficult for students and provide any assistance in taking down the ideas.

• Answering the online questions. Students should take notes and answer the questions for each colony on a separate page. Then EACH student should take home the attached rubric to complete on the colony. They will use this rubric to complete the PowerPoint presentation.

• Preparation for the PowerPoint presentation. I believe the PowerPoint portion of this activity should take 2-3 class periods.

  • First Day: I will come into your class and model the ways to present the information in PowerPoint. My suggestion is to have students create bulleted lists of their points on slides 2-10. I have wonderful clip art they can use on slide one. Groups should spend approximately 10-15 minutes deciding which colony they felt was most successful.  The first day, we should create the first slide, save the PowerPoints into your class folder and have students focus on picking the points they will use for the other slides (that might need to be homework).

  • Day Two: Students should work on completing the slides and seeing if there are any pieces of information they need to finish their presentations.

  • Day Three: Students should complete all work on presentations and present them to the class (set 3 minute limits  - they don't need to read what is on slide, but may want to pick MOST important points and elaborate).

• Final Rubric: You may use this rubric with your students to help them assess how they did on this activity.