Reflections on team teaching 18th Century Vermont

Vacations are earned! That's something I know. But they are earned by teachers and students alike, especially after completing a whirlwind unit like we just did.  For the month of February the ELA teacher on my team, Joy Peterson, and I did our first integrated humanities unit. There was an adjustment period for us as teachers- opening the wall between our two classrooms, collaborating on an hourly basis and resetting norms for the big room during non-academic times. So I have to assume the students took some time to settle in as well!

I really enjoyed the experience. It was great to see the flexibility and having multiple experts in the room to refer students to so they could really get the support they needed. I think a true example of personalized learning! Need more research options or random facts about Vermont? Go see Mr. Bailey. Need some support laying out your presentation and properly citing sources? Go see Ms. Peterson.

We started the 3 week unit with a week of stations (documented throughout on our team Instagram feed), where each day students were exposed to different aspects of 18th Century Vermont. People/Settlement/Conflict was the first station, Agriculture/Food the second, Industry the third and Growing Up in Vermont the fourth. We had students keeping exit tasks books throughout as well as self-assessing their focus and interest levels to see how the numbers for focus change as the number for interest in the topic changed. From there they brainstormed personal research projects and used this padlet to research. I was really proud of the focus we intentionally set out for Native American life during that century. A lot of students took an interest in that and did projects with that topic.

The Learning Targets we were assessing the work on was the Humanities target of "Speaking & Presenting" and the Social Studies target of "Culture". I did a lesson with direction instruction around Speaking and Presenting using the Highlights magazine cartoon of Goofus & Gallant. Joy and I created indicators for the target, doing some translating of the language within the target to be more 5th/6th grade vocab friendly. In the mini-lesson, I broke tables groups out to create a Goofus & Gallant using just one part of the target (highlighted in this google doc).

This past week was for presentations, and I can confidently speak for Joy and myself in saying how blown away we were by the content and delivery across the board. I'm so excited to be putting in a variety of examples in below. I'm also pleased that a few students are going to extend their experience by entering their presentations in Vermont History Day in April.

Now it's time to do my part as an 18th Century Vermonter and wait for the weather to cooperate so I can start sugaring season. We run it old fashioned- buckets, lines and a wood fire. An ode to those who've come before. Enjoy the student examples below:

Triumph & Tragedy in 18th Century Vermont

Morgan Horses

Potash

18th Century Vermont Life

This group visited the 1 room schoolhouse as part of their project