Classroom Ideas
Life Long Ago
Discussion Topics
Have students offer ideas about everyday items that didn’t exist long ago.
Have students discuss the daily life of the early settlers or their great-grandparents.
Create a list of all the items that people would have to make for their daily lives.
What did the daily diet of the early settlers look like?
Discuss the very first Thanksgiving.
Art and Social Studies
Use various materials to create a small-scale home for a group of Native Americans, e.g. a wigwam. Can be done in groups.
Cloze Practice
A cloze piece has full sentences used in the virtual field trip with blanks where students can write in the information that is missing. This task requires close listening to the trip in order to complete it.
Coral reefs are the _______ type of ecosystem in the world. They’ve been around for over _____ million years.
Answers: oldest; 240
Alternatively, you could have students create 5-10 cloze statements and they could share those with the class.
A third alternative is to distribute the cloze worksheets before watching the video. Students can fill them in as they watch.
Native American Groups
Create a lesson (or lessons) that introduce students to the major tribes of Native Americans. This could be nearby tribes, or tribes across the country.
Transportation
Compare/contrast various modes of transportation that the early settlers used.
Explore Vocabulary
Identify key vocabulary terms while previewing each video. Prompt students to find the meaning of each word as they watch the video. Example: What do the words bartering and artifact mean? Think about the meaning of this word as you watch this video.
Visual Learning
Offer videos to struggling learners as another form of accessing information and creating knowledge.
Art
Draw a scene from the video you just watched.