Objective: My objective for this project was to get kids thinking about Native Americans in more interesting ways than simply reading about them in a social studies book. I also wanted students to realize that not all of the Native Americans were the same in their speech, dress, or their type of housing.
Materials Used: I contacted three elementary students that I know from different parts of the United States. I suggested a web site as reference for the students to find their information.
Procedure Followed: I gave a list of information that I wanted the students to share with each other about one group of Native Americans from near where each student lived. As the students sent the information, I posted it to the site for the project.
Expected Outcome: In doing this project, I expected the students to use more than one website or book to find information about the specific tribe they were researching and send the information that they found to me in an appropriate amount of time. Each student sent their information, but they all used the site I suggested rather than finding other sites. The site they used is full of great, easy to access information, but more diversity would have been nice. I will have to make that clearer when I attempt this project or one like it with other classrooms. Also, next time I would like to do more extended activities with this project. One thing would be to have each group of students send more information about the types of housing the different tribes live in and possibly suggested materials for creating this type of housing. Students could them attempt to make a model of the housing for a tribe and end up with a nice collection of the variety of housing used by Native Americans. Each class would also have a United States map and each group would send either a list of states or a map with sections highlighted where their tribe lived. The students could then have a map where they could label each section with a tribe name. I think these additional activities will help students learn more about the tribes and also dismiss stereotypes about Native Americans that many children have in elementary school.