Reflecting On Our Learning and How Our Thoughts and Ideas Have Changed

Today's visible thinking routine encouraged learners to reflect on their thinking about the early civilizations of North America and their related project-based learning experience over the past month. This visible thinking activity allowed learners to identify and verbalize their new understandings, opinions, and beliefs. By examining and explaining how and why their thinking has changed, they are developing their reasoning abilities and recognizing cause and effect relationships. Here are some thoughts from this week's guest bloggers:

What was interesting to me was that early Native Americans used every part of an animal they killed because they were thankful for having something to eat and for its other uses that would help them survive (like using animal bones to make into tools).  Also, I used to think that women did all of the cooking and sewing and that the men were the hunters, but now I know that the jobs they had were based on their skills not whether they were a man or a woman.   - "Mala" & "Rianna"

What was interesting to me was that we learned that it is disrespectful to wear a headdress unless you were or are a respected tribal leader who earned each of the feathers in the headdress for doing heroic or brave things. I thought we would be able to wear a headdress in our reader's theater performance, but when we learned about Chief Masconomet and his people, we found out that it is actually disrespectful.      - "Glisten"

I used to think that all Native Americans lived in teepees, but now I know that the type of home you lived in depended on where you lived. It all depended on the climate and resources in the area. Some lived in teepees, while others lived in chickees, plankhouses, longhouses and more.   - "Ritzi" & "Clover"

What was interesting for me to learn was that Chief Masconomet probably felt forced to sell part of his land in a secret agreement and that so many of the Native American people living in the 1600s died because of diseases brought to their region by European explorers.    - "Aloha"

I used to think that Native American headdresses were worn just for decoration, but now I know that each of the feathers in their headdresses were earned by doing acts of bravery or by helping others. I am still wondering if there is some sort of celebration after you earn your first feather and also, does it get harder and harder to earn more feathers?     - "Mango"

What was interesting for me to learn was that longhouses in the Northeast region can sometimes have 30 or more families living in them. Their longhouses had a hole in the roof to let the smoke escape and their homes are very organized inside - like the campfires will be on one side and storage and beds will be on the other side. Also, I used to think that Native Americans were always just here, but now I know that a land bridge called Beringia had formed and it connected Siberia to North America. People in Siberia followed the animals into North America because the animals were their source of food.    - "Cat"

I'm wondering how our own lives might be different if the Europeans never settled here.    - "Champ" & "Aloha"

The Four C's in Action

We're in the final phase of our project-based learning (PBL) experience related to the early civilizations of North America. We began with an in-depth, hyperdoc-based investigation into the various cultural regions, engaged in a buffalo skin sketch-noting session for retrieval practice and to help us develop a deeper understanding of how geography influenced Native American settlements, and later broke into small groups to write reader's theater scripts or documentaries portraying or describing daily life in our selected cultural regions. The next and final phase of the PBL experience provides an opportunity for some of our learners to create small-scale replicas of daily life in a tribal village to pair with their iMovie documentaries, while others are creating props (including large-scale longhouses, teepees, chickees, and canoes!) to use in a live performance to pair with their reader's theater scripts. Several other learners are just as excited to create a series of podcast episodes related to the challenges these early people faced adapting to the geography in the various regions. This week's learning reflection asked learners to talk about what they created today and how their creations address our PBL driving question: How does geography shape how we live?  This is what CREATIVITY, CRITICAL THINKING, COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION look like during a PBL experience:

During today's PBL experience, I created a large-scale replica of a longhouse with my group. It was meant to look like it was made from logs, animal skin and tree bark - just the way the early Northeast Woodland people would make them. Northeast Woodland people would use animal skin to cover their longhouses because it would keep them warm during the cold season and they could flip the skin up over the top of the longhouse during the warmer seasons to help keep them cool. The Northeast region has many forests, so there were a lot of trees and this became an important resource for them. They had many uses for trees, like using them to make their homes. I like building and creating things to represent what I am learning.     - "Cat"

During today's PBL experience, I created a plank house to show how people of the early Pacific Northwest region lived. My creation shows how geography shapes how people live because this type of house is made of cedar (they had lots of cedar trees in this region). My favorite part of this PBL experience has been making the tiny replica of a Chinook tribe's village. I like it because it's really fun to figure out how to do the really, really difficult parts. You get to experiment with different ways to do things.    - "Tazer"

During today's PBL experience, I created a chickee house with my partner to represent the type of house that was built in the early Southeast Woodland region. This was a popular house of the Seminole people in particular. Chickees are made out of a log frame, with palm leaves for the roof and bark rope to hold it all together. Chickee homes are raised off the ground so that they won't sink in the mud or sand and the sides are open to help keep them cool in their hot climate. My favorite part of the PBL experience so far has been writing the documentary because we got to choose how the characters would feel and what they would be faced with.    - "Wifi"

Today I created a Northeast Woodland longhouse with my group. We had a lot of fun with this and it's almost finished. We made a longhouse to represent that people in this region would live with multiple families. Sometimes a longhouse would have more than 20 families living in it. Since there were any trees in this region, there were plenty of resources available to build this type of house - logs, grasses and animal skin were needed to build these homes and there were plenty of these resources available.  My favorite part of the PBL experience so far has been building the longhouse because it was cool to build something that Native Americans might have built and to have to think about the types of materials they would have used and how they used them.     - "Mala"

During today's PBL experience, I created a chickee house with my partner. Chickee houses were popular in the early Southeast region because their homes needed to be raised off the ground so that people did not have to sleep on the muddy ground. There were plenty of trees in this region which were used to build these types of homes.    - "N.A.S.A."

My group and I created a teepee to represent the type of home many of the early people lived in in the early Great Plains region. Teepees were created out of simple materials - usually 5-6 wooden poles for the frame and buffalo skin for the covering. They used simple materials because they did not have a lot of other resources that they could use for homes. Also, people of the Great Plains region were nomadic so it was easy for them to take down their teepees and bring them with them as they traveled from place to place following their food source (buffalo). My favorite part of the PBL experience so far was doing our investigation of one region because we wouldn't get to write the script and get to make the artifacts without knowing so much about a region.     - "Rianna"

During today's PBL experience, I created a fishing net because fishing was really important to the early Pacific Northwest people. They would use cedar tree bark to make rope and use that rope to weave their nets. I really liked creating this artifact because we could be as creative as we wanted.    - "Lize"

During today's PBL experience, my group and I created a teepee. It was made of buffalo hide and sticks. The reason the early people of the Great Plains region made teepees is that people in this region would follow the buffalo because it was their main source of food and they would have to be able to fold up their teepees and be able to move from place to place following the buffalo. My favorite part of this PBL experience so far has been creating our artifacts because I really like to create things and it was fun to put our knowledge of early Native American people into a fun project.     - "Mango"

Today, my partner and I made a net to catch salmon. People in the early Pacific Northwest region relied on salmon a great deal. Not only was it a major food source, but they would use it to trade with other cultural groups. The nets they used to catch the salmon were made of rope from cedar tree bark. My favorite part of the PBL experience so far has been writing the reader's theater script because I love writing plays and performing them.    - "Soda"