Oregon Trail Lesson- Wagons and Dragons

In the second school I have taught at, a big issue that I was faced with was access to technology. Being in a mildly rural area, Sedona did not have good access to internet, and the filters the school employed allowed for powerpoint, word processing, some research, and little else.

That being said, one of my favorite things to teach is the Oregon Trail, and the text based video game provides such a great way to connect history with reading, writing, and above all video games.

That being said, the amazing internet archive has recently released a streaming service for the Oregon Trail. You can access it here:

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Oregon_Trail_The_1990

Not only is the Oregon Trail available but a lot of the other older video games have been placed there for the public to access!



Regardless of how amazing this resource is, West Sedona was going to make it as difficult as possible to provide the kids with this experience. So I wrote my own, manual Oregon Trail Game, based on Dungeons and Dragons.

The lesson starts with a character sheet:

As you can see, students have to build a character and create a budget. 

I then created a powerpoint that was the journey. Students would come to a challenge, and then have to roll a dice to find out what happened to them. Depending on what character traits, or supplies they had, it could effect how well they faired on the Trail. 

This lesson was very successful, it was a total of around 31 slides. After each couple of events I would have students reflect on their journey thus far in a "trail diary" in which they drew a quick picture, wrote a sentence or wrote some key words. This maintained that students were focussing. 

While I enjoyed the concept of the lesson, it was very teacher involved, but proved to get the point across, while helping students learn some geographical features of the Northwest. 

In the end for fun, the students had to fight a dragon, in fact, no other than Trogdor the Burninator. 

Afterwards we watched the Trogdor cartoon, which was popular when I was in Middle School. They got a kick out of it, and it was fun to share something I enjoy with them. 

Dragon: by Homestarrunner.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90X5NJleYJQ

Bias- A President's day project

Today I started a week long unit in which students had to research a US President, and then explain why they were either the best President or the worst, by utilizing bias and other campaign techniques. (It is a Presidential election year, the kids are PSYCHED about the Trump). March madness was coming up too, so we created a "Bracket" style board to vote their presidents.

Day 1: Research and Create!

Students chose a President, researched about them, wrote a short summary of their achievements, and then drew a picture to compel their peers to vote them the worst or best president ever. This actually took about 3 hour long periods, if I'm being honest.

Day 2:  Vote on sources!

I pitted the presidents against one another and students went around and voted for who they thought was most successful in construing their message. First round was based on what we should always consider first: sources used.

The first round was based on the legitimacy of the sources used. If students didn't include a source, typically they lost.

Day 3:  Vote on visuals!

Students voted on the most successful visuals. Did the author emphasize certain words? Is it in pen or pencil? Does the image they drew look legitimate?

Day 4: Vote on an argument.

Now that we had the president's narrowed down, it was time for some reading. We now voted on who's summary was the most compelling.

Day 5: Lobbying

Students served as lobbyists for another students piece. Students learned that the louder and more excited you are, you could be straight lying, and people would vote for you. Because students find Donald Trump so compelling we compared this event to his campaign.

Day 6: Finals

Students vote on overall aspects. Whoever wins gets a prize!


Great project, a lot of fun. The kids dug it.

History Book Pages- A Chapter Review Alternative Assessment to Testing

As a progressive, multi-age teacher in middle school, one of the things I have struggled with is figuring out how to assess, while still supporting my tests-are-bad-for-kids philosophy. The solution I found of course lies within the project based realm of my dreams. That is I had students create their own history books.

History books for K-12 are incredibly weak, and often leave out or edit critical info to appease the masses. We all know the story of Columbus being perceived as a benevolent explorer, but in reality was an incredibly brutal, seditious man. Much like society has heroified Columbus, it has also heroified nearly every other white man in history, which means that history of any other caliber is left to the side. This also means primary sources are virtually eliminated.

I had the kids create their own mini history books by providing them with multiple sources and asking them to acknowledge bias in writing, and pick apart what they truly felt was significant in the writing.

They did this, collected sources and rewrote important points in their own words, thus creating an annotated timeline of each important point in history.

It worked really well, boosted writing, studying and researching skills and created a project that they could truly see their progress in writing.

Overall an excellent alternative to the memorization that I remember from 7th grade.