West Day 4: March 16th

Today we used a reverse concept attainment to learn about why people migrated to the west and how the tales of success compared to the harsher reality. The students seemed very excited to be looking at primary sources in history. On the preassessments, only a number of students could name reasons for going to the west and they mainly surrounded around gold so we decided to talk about the reasons and also spend some time on the gold rush because of high interest. Using images also made it really easy to get a range of abilty students involved. If anything they could answer the question 'what do you see'. The students did a very good job figuring out reasons for going west from the images. They also did a good job at identifying reasons why people left the east from the images. It felt like a large and open discussion rather than a lecture of material. The students were very involved. They were also very excited about the gold rush and I think this concept appealed to every student.
After listing all the reasons, I had them make an advertisement discussing one of the reasons for moving west. All but one student participated in this. One student just would not write antyhing. He kept saying he didn't understand and didn't know which idea to pick. I repeatedly told him the directions and then assigned him the easy and fun topic of gold. He wrote half a sentence. I was quite disappointed because I was providing as much support as I could without neglecting the rest of the students. The other advertisements were fabulous and I was very impressed with everyone's creativity and understanding of the allure of the west.
I finished with five minutes left and I passed out the study guide for the test and allowed them to finish the posters. I was a little unclear of what I wanted them to do with the extra time and I wish I had went over the study guide in more detail with the students so that they would be able to navigate it easily and have a better understanding of what was going to be on the test on Monday.