Social Studies Explorers Lesson Plan- Grade 5
Erin Chisholm and Patty Giannone
Objectives: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the sequence of events of explorers and the causes and effects of their discoveries.
Goals: Students will write a paragraph describing a specific portion of an explorer’s life with fewer than 4 grammatical and/or informational errors total.
Students will create a map while working in a group with peers, displaying no more than one inaccurate piece of information.
Students will present an artifact that relates to the explorer’s life and explain why it is pertinent to that explorer.
Massachusetts Frameworks Standard: 5.3 Explain why trade routes to Asia had been closed in the 15th century and trace the voyages of explorers. Describe what each explorer sought when he began his journey, what he found, and how his discoveries changed the image of the world, especially the maps used by the explorers.
Vocabulary:
Navigation Cartographer
Encounter Caravel
Astrolabe Expedition
Chronomoter Empire
Sextant Renaissance
Monarch Compass
Profit City-state
Prerequisites:
Students must have background knowledge of the explorers, their routes, their cause for exploration, the results as well as the mentioned vocabulary.
Procedure:
Students will be assigned a group by the teacher. Within the group, they will choose one explorer that they will research together. (Columbus, Polo, Vespucci, de Soto, Caboto, Leon) Each person will choose which aspect they will research. (Early life, Getting ready, The journey, The discovery)
Day 1:
They will be given organizers, textbooks, picture books and computers with internet access to research their explorer. During the school day, they will gather all required information. At home, they will create their rough draft of the paragraph to be edited the next day.
Day 2:
Students will edit their paragraphs with partners and complete their final drafts. Within their groups, they will create a map outlining their explorer’s journey, indicating the following:
where their expedition began and headed to
labeling the countries and cities the explorer visited
labeling any continents that are drawn on the map
labeling the oceans
arrows indicating explorer’s direction
The map must also be colored in and contain a map key.
Day 3:
Students will each bring in one artifact that relates to their explorer. As a group, they will present their paragraphs, maps and artifacts to teach to their classmates.
While groups are presenting, the other students will have a note-taking sheet (attached) to record important notes about the explorers as well as a scoring rubric to rate the groups on the information that was presented to them.
