CultureGrams to State Banners

Currently, my students and I are involved in a trimester-long unit (Storyline) about presidential elections.  Storyline can be likened to a simulation set within a story . . . think: characters, setting, incidents, etc. The students in our Storyline are pretending to be campaign workers for a presidential candidate who happen to be from all over the U.S. 

The events in Storyline are not only moved along by incidents, but are driven by our state standards. In the case of these state banners, they are a representation of some of what we learned in social studies (geography, U.S. states, regions of U.S., economics of states).  I also wanted to expose the kids to a very simple, scaffolded research project and teach them how to use the CultureGrams database mentioned in my last post. It was also an opportunity to create a visual representation of their ( Storyline character's) home state.

I gave them a data collection sheet shown below, gave them some time in class to research the first day, and then the rest of the research was to be done at home. (I gave them printed copies of the CultureGrams if they didn't have access to the Internet at home.).

A few days later i modeled for them how to create their banner . . . from making simple line drawings of the objects in the squares; revising, editing and positioning captions to creating block letters for their headings.

The majority of the work on this project was done at home because I wanted this activity to tie some loose ends together in more rigorous curriculum they'd already learned . . . plus, we didn't have a lot of time in class before Thanksgiving break.  I was really tickled with the results!  Everyone was so successful and every banner was really well done . . . they were all so proud of their creations.   I believe that they were highly motivated because the activity was pretty scaffolded, the simple line drawings were fairly easy to do, and the majority of the kids in my class LOVE to do projects where they can create and show their artistic side. It's so fun when kids feel good about the process and the product!