Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Reflection
For my Native American project, I chose to write a Social Studies unit for a middle
school sheltered English ESL classroom, using content-based instruction principals. In content-
based instruction, the subject-area content and the language practice are integrated, so language
learners both receive the language support necessary to understand the concepts and the direct
language instruction necessary to improve their fluency (Center for Advanced Research on
Language Acquisition, 2009). The irony of combining English language instruction and Native
American history is not lost on me, but when preparing ESL materials, it cannot really be
avoided.
I focused on the Hopewell cultural exchange for several reasons. Firstly, in American
history classes, Native peoples are often discussed primarily in the context of their interactions
with European explorers and settlers (Journell, 2009), overlooking the fact that human history in
North America stretches back millennia before Europeans’ arrival on the continent, an example
of how curricula can be problematically eurocentric (Sadovnik, Cookson & Semel, 2006) even
when ostensibly addressing issues relevant to Native peoples. The artistry of the Hopewell
artifacts and the window they provide into day-to-day life in the region makes Hopewell an
civilization (Virtual First Ohioans, 2009; Ohio History Central, 2009), which provides a way of
countering this trend. Secondly, the ancestors of many modern Native American tribes
participated in Hopewellian cultural exchanges, so the study of the Hopewell period provides
important context for understanding the development and nature of these groups (Jochim, 2005).
Thirdly, I feel that Hopewell-related topics are particularly accessible for ELLs, as our
knowledge of Hopewellian practice comes primarily from the examination of artifacts and
monuments, not from written or orally transmitted information. Thus, students can approach this
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EdHD 5005 Minnesota Native project
11/30/09
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topic like anthropologists, observing and making inferences based upon their observations,
without being hindered much by language deficits. The presence of Hopewell-era mounds right
here in St. Paul (Woitas, 2009) also offers a concrete, tangible example and helps place the topic
One of the challenges of ESL teaching is providing ELLs with the legally required free,
material and activities in a way that is comprehensible for students with a limited understanding
of the language (ELLs and the Law, 2009), who also often have literacy deficits and lack
background knowledge of the content. In this unit, I chose to compensate for the students’
language deficits by constantly using visual images as an accompaniment to any text input or
output. I also kept students mostly in pairs or small groups, as non-fluent language students are
generally able to make greater language gains when working together (Ohta, 2000), and used a
good deal of repetition of the same concepts, information and words, as students may not grasp
ideas on the first pass, and multiple repetitions of new vocabulary are required for
internalization.
I see this unit as part of a year-long overarching American history curriculum, one of a
series of units that each provide a snapshot of life in a certain time and place. These units would
be arranged in chronological order, so this Hopewell unit would occur early in the year. Of
course, ESL program models vary greatly from district to district and school to school, as do the
expectations for curriculum and instruction, so it’s hard to say whether I’ll ever have a chance to
use this unit as written. However, the information I’ve gathered about life in the Hopewell
interaction sphere should prove useful in preparing American history lessons, which I will
certainly be required to do at some point, and I believe the activities and instructional methods I
chose to convey the content could be easily applied to related topics simply by changing the
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EdHD 5005 Minnesota Native project
11/30/09
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content goals and materials. Moreover, reading up on the pre-Columbian history of North
America has been extremely enlightening for me – I thought I knew a fair amount about the
topic, but I discovered that I had barely scratched the surface – so even if I never use this specific
unit, preparing this project has been a worthwhile experience for me as an educator.
Curricular Unit
Content objectives: Students will be able to describe the diet, social structure, housing and
religion of Hopewell-era Native Americans.
Language objectives: Students will write and speak declarative sentences in the simple past
tense to share information with their peers.
Learning strategy objectives: Students will use graphic organizers to enhance comprehension.
Students will set a purpose for reading.
Activities:
• Teacher uses a map and the classroom timeline to show what time period and region will
be examined. Labels a period from 200 BC to 500 AD with “Hopewell Tradition” on the
classroom timeline. Teacher explains basic concept: the people living in this region
traded products and shared ideas with one another, which helped them co-exist peacefully
and develop interesting art and architecture (Jochim, 2005).
• As a class, students fill in the “K” and “W” of a KWL chart regarding Native American
life of that era.
• In pairs or groups of three, students do a “jigsaw” of various Hopewell-related topics.
Each group does a paired reading of a brief, leveled illustrated text about one aspect of
Hopewell life. Aspects include foods (agriculture and hunting), social structures,
housing, and religion. Using pictures and words, each group puts salient information on
a poster, then shares their information with the class.
• As a class, students update the KWL chart, crossing out “Ks” they now know to be
incorrect, and filling in the “W” column.
• Students display their posters in the relevant section of the classroom timeline.
Assessment: Observing the students’ reading aloud during the jigsaw allows the teacher to
informally assess fluency; the level of accuracy and completeness of the posters allows the
teacher to monitor how much content information was understood.
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EdHD 5005 Minnesota Native project
11/30/09
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Lesson Two: Artifacts and What They Tell Us
Content objectives: Students will be able to make inferences about Hopewell-era life based upon
observation of artifacts.
Language objectives: Students will form simple compound sentences using the conjunction “so”
in order to make inferential statements. Students will use the word “probably” to differentiate
between inferential and factual statements.
Learning strategy objectives: Students will use visualization to understand and remember factual
information.
Key concepts/vocabulary: various animals (hawk, deer, bear, etc.), crafting materials (copper,
silver, stone, etc.), pottery, patterns, pipe, awl, blade, anthropologist, carve, jewelry, statue
Activities:
• Students update their vocabulary journals with new vocabulary from the previous lesson,
and with words that will be needed for today’s.
• In pairs or small groups, students receive a packet of cards with photographs of Hopewell
artifacts (Virtual First Ohioans, 2009; Ohio History Central, 2009) and cards with
written descriptions; they match the photos with the corresponding descriptions.
• Teacher explains that the Native Americans of this time and region did not have writing,
so anthropologists learn about them by studying artifacts. In pairs or small groups,
students make inferences about Hopewell-era life based on the artifacts (e.g.,”Many
statues of young men are bald, so men probably shaved their heads.”) Students share
their inferences with the class.
• Based on these inferences and on the previous day’s readings, students create small
illustrations showing a person dressed in the style of the time, in an appropriate setting,
doing an appropriate activity (e.g. a shaman, dressed in a bear costume, conducting a
funeral service at a mound.) Students label all components of their pictures.
• Students add their drawings and the artifact photos to the classroom timeline.
Assessment: performance on card-matching task and inference statements allows teacher to
informally assess language skills; the level of accuracy and completeness of the illustrations
allows the teacher to gauge comprehension of content information.
Content objectives: Students will be able to state the purpose of the St. Paul mounds, and
describe their structure, construction and current state.
Language objectives: Students will answer factual questions using sentences or sentence
fragments.
Learning strategy objectives: Students will work cooperatively to gather information more
quickly and accurately.
Key concepts/vocabulary: everything from lessons one and two, cremation, platform, clay, grave
goods
Activities:
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EdHD 5005 Minnesota Native project
11/30/09
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• In pairs or small groups, students conduct an information scavenger hunt, examining the
mounds and the informational plaques to answer content questions and find content
vocabulary in context.
• While doing this, students take digital photographs of the site.
Assessment: students receive a participation grade based on how actively and assiduously they
conduct themselves during the scavenger hunt, in accordance with pre-discussed behavioral and
academic expectations.
Content objectives: Students will be able to reiterate key facts from Lessons 1-3, describing the
lifestyle of Hopewell-era Native Americans.
Language objectives: Students will form descriptive sentences in the simple past and simple
present tense in order to convey factual information.
Learning strategy objectives: Students will restate and summarize previously learned
information to confirm comprehension and consolidate memories.
Key concepts/vocabulary: all vocabulary and concepts from previous lessons, draft
Activities:
• As a class, students go over the correct answers to the previous day’s scavenger hunt.
• Students receive printouts of the illustrations from lesson one’s readings, photos of
artifacts, and the pictures they took the previous day at the mounds. They use these
photos to draft “books” about the Hopewell era, arranging the pictures in a logical order,
then writing factual descriptions to go along with each picture. Students may use the
information posted on the timeline, their vocabulary journals, and their scavenger hunt
sheets for reference.
Assessment: examining the book drafts in progress allows the teacher to both informally gauge
writing fluency and grammatical accuracy, and to judge how well the students recall content
information.
Content objectives: Students will be able to reiterate key facts from Lessons 1-3, describing the
lifestyle of Hopewell-era Native Americans. Students will use resources to check the accuracy
of their statements about Hopewell-era Native Americans.
Language objectives: Students will polish their descriptive sentences by checking for adherence
to standard English conventions.
Learning strategy objectives: Students will use process writing to improve the clarity and
accuracy of their writing.
Key concepts/vocabulary: all vocabulary and concepts from previous lessons, revise, edit,
publish
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EdHD 5005 Minnesota Native project
11/30/09
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Activities:
• In pairs, students work together to revise and edit their books. Partners fact-check for
accuracy, suggest additional content that could be included, and make corrections to
grammar, punctuation, formatting and usage.
• Individually, students write final drafts of their books. If this step is not completed in
class, it may be done as homework.
• Upon completion, students “publish” their books by reading them to the class, then
displaying them in the room.
Assessment: Students receive a participation grade for the peer revision/editing activity. Their
books are graded according to two rubrics, which focus on the accuracy of the content
information and on students’ use of writing conventions that have already been explicitly taught
in class. Students receive two separate grades on the book, one for content, one for language
use.
Americans living along the Mississippi River and inland of the eastern coast of what is now the
United States. The archeological record shows that during a period from approximately 200 BC
to 500 AD, the various populations of this region used similar shamanistic religious practices,
burial traditions, social structures, and techniques for architecture, hunting, agriculture, and
pottery-making (Virtual First Ohioans, 2009; Ohio History Central, 2009). There is a lack of
evidence of interpersonal violence, but there is evidence of frequent trade and inter-regional
social/ritual gathering, suggesting that shared values and prosperity contributed to what some
None of the peoples who participated in the Hopewell interactions possessed writing
systems, but they left behind numerous artifacts that are extremely informative. The most
prominent evidence extant today is the numerous mounds they constructed across the region .
Many appear to be simple small hills, but others are built in the shapes of geometrical forms or
animals. A handful are aligned with lunar or solar activity, and many were used as graves (Ohio
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EdHD 5005 Minnesota Native project
11/30/09
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History Central, 2009). We have some excellent examples of Hopewellian mounds right here in
the Twin Cities, at Indian Mounds Park near downtown St. Paul (Woitas, 2009).
two reasons: first, several of the modern local Native tribes were influenced by the Hopewell
exchange, including the Dakota and the Ho-Chunk (U.S. Department of the Interior, 2009); and
second, Hopewellian artifacts and mounds offer clear, tangible evidence of the long, vibrant
Americans are often discussed primarily in the context of their interactions with European
I hope this brief overview has piqued your interest in this period of North American
history!
Works Cited
Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition. (2009). Content-Based Second
Language Instruction. CoBaLTT website, http://www.carla.umn.edu/cobaltt/CBI.html.
ELLs and the Law: Statutes, Precedents. (2009). Education Week Vol. 28, Issue 17 , 8-9.
Jochim, M., Dickens, R. J., Carr, C., & Case, D. T. (2005). Gathering Hopewell: Society, Ritual,
and Ritual Interaction. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
The Ohio Historical Society. (2009). The Hopewell Culture. Virtual First Ohioans website,
http://ohsweb.ohiohistory.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=279.
The Ohio Historical Society. (2009). The Hopewell Culture. Ohio History Central: An Online
Encyclopedia of Ohio History, http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?
rec=1283&nm=Hopewell-Culture.
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EdHD 5005 Minnesota Native project
11/30/09
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Sadovnik, A., Cookson, P., & Semel S. (2006). Exploring Education: An Introduction to the
Foundations of Education. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
U.S. Department of the Interior. (2009). Indian Mounds Park. National Park Service website,
http://www.nps.gov/miss/planyourvisit/indimoun.htm.