Jameka K. Sayles
I am a Social Studies teacher at the Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School in New Haven. My teaching assignment this year included approximately 100 fifth and sixth grade students. My subject area is Social Studies with a focus on American History.
Our school is comprised of students from the New Haven Area as well as students from several other districts. My school is very diverse. From the staff to the students, my school is like a microcosm of America. We have people from various ethic backgrounds, religions, and races. Because it is an Arts school, we also have students who are richly gifted in music, dance, drama, visual art, etc. This beautiful patchwork was very obviously displayed in my homeroom class this year. There were 20 students altogether, 12 boys and 8 girls. I had four Hispanic students, 13 African American, 1 Turkish, 1 Tibetan, and 1of Jamaican descent.
My desire to write this curriculum unit stems from three major areas. The first is my genuine love of History. I love to investigate things of the past. I wise man once said, "If you don't where you come from you will never know where you are going." My second reason is based on the curriculum standards that have been outlined by New Haven Public Schools. Students will:
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- Gather historical data from multiple primary and secondary resources
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- Formulate questions and hypotheses from multiple perspectives using multiple sources.
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The final area is based upon the natural curiosity of my students. Throughout the school year, I noticed how intrigued the students were to learn about children of the past. The students were usually able to relate to the lives of the children of the past by comparing to their lives today.
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My curriculum unit targets the fifth grade students that I teach. As fifth graders there are several adjustments they have to make upon entering school in August. Students must learn to adjust to changing classes, opening lockers, Arts classes, and learning from several different teachers throughout the course of the day. Along with these environmental adjustments, students also have educational adjustments to make. Since there is such a big focus on Reading and Mathematics in the primary grades, students have limited background knowledge in History.
Students will be studying this unit shortly after a unit on the Mayflower. Students will have that background information to build upon as they explore the material of this unit. My unit is a hands-on, interdisciplinary unit. I think that the children will be very excited to know how children in this area lived in colonial times. In previous units where I incorporated the life of children of that time period, students were amazed at the similarities and well as the differences.
