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Lesson Plans

School Name

Blach Intermediate School Los Altos, California

Teacher Name

Mary Wasik and 8th Grade Social Studies Teachers

Grade

8th Grade

Unit Name

Lesson Name

Exploring With The Anza 1775-76

Focus of the Lesson

Using Web de Anza (http:anza.uoregon.edu) resources in small groups, students will engage in studying primary sources of the Anza Colonizing expedition. Students will summarize salient Expedition details from selected dairy days and create a corresponding visualize representation of those selected days. Each small group resulting work will be part of larger timeline of the overall Anza Colonizing Expedition.

Objectives

1. Given access to primary source documents of the Juan Bautista de Anza Colonizing Expedition of 1775-76, students will discover characteristics of the land, indigenous people, and Anza Expedition activities to create an understandable history of this event in Western North America.

2. Students will work cooperatively in small groups to pursue historical inquiry in order to; write their own understanding of select days diary entries, produce a visualization to accompany their diary summary of select Expedition days, participate in a school wide Anza time line produced by entire 8th grade (60 small groups) as a community event.

3. Students will produce written and visual work acceptable for a timeline web site of the Anza Colonizing Expedition.

Projected Time Needed

One Week

Materials and Technology Needed

Computers with Internet access

School Library with print reference sources

Poster paper and supplies

Use of Web de Anza

Web de Anza resources are the keystone of this lesson at http://anza.uoregon.edu.

Use of Scholars-Consultants

Teacher/Student Activities

Note: This is a schoowide activity called "Web de Anza Project" where all Social Studies classes in the 8th grade participated.

1. Each Social Studies class is given select dates for small groups to historically research concerning the Juan Bautistia de Anza Colonizing Expedition. (Idea to disperse the selected dates among classrooms so that the overall October to June history of the expedition is apparent to students upon completion of student research and presentation.)

2. Each classroom small group is expected to become "historical experts" on a brief period of Expedition time (3-5 days). Each small group should study, using both Anza and Font primary source diaries, to include research on:

• Where was the expedition on select days?
• Were these selected days of travel, days of rest, or both?
• What seemed to be the main Expedition concern on selected days?
• Did anything extraordinary happen on selected days?

3. Each group is to make an artistic visual in terms of a poster that highlights an event or symbolizes the days of the Expedition which a small group researched.

• Posters can be of whatever medium the group chooses- ink, pencil, water color, chalk.
• Posters should clearly have Expedition dates on them at top of paper and be well prepared for community and web page display.

4. Posters and small group narrative web page summaries (printed out) will be posted in chronological sequence in school multipurpose room for student and community review of the history of the Anza Colonizing Expedition, 1775-76.

5. A school web site can be created as a calendar table grid. A design could include a welcome page with corresponding links in a table to small group research of select days of individual narrative summaries and artistic visual based on primary sources of the Anza Colonizing Expedition.

Evaluation of Student Learning

Evaluation of Lesson

1. Students, in small groups, produced 60 case studies of historical inquiry of the Anza Colonizing Expedition. Individual group projects were displayed in the school Multipurpose room for a community Holiday Fair event. Displayed student projects reflected every month of the Expedition from October 1775 to June 1776 and did show an understandable history for an Eight grade student.

2. A school web site called "Welcome to Blach's School's Interpretation of the Anza Expedition into California" was created by students and teachers at http://www.blach.losaltos.k12.ca.us/cclub/AnzaWeb/Welcome.html .

Content Standards (NCSS Middle School Level)

Time, Continuity, and Change 2.b, c

Other

Home Page

Note: Web de Anza resources contain an extensive collection of primary and secondary historical sources on the Spanish Colonial era of Juan Bautistia de Anza in North America, 1750-1800. We encourage you to visit the main Web de Anza site at http://anza.uoregon.edu and explore.