State Government

We've been spending some time lately focusing on our state government, and the roles of each of the different branches.

We started off by doing a Chalk Talk-an idea I got from Making Thinking Visible (a great read-I'm about halfway through!).

I wrote a question on 4 pieces of chart paper, and had the students write down what they thought. We rotated around the papers, and I asked them to read what previous friends had written before they wrote what they thought-it might trigger something else!

Then, we put them up on the board to discuss them.

There were some very interesting things that they thought off! (Mostly wrong-but still interesting!)

We did a mini-lesson on the branches-using a tree to help with our thinking!

The next day, we did a concept sort.

I typed of the roles and responsibilities of each branch, and had them work in groups to decide where each one went.

Their conversations and reasoning was so interesting to lesson too...as well as how different groups worked together!

We reviewed our tree again, and sorted our any misconceptions they had.

Then, we hit up our branches of government foldable-where we went more into detail about each branch.

For their mini-assessment, I had them create their own tree in their notebooks. I did type out labels for them, (although I forgot some and they had to write stuff in), and I allowed them to use their notebooks.

To wrap everything up, we ended with a mini version of the chalk talk and concept sort.

Next up-state symbols!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn