Interdisciplinary Research Project:  Reading, Writing, Research, and Social Studies

For this project, students spent a week reading all about Michigan's Native Americans.  After a class discussion of previous reading, students decided on the subtopics to research.  The class decided on:  language, hunting, food, transportation, housing, and tools.  Students then began reading information, sifting and sorting important information about each subtopic.  They wrote notes and added this information to class posters.  After about a week, students were placed into groups according to interest.  They spent an additional few days researching one particular topic, working as a group to look for specific information to fill out their poster.  They used the information gathered to create a group paragraph about their topic.  On the last day of the unit, students jigsawed out into groups, with one person of each specialty in each group.  They spend a few minutes teaching others by sharing their poster and reading their paragraph.