Literacy Project

The overview of this unit consists of four topics.  The students will learn about the land, History -1500's to the present, people & economy and the environment of Connecticut.  The assessments will be quizzes, class participation and the end of the unit research project.  The project will be to research a Native American tribe form Connecticut using the cooperative learning model.  Students will break up into groups and research a particular Native American tribe that lived in the state of Connecticut.  As a group, they have to give a written summary of their research, create a bulletin board and give an oral presentation using the collaborative tool Movie Maker.    They need to present and record their presentation, and edit their work using the movie maker.    Windows Movie Maker is a presentation software program that comes already installed (in most cases) on all Windows computers. Windows Movie Maker is a fun and easy to use video editing program that allows you to make home movies, photo albums and business presentations.  It is a great starter tool to learn the basics of video editing.  It is also widely used in schools as a tool for class projects and allows students and teachers to create wonderful graduation presentations of all the goings-on that took place in the school year.  Still pictures, other video clips, sounds, music and narration can all be added to a Windows Movie Maker project.   I wish I started to use this tool earlier in the year because it wasn't enough time to create a better product, but the kids had fun.