Blog #3


1. Compelling Question: How did the peoples' cultures influence them to take the Oregon Trail?


Supporting Questions:

1. What were the cultures of the people who traveled the Oregon Trail?

2.Why did people choose to take the Oregon Trail?

3.What were the people's goals for traveling the Oregon Trail and how did their culture reflect their goals? 


Compelling question answer: Their culture centered around American ideals, such as individuality, family, hard work, and determination. Most of them were pioneers who wanted to create a better life for themselves. Many people also chose to take the trail to escape from their economic problems. Although the journey was long, 2,000 miles, and 20,000 people died, the beliefs and hopes of these people enabled them to take a risk.

2.We chose this compelling question because it is not too broad but also gives lead way for students thinking and their answers so their answers wont all the be the same. We spent a lot of time trying to come up with a question that would make our students excited and engaged but still challenging enough that they would have to put in a decent amount of work to come up with the answer. Our supporting questions all help answer the compelling question in someway, they all help the students learn about the Oregon Trail while focusing on the people's cultures. Our answer to our compelling question helps answer all of the supporting questions while not being too broad or short on the answer. We belive that with our compelling questions and our supporting questions our students will put in quite a bit of time and effort and learn a lot before they are able to successfully complete that compelling question, we did try and make the supporting questions interesting to the students as well witout giving away too much of the answer to the compelling question so that they do have a to dig a little bit deeper. We talked about what cultures of people took the Oregon trail, why most of them chose to take the trail and then some of their cultural and personal beliefs. 

Comments

  1. maryfalaschiOctober 17, 2020 at 8:15 PM


    Celynne,
    I liked how you really focused on the standard of culture and really made it the key element. Also, I liked how you answered your compelling questions I thought it was done very well, by the end I feel I would have a good understanding of the people that went on the Oregon Trail. When describing the thought process behind the question it was great how you considered what students might say and that there are various answers to the question. Do you think you would might mention the culture of Oregon and how what their lives were like there? Also, what do you think you would use for primary sources for your question?

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    Replies
    1. Celynne PopeNovember 21, 2020 at 11:04 AM

      Hey Mary, thank you for your response! I do think that I would mention the culture of Oregon and talk about their lives there to try and give my students more background knowledge about Oregon and help them understand a little better. Great point to bring up!

      Delete
  2. Briana HortonOctober 17, 2020 at 8:57 PM

    Celynne,
    Your overall goal seems to be good for the compelling question that you chose. I know that it's certainly hard to think about how broad and how short to keep answers and questions with this idea. I am a little curious what your grade band is however since you don't mention it. Maybe talk some about how your social studies theme contributes to your ideas. What does it look like for children at this age to talk about this idea and how does it benefit them to talk about it? I think you might be able to tie in some ideas about how students would be interested in this topic or how it relates to them. Overall, you had a good idea. It's just would be interesting to hear about how you would implement this in the classroom as well or what ideas you had that would make it more interesting to your audience (students). Good post, thanks!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Celynne PopeNovember 21, 2020 at 11:08 AM

      Hi Briana,
      I think that it would be a great idea to try and tie in some ideas of how students would be interested in this topic and try and relate it to something that they are interested in or something that can relate to their personal life. Thank you for the ideas!

      Delete
  3. Joseph ScarboroughOctober 18, 2020 at 12:15 AM

    Hi Celynne,
    I think your compelling questions does a good job at setting up the initial inquiry of the lesson. It doesn’t have a clear and simple answer so it will require students to think about the topic more critically. The supporting questions also do a good job at helping build towards understanding the compelling question. They don’t give too little or too much toward the compelling question but instead help to set up the answer to the compelling question between all of them. The answers to your compelling question will work well for making student work through the inquiry process in order to find the answer.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Celynne PopeNovember 21, 2020 at 11:10 AM

      Hi thank you so much for your feedback!
      I did try and make sure that my compelling and supporting questions still took some time and thought from my students rather than just giving away the answer or having it be too hard. I am glad that you saw my vision for this!

      Delete
  4. Ashley Cayton BlogOctober 18, 2020 at 5:54 PM

    Great blog! This is a great compelling question and the supporting questions are a great lead into answering the question. You did great at creating a question that will lead into students inquiry which is great!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Celynne PopeNovember 21, 2020 at 11:11 AM

      Ashley,
      Thank you so much for your response to my blog! I tried to do a good job of coming up with questions that were not too hard or too easy for my students.

      Delete

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