Social Studies: Learning About our History

We have brought our social studies units to a close by learning about some history.  We began the unit by discussing several old pictures of Lanesboro.  The class loved these pictures, and it was fun to look at how Lanesboro has changed over the years.  We were able to pick out the similarities, but we also had many questions about different parts of the town.  Here is an example of a picture we discussed below.



 This lead us to put some events from the history of Lanesboro in chronological order using a timeline.  The students then brought in and shared their own timelines from their lives.  It was fun to see their pictures and learn more about each other!

We also learned about the history of the Dakota Native Americans who lived in Minnesota.  This lead to great discussions about how we should treat people fairly and equally.  The students made some Native American art work.

Our final topic was about the history of the United States originating with the 13 colonies and their break away from King George the III of Britain. We learned that we elect people to our government through a democratic process of voting.  We practiced this in our classroom through a class election. The students chose a classroom job that they wanted to "run" for.  Then we had an official vote with each student filling out a private ballot. After the votes were counted, we had our elected officials carry out that classroom job for this past week.