Technology Lesson Plan

Nancy Sczesnak – Teachers on Sabbatical Program

Lesson: Using Powerpoint to create a Social Studies presentation

Objective: Students will become proficient at using research they’ve done on Native Americans in New York State to create a Powerpoint presentation.

Grades: Third – Sixth graders should be able to use this lesson.

Materials: Laptop cart, internet research on Native Americans in New York State, Smartboard

Procedure:

  1. Students will use the internet and various search engines to compile information on a previously chosen Indian tribe that resided in New York State.
  2. Using the Smartboard to demonstrate the steps involved in creating a powerpoint presentation, the teacher will take students through the use of the powerpoint program to create a minimum of 6 slides that will show various aspects of a particular Indian tribe.
  3. The slides will break down in the following way:

Slide 1 – The name of the tribe and where they lived in New York State

Slide 2 – Describe the type of housing the tribe lived in and why that was used by the particular tribe.

Slide 3 – Describe the roles of men, women and children in the tribe.

Slide 4 – Describe the types of food the tribe would eat and how that food was procured by the tribe.

Slide 5 – Describe the hierarchical structure of the tribe. Was there a chief? What form of government did the tribe have?

Slide 6 – Discuss the state of the tribe today. Are they still in existence? Where are they living today? What is the lifestyle of the tribe like today as compared to the past?

  1. Each powerpoint presentation will show competence in the following areas:
  1. Creating slides
  2. Using transitions from one slide to another
  3. Incorporating relevant pictures, downloaded from the internet, into the presentation
  4. The use of sounds in the presentation

Evaluating projects: Students will be evaluated on the completeness of the information included in the presentation and how well the aspects of using powerpoint were executed.

Follow-up: Students will present their powerpoints to the class. Other classmates will take notes on each presentation and choose a category from the presentations to write a compare and contrast essay on an aspect of Indian life. For example, a student may choose the roles of men, women and children to study from the powerpoints. The student will then compare and contrast the information on this topic from each powerpoint to write an essay.