Inauguration-Week of January 21:

Our classroom activities involved concepts related to democracy and the inauguration.  I used this opportunity to expose the students to some concepts related to democracy through identifying key terms and vocabulary.  While students viewed and listened to the following activities through whole class projected images, they had clipboards in hand whereby they had to jot down any words that they believed to be power words.  Between each piece of media, they could share their words with the students around them.

• BrainPop Democracy: http://www.brainpop.com/socialstudies/worldhistory/democracy/
• Kid Who Was President Audio http://www.recordedbooks.com/school_flyers/school_audio/KidBecamePresident.mp3
• Obama's Inauguration Speech Snowcloud:  http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/snowcloud+obama+inauguration+speech/2907297

Students then used their power words in an Inauguration type Mad Libs: http://tinyurl.com/dkn5ha

After viewing the media and listing their words, I requested that they "draw" their words outs on a big sheet of construction paper in preparation to make Stove Pipe Hats: http://www.expertvillage.com/video/77255_party-hats-stovepipe.htm

Here is a slideshow of the students' stovepipe hats:

Teacher Reflection:

I was quite pleased with the results of this activity.  I liked the cross curricular focus of language arts, social studies, and the arts.  All students were engaged throughout the activities.  The only problem, which is typical, was those students who worked faster on the stove pipe hat.  As it was a step-by-step process with whole group instruction for each step, some students had to wait for others to finish.  I typically have additional activites for students who finish faster.