10-11+MAS+Chris+Thompson

Chris Thompson 8th Grade Social Studies Spring 2011

Using Excel in Social Studies

Unit Plan

Many students in my eighth grade social studies classes had limited experience with using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and trouble with correctly interpreting data on graphs. I designed this lesson to provide students with opportunities to practice using content knowledge and unfamilar technology to create charts and graphs. After studying World War II and its effects around the world, particularly its devastation to the populations of participating countries, students were required to use Microsoft Excel to enter World War II death statistics into a spreadsheet and create line and bar graphs. I created a series of videos to serve as a tutorial for students to understand basic operation of the program as well as useful features that save time such as Auto Sum. Students were responsible for entering data, creating and formatting graphs, opening separate workbook pages, renaming them, and moving graphs to their appropriate workbook pages.

Rather than use worksheets to give instructions like my last audio tour project, I relied on the videos I made to serve as the primary means of delivering the instructions for creating the charts and graphs. Below are the videos which can also be found on this http://masgrade8history.wikispaces.com/World+War+II+Statistics wiki page. Student samples can be found on this http://masgrade8history.wikispaces.com/Room+312+World+War+II+Death+Statistics wiki page. media type="youtube" key="8CaFH-yUrWo" height="362" width="461"media type="youtube" key="tyPuPoP6FFI" height="366" width="475"

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media type="youtube" key="BYWY76qsQ6A" height="369" width="458" =_= Students samples Low

Middle High Rubric =Fall 2011= =Understanding Primary Sources Through Audio Tours=

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 * Eighth graders at the Milwaukee Academy of Science examined primary source illustrations and created audio tours designed to give the public insight into late nineteenth and early twentieth century American life. In the first lesson of the unit, students were introduced to primary sources and their role in helping historians piece together the events of the past. Students were taught how to follow a process of primary source analysis. They began by listing concrete descriptions about the primary sources and progressed to making observations about the time period of the sources. The information gathering stage was succeeded by the creating of scripts, rehearsal, and recording of audio tours.**======

Web 2.0 tools: Audacity
Please visit the 8th grade MAS wiki to hear student audio tours.

Tours covered the following artifacts: The Statue of Liberty Coal Breaker Boys The Gramophone Womens' Suffrage Ford's Assembly Line Wright Brother's flying machine

The Library of Congress website provided primary source illustration sets. Primary source sets can be viewed [|here]

Unit Plan

Worksheets



Rubric

High, medium, and low examples of student audio tours.

High Audio tour checklist with artifact analysis sheet, drafting,and final script. Primary Source: Illustration of coal breaker boys

Audio Tour media type="file" key="carolyn, briana h audio tour.mp3" width="397" height="90"

Medium Audio tour checklist with artifact analysis sheet, drafting, and final script. Primary Source: The Statue of Liberty

Audio Tour media type="file" key="tim audio tour.mp3" width="393" height="86"

Low Audio tour checklist with artifact analysis sheet, drafting, and final script. Audio tour was not recorded. Primary Source: The Statue of Liberty