Comparing Native American Tribes

Subject: Social Studies

Grades: 1-6

Standards - United States History

• Understands the characteristics of societies in the Americas that increasingly interacted after 1450
   

Standards - Grade K-4 History

• Understands selected attributes and historical developments of societies in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe
• Knows the cultural similarities and differences in clothes, homes, food, communication, technology, and cultural traditions between families now and in the past

  Teacher Instructions
 

In this activity students compare similarities and differences of two Native American tribes or groups. In addition to learning more about Native American history and culture through the research process, students will also be challenged to categorize and analyze the information. In this way, students will be engaged in higher order thinking and will also be more likely to retain what they learn. For students in grades 1-2, it may be more appropriate for teachers to lead the activity with the entire class; this will give students a chance to add ideas to the graphic organizer without having the responsibility of completing the exercise on their own.
 

This lesson requires the Kidspiration® software application published by Inspiration® Software, Inc.; a 30-day trial can be accessed by visiting www.inspiration.com/Freetrial
 

1. Introduce the lesson by asking the students to brainstorm what they know about Native Americans. Then ask if all Native Americans were basically the same, or if there were distinct tribes with distinct cultures. Explain that there were many different tribes, each with their own rich culture; the students will be researching two tribes to look for similarities and differences between them. They will be able to choose three categories of information to compare, such as: food, clothing, tools, art, homes, religion, and the roles of men and women.
2. Students will research two different tribes with the references available. One good web site for elementary students is Native American Facts for Kids: www.native-languages.org/kids.htm. It is produced by a nonprofit organization interested in promoting Native languages, but the site also contains a wealth of other information on all major tribes.
3. Students will fill in the names of the tribes they choose in the title box of the Kidspiration template (comparing tribes-student.kia) and the three categories of information in the other yellow boxes provided. Then they will determine similarities and differences to complete the organizer.

4. After completing the organizer, students can also add images from the Symbol Libraries to illustrate their similarities and differences, or copy and paste additional images from the Internet.
5. Close with a discussion about the exercise. What interesting similarities and differences did they discover? Were there more similarities or differences between the tribes? Are there factors that help to account for these similarities and differences, such as environmental conditions? For example, did the climate and types of food available influence the development of the distinct cultures?
    

Assessment

• Students can be assessed on completing the graphic organizer successfully. Completed projects can be printed and turned in or saved to a common folder on the school network.
• Students can also be assessed on the details added in Writing View and/or the completed paper if assigned (see Lesson Adaptations, below).

Lesson Adaptations

• Ideally students will identify three similarities and differences for each category they choose, but less may also be acceptable. Students should also be encouraged to add more boxes if they can identify more than three similarities or differences for each category.
• Teachers in grades one and two may want to do this exercise as a whole-group activity to begin teaching concepts such as how Native American tribes had distinct cultures and about similarities and differences in general, without overwhelming the students with the responsibility of completing the entire organizer on their own. Teachers may want to begin this process by reading a book about Native American tribes to the class, or having students first attempt a reading on their own.
• Students can go to Writing View to add additional details. From Writing View they can also click the Transfer Tool to move the document to the word processor to complete a paper on the similarities and differences between the two tribes.
• The activity could be modified to make it easier or more challenging. For example, one category could be added or removed. To save the modified template, go to the Utility menu>Template Wizard, and then follow the steps.
• This template can be used to compare any two things, not just Native American tribes.
• There are other comparison templates built into Kidspiration that can be utilized. On the Starter screen, see Comparison under More Activities and Cultural Comparison under Social Studies that uses a Venn diagram. These are especially good for younger students.