Integrated Prehistory Project! 3rd and 4th graders in action!

Prehistory is a good option to create an integrated project, such as social science, English and Spanish languages, art and ICT. This is why some teachers planned together a great project to create a real class environment, to motivate our students and to give them an opportunity to learn with a smile in their faces. This time our 3rd and 4rd graders had to work on these objectives:

• To situate the prehistoric period on the timeline.
• To learn and to use the vocabulary about this topic.
• To desmostrate their understanding of the prehistoric life through art, creative reading and writing and our podcast for San Miguel Kids Radio.

The key questions were: 

1. When did the Prehistoric period begin? When did this period end?
2. What was it like to live in prehistoric times?
3. Who were the first settlers in Spain?
4. What do we mean when we say that people were hunters or gatherers?
5. When and why did people start to live in caves?
6. When did people start to farm? Were they nomads or sedentary?
7. What did early humans make their tools with?
8. Why did early people make cave paintings?
9. What were the differences between the Palaeolithic, the Neolithic and the Metal Ages?

Art lesson: Kids created drafts of drawings about the Prehistory, such as animals, the hunt, tools and other situations that brought to their minds Prehistory. For this task, they could use computers in the classroom and they played with some links in Social Science.

After the drafts, they prepared paints, brushes and paper and they started to create the wonderful posters for our BIG CAVE in the corridor of the school.

Our wall panel was the best place to display a presentation about Prehistory with some their drafts about the prehistoric drawings. Have a look to this roof! Isn't is awesome?

Social Science lesson: Some activities that helped to my 3rd graders' kids to learn better in a funny way meanwhile reading and writing were these two examples. By pairs, they had to discuss how to organize the strips of paper to order the different periods during Prehistory. 

The second activity was more difficult, we offered them some key information about the periods of  Prehistory and had to complete their own chart.

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Mrs. Talero's students improved their research about reading and writing about Prehistory with this flipbook. This final product had different sections and the idea was that the kids tried to use an easy English through short sentences and clear vocabulary. 

ICT lesson: They explored Prehistory with a bank of  interesting  links.

Spanish lesson: The idea was that children wrote some texts about how could be a day if they were living in the prehistoric times. Do you want to see more! Let's go ahead! After that, they recorded a podcast for San Miguel Kids Radio.