Melanie Southard

LESSON PLAN OUTLINE

A. TITLE/TYPE OF LESSON- Introduction to the Plains (Lakota) Native Americans-Social Studies

B. CONTEXT OF LESSON

This activity is an introductory lesson about the Lakota Indians of the Plains. This fits into the curriculum
sequence because the previous week, the students will have done a unit about the Eastern Woodlands
Indians. The pre-assessment that I implemented was a series of interviews with a few students during
lunch and recess. I asked students a series of questions such as “Do you know where the plains are? Have
you heard of the Lakota Indians? Do you know what the climate is like out in the plains? Do you know
how the Lakota traveled?” From these questions, I got a clear consensus that the class knew very little
about the Lakota. The most common answers were them retelling me what they already knew about the
Powhatan Indians. Because of the information I found from this pre-assessment, I knew this lesson was
going to be an introductory lesson covering the basic facts because it is a completely new topic for most
students. The goal of this lesson is to introduce this new group of people and have them start to make
connections about the similarities and differences of these groups and their cultures as they lived in the
past. I will complete this goal by integrating technology (prezi) into my lesson in order to make the
investigation of the Lakota Indians more memorable and interesting for them. In an article by Bafumo and
Noel, 2014, called Using Technology Supported Strategies to Improve Pre-Service Teacher Preparation,
they describe that, “technology accelerates knowledge acquisition and new knowledge accelerates societal
change. Teacher preparation faculty need to be acutely aware of changes and swiftly modify courses to
effectively prepare teachers for 21st century classrooms” (p. 41). I believe the incorporation of the smart
board in my lesson will engage the students more making this a more powerful social studies lesson.

C. LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Understand – what are the broad Know – what are the facts, rules, Do – what are the specific thinking
generalizations the students should specific data the students will gain behaviors students will be able to do
begin to develop? Explicitly connect through this lesson? (These “knows” through this lesson? (These will also
your understand objective to social must be assessed in your lesson.) be assessed in your lesson.)
understanding, civic efficacy, or
social transformation aims of the Students will know what area of the Students will locate where the Lakota
social studies. (These are typically US the Lakota lived. are on the US map.
difficult to assess in one lesson.)
Students will know what type of Students will describe the climate of
Students will understand the housing the Lakota had. the Lakota environment.
similarities and differences of
cultures of the Native American Students will know the type of Students will describe the differences
cultures as they lived in the past in transportation the Lakota used. between the Eastern Woodland
order to make connections of social Indians and the Plains Indians.
transformation and understanding
between the past and present.

D. ASSESSING LEARNING
To assess learning, I will have the students working on a graphic organizer such as a venn diagram to
compare what they know about the Eastern Woodlands Indians and what they have learned about the
Lakota Indians. This will assess their prior knowledge as well as show if they are starting to make
connections between the two different areas and groups of Native Americans. Within the graphic
organizer, I am looking for basic facts about each Native American groups including region
(Woodlands v. Great Plains), climate (4 distinct seasons v. very long hot summers and very cold long
winters), housing (longhouses v. teepees), occupation (hunters, fisherman, farmers v. hunters and little
farming), transportation (canoes and walking v. walking and horses), and other facts that they have
Melanie Southard

previously learned about the tribes. I am also looking for at least 1 similarity written in the middle to
assess if they are able to make a connection between the two tribes.

E. RELATED VIRGINIA STANDARDS OF LEARNING (and NATIONAL STANDARDS if required)

Standard 2.2: The student will compare the lives and contributions of three American Indian
cultures of the past and present, with emphasis on the Powhatan of the Eastern Woodlands,
the Lakota of the Plains, and the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest.

F. MATERIALS NEEDED
 Prezi: Ms. Southard
 Foldable map
 Yolen, J. & Moser, B. (1990). Sky Dogs. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
Publishers

G. PROCEDURE
(Include a DETAILED description of each step. Write what you will SAY and DO, What you
hope students will THINK and DO in response, and remember to plan for differentiation) Please
consider various formats for organizing your procedures section. .
 Engage -Introduction of the lesson
 Implementation of the lesson (specific procedures and directions for teacher and students)
 Closure
Engage : 7 Get students attention to start lesson. “Class, take a second to think about
minutes what you learned about last week in social studies. Can anyone tell me what
you were learning about?” Students will have a chance to respond. “Right,
you learned about the Eastern Woodlands Indians. What I want you to do is
think back to all of the different aspects of the Eastern woodlands Indians
culture you learned about. I am going to give you something called a venn
diagram” Draw venn diagram on the board and explain where to write al of
their facts about the Eastern Woodlands. “You are going to have about 5
minutes to independently write all of the facts you remember about how the
Eastern Woodland Indians lived, what they did as occupations, what they
lived in, their environment and any other facts you learned. Ready Go”.
Students will work independently filling out what they recall. “Alright I want
you to turn to someone at your table and talk about what you wrote down”
Give students the chance to discuss. “Can I have a few volunteers to share
about what you just talked about” Several students will share facts. “Wow
you all know so much about the Eastern Woodlands Indians. This week we
are going to learn about a different region of the United states and how
Native Americans in the past lived in that area.”
Implementation: “Today we are going to be learning about the Lakota Indians. Class say
30 minutes Lakota.” Students respond. “Let’s get out our foldable maps that you were
working on last week. You can see on our map, in the east of the United
States we have the Eastern Woodlands. The Lakota Indians were known as
the plains indians. Does anyone know where the plains are in the US?” See if
anyone can come up to the map and point to where it is. Show pictures of the
Plaines, parries, and rolling hills of the area using the smartboard in Prezi
format. “This is what the plains looks like. Can anyone describe what they
notice about these pictures”? Students make observations. “Turn to a partner
and talk about how is this different from the Eastern Woodlands?” Students
respond. “Let’s share about what you talked about.” Class discussion. “Great
observations and responses! Now, does anyone know what a climate is?”
Students respond. Show pictures of the climate. “Let’s investigate these
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pictures of the climate, take a minute to think about what these pictures tell
us about the environment” Students think and share observations. “In the
plains, the winters are very hard and very cold and in the summer it is very
hot. Turn to a partner and talk about how this is different from the climate of
the eastern woodlands.” Students work together. “Let’s share our thoughts.”
Class discussion. “Great thoughts! Let’s talk about housing of the Lakota
Indians. Does anyone know what this is?” Show picture and have students
respond. “I want you to investigate these pictures of the teepee. Let’s use the
picture to come up make some inferences about what it is made of and
different characteristics of the teepee”. Students think and share out their
observations of the teepee. “It is made from buffalo hide. They made very
long poles, usually about 15 feet and fixed it into a cone shape with the hide
draped around it. The women in the tribe were in charge of the teepees. It
was like they were queens of the castle. Teepees could be very big. Some
could fit up to 30 people in it. An important thing to remember about the
teepee was that it was easily movable. It could be taken down packed up and
moved wherever the Lakota traveled. Turn to a partner. How is a teepee
different from the houses of the Powhatan Indians?” Students discuss and
share out answers to the class. “Great. So the last thing I want to talk about
before we move on to a different activity is about the type of occupations the
Lakota had. Show picture of the Lakota hunting buffalo. “Can anyone help
me make some observations about the occupations of the Lakota?” Have
discussion about what the picture is telling us. “The Lakota were hunters.
They hunted the buffalo in the plains. This is a picture of a buffalo. We just
talked about what they used part of the buffalo was used for can anyone
remind me?” Students will respond that we used the buffalo hide for the
teepee. “Right. The Lakota indians hunted the buffalo and used it for many
different reasons. They used it for food, shelter, weapons, rope, utensils and
many more purposes. Turn and talk to someone in your group about how this
is similar or different from the Powhatan indians.” Students discuss and
share out. “We learned a lot about the Lakota Indians today. But there’s one
essential part of how they lived that we still have to explore. Let’s all move
to the rug so we can explore a story about the Lakota.” Move to rug.

Introduce the book Sky Dogs. “What is a sky dog?” Students respond with
what they think the answer is. Read through the book, stopping to ask
questions about what they think will happen next. Stop at page 5 and ask
“what do you think the shadows are and use specific details from the text to
support your thinking?” Stop on page 15 and ask “they came to the
conclusion that they were not dogs, how do they know?” Make connections
about the Lakota to the Powhatan. Have a discussion about why horses as a
use of transportation is an important part of the Lakota lifestyle. Talk about
how the buffalo moved around the plains due to weather and food and since
the buffalo was a huge part of the Lakota’s lifestyle, they had to move
around too. This is why teepees are able to be moved. Horses made it easier
to follow the buffalo when they moved around.

Closure: 15 “Ok now that we have discovered this important fact about the Lakota
minutes Indians, I want you all to go back to your seats and fill out the rest of your
venn diagram. The other side is where you are going to put what you have
learned about the Lakota and the center is where you are going to put any
facts that apply to both of the native American tribes that we have learned
about so far.” Students will work independently on the venn diagram. I will
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collect the venn diagram and make copies so I can use it for my assessment
but I will give them back their copies so they can use it to study from and as
a reference.

H. DIFFERENTIATION

I have tried to make this activity as accessible to all students as possible to begin with. The students in
my class who are ELLs, I will make sure I go around during the time when they are independently
doing their venn diagram and provide them with sentence starters if they are struggling. I also thought
it was important to incorporate partner thinking and sharing into the lesson so that those students who
are struggling to understand will have the support of other students in the classroom. For those
students who finish the Venn diagram early at the end I will have an extension activity for them.

I. WHAT COULD GO WRONG WITH THIS LESSON AND WHAT WILL YOU DO ABOUT IT?
Think about this! It may help you avoid an embarrassing situation.
Some students could have trouble conceptualizing the different aspects of the culture since it
might be unfamiliar. To combat this I will have a plethora of pictures for them to look at and explore
that will depict how life was for the Native Americans in the past.
Some students might also have trouble focusing or doing independent work. I will be walking
around the room, making eye contact with them and placing myself near them to try to redirect their
behavior. I will engage with them one on one as well in order to redirect their attention.

The purposes of this assignment are three-fold. 1) This assignment sheet is intended to serve as a theoretical guide
while planning your lesson. It asks you to consider the rationale for your decisions while planning. 2) It is intended to
help you consider the complexity of the content you plan to teach to your students. 3) Finally, it is intended to serve as
a reflective space for you to think about this experience and what it taught you about yourself as a social studies
educator. Cite sources in APA.

C. Social Studies Content and learning objectives: It can be very helpful to write this section BEFORE you teach.
Two to three paragraphs answering the following questions. What are the essential understandings or
significant (“big”) ideas developed in the lesson? What are the most important understandings about the
topic? This should be based on your own prior knowledge about the topic as well as what you needed to learn
about this topic. This section is similar to an essay you might write in a history or geography course, where
you demonstrate your understanding of the concepts and generalizations (including their definitions and
application). You will need to consult outside resources for this section
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Before teaching this lesson, I knew it was important to do research on the Lakota Indians since I had
some prior knowledge of the culture of the tribe but not enough to teach the lesson. Upon doing research, I
came to the conclusion that one of the most important differences between the Lakota and Powhatan Indians
were the acquisition and use of horses in the plains. The Lakota Indians were known as the Horse Nation and
according to the National Museum of the American Indian, “the bond between American Indians and the
Horse Nation has remained strong through the generations” (A Song For The Horse Nation, 2013, n.p.). The
symbol of the horse for the Lakota Indians were sacred to them as they appeared in their art, on their
teepees, and in their stories. Most importantly, quality of life significantly increased upon arrival of the horses
from the Spanish conquerors. “When the hunting tribes of the Great Plains moved camp, tipis and household
goods were usually carried by women, or by dogs pulling travois. The distance anyone could travel in a day
was limited. But with horses, tribes could move farther and faster. Because horses could haul larger loads,
travois increased in size, and so did tipis” (A Song for the Horse Nation, 2013, n.p.). This also in turn allowed
the Lakota to follow the buffalo easier and hunt the buffalo easier rather than on foot.
Because of the contribution of the horse on hunting, war, and transportation, and since the tribe the
class learned about previously, the Powhatan, did not have horses, I identified this topic as a bid idea for this
lesson. Horses to the Lakota Indians were of the upmost importance, “second in importance only to the
buffalo by giving tribes the ability to hunt widely over the semi-arid Great Plains, control greater territories,
and measure a man’s worth” (Baker, W., 2004, p. 24). Horses not only made life easier, they were said to have
been a gift from the God’s, meaning those who possessed them, had a high status within the community.
Through research, I concluded that the horse was not only important as a form of transportation for the
Lakota, the horse was a sacred symbol which was imperative to convey to through the lesson as a distinctive
factor of the Lakota tribes of the Great Plains.

D. Assessing Learning: What did your assessment tell you about students’ progress related to your objectives?
How would you use this information to plan future lessons?

From the assessment I learned that the students had a firm grasp on the information they learned
about the Powhatan the week before. Each student had several facts about region, housing, occupation and
transportation for the Powhatan side of the Venn diagram. For the Lakota Indian side of the diagram, there
were less facts that the students wrote down but that was expected since it was only the first day we had
talked about this group of Indians. The most common facts that the class as a whole seemed to pick up on
were that teepees were made out of buffalo skin, the Lakota hunted the buffalo, and they had horses to help
them move to hunt the buffalo. Overall, this makes me excited that they were able to pick up on my main
idea for the lesson. My challenge for them was to have at least one fact in the middle of the diagram that
applied to both the Lakota and the Powhatan. Most students either put they both walked places or they both
hunted. We did not talk about any similarities in class so I am pleasantly surprised that they were able to
make the connection between the two tribes!
One piece of information commonly missed on both sides of the Venn diagram is the climate of both
of the regions. Only one student wrote about the climate of the Great Plains but no one write about the
climate of the Eastern Woodlands. I would take this information from the assessment and use it to go back
and reteach what a climate is and then investigate the Eastern Woodlands climate and then also investigate
the Great Plains climate. I would also use this to plan future lessons about the Lakota in terms of extension
activities for investigating more uses of the buffalo and to explore the different facts about teepees such as
the drawings on the outside of them.

E. Standards of Learning: What content knowledge (facts, concepts, and generalizations) did the VSoL
emphasize? How did you interpret this as a teacher? Was there information that was not included in the
VSoL that you felt was important for students to explore? If so, how did you respond? Why did you respond
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that way? How did you interpretation help you align to the larger aims of social studies education (civic
efficacy, social understand, and/or social transformation?)

The Virginia SOL wants students to know the region, home, occupation and transportation of each of
the three American Indian culture. For a unit on the American Indians, I felt as if the SOLs was really a bare
bones model in terms of information that they requires the students to know. As a teacher, after research the
importance of the horses to the Lakota, I thought it was really important to explore how the horses arrived to
the Great Plains and how much of an advancement this was for their peoples. I also decided that since buffalo
were the most important factor in the Lakota Indians survival that we would spend time brainstorming the
use of the buffalo and what specifically happened during the climate changes. I learned from planning my
lesson that if you are only teaching your students what is outlined in the framework then you are doing them
an injustice. As teachers we need to be giving our students as much information as possible in order to give
them a well-rounded and comprehensive education. In my opinion, these lessons would be extremely boring
if we only taught what the SOL says. It is so vague that if you don’t do more research and find out more to tell
your students, it’s almost not even worth knowing.
My understanding of the SOL helped me align to the larger aims of social studies because part of the
framework is to explore how they have changed over time. This allows the students to compare how life is
different today than it was back then and it is important to know the contributions that the tribes have made
to America. When students examine life in history is allows them to develop a sense of appreciation and
respect for the cultures as well as understanding the transformations have occurred throughout time. I think
this standard made addressing the larger aims of social studies a little on the easier side since it is written into
the SOL as essential understandings and essential knowledge.

G. Procedures: Why did you choose the methods you chose for this lesson? Where they powerful (active,
meaningful, challenging, value-based, and/or integrative?) In hindsight, what would you change about the
lesson to make it more “powerful” for future students? Did your procedures align with your objectives and
assessments?

From the start of planning this lesson, I knew I wanted to integrate technology when we were
investigating the pictures of teach general topic. I wanted to do a smartboard interactive map where students
could come up and zoom in on a certain icon and we would explore that area but I am not yet able to figure
out how to make that work with the set of technology skills that I have. Instead, I settled for doing a Prezi to
still get a zooming in and out effect on the smartboard. I think having technology in your lessons is a great
asset because it grabs student’s attention. It makes the lesson fun and active! I also used some of the various
SCIM-C methods when investigating the pictures. When I showed a picture on the board I gave them a minute
to make observations about the picture and then we shared out as a class on what we noticed. We then
inferred the meanings behind the pictures and what they could be suggesting. Lastly, we also did a lot of
interpreting as I asked students to put themselves in the shows of the Lakota and asked them how they would
feel about moving around and packing up their home all of the time.
Overall, I think my lesson was active because I had students come up to the Prezi and point out
different aspects of the picture they noticed that told them about the Lakota lifestyle. It was also a
meaningful lesson because of the connections I asked them to make to their own life and how their life in
present day America differed from the Lakota’s in the past. Lastly, the lesson was integrative because I
incorporated literacy with a read aloud. I think it was very beneficial to do a read aloud at the end of the
lesson instead of at the beginning so that the students had some foundational knowledge to start to put
together the pieces of how important the horses were in the Lakota culture and how much they made life
easier in the Great Plains. In hindsight, I wish I was able to extend the lesson more and do more with the
concept of the horses to show them the importance but I do recognize that I only had about 50 minutes and
my students came into class knowing virtually nothing about the Lakota Indians. If this was an activity in the
Melanie Southard

middle of the week after they had established more foundational knowledge, I would have loved to do an arts
based inquiry with them to have a more hands on, active lesson. In the end, I think my procedures aligned
with my assessment because the assessment was a full circle experience of assessing prior knowledge of
another tribe to coming back at the end and recalling new knowledge and starting to make connections of
similarities between two of the three American tribes in the SOL.

H. How did this teaching experience make you think about yourself as a teacher?

Overall, compared to other lessons I have taught this semester, this lesson teaching experience went
really well. Because it went well, I think it gave me confidence that I am not going to be a completely terrible
teacher in the future. I know I still have a lot to learn and this lesson was not perfect by far, it still felt good to
have everything go as planned and to see concrete evidence of my students learning as a result. Before this
semester, I had never heard of powerful social studies and growing up, my experience learning social studies
has been less than stellar. Now, at the end of the semester, after learning all that I have in this class and after
teaching a successful social studies lesson, I feel confident and comfortable that I can change the way a lot of
people think about social studies. In my future classroom, students will not dread our social studies block,
rather they will be engaged in powerful social studies experiences that help them make sense of the world
around them!

Bibliography

“A Song for the Horse Nation” (2013, January 7). Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. Retrieved
from http://nmai.si.edu/static/exhibitions/horsenation/index.html

Bafumo, M. E., & Noel, A. M. (2014). Using Technology Supported Strategies to Improve Pre-Service Teacher
Preparation in Social Studies. Canadian Journal Of Action Research, 15(1), 40-49.

Baker, W. B. (2004). Healing Power of Horses. Irvine California: A Division of Bowtie Press, Inc.

Yolen, J. & Moser, B. (1990). Sky Dogs. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers