Dialogue and Colonial Times...killing two birds

We have been working on dialogue in class, so I thought I would tie it in to our studies on colonial life with this fun little project (that could be adapted to really any unit of study...we just happened to be working on the colonies :) )

So let's see...how to best explain this.  We started with looking at the various clothing that the colonial people would wear.  There is this AMAZING site from Colonial Williamsburg (that a 4th grade colleague pointed out) that is chalk full of information about the time period.  I used the part about what the different people wore at the time.  This is an interactive website where you actually get to dress members of society. (click on the blue link above to go directly to the site) We did this together, with me on the board, and them choosing the clothing.  The LOVED it.  Really, it was quite fun!  I also had them fill in a circle map with all the clothing as we were going so that they had a record of what each piece was called.  You can grab the Circle Map here. On a side note, the Colonial Williamsburg site has a fantastic teacher forum to join, which has even MORE lesson plans.  It is worth it (and free) to sign up. 

Then, to help them really grasp our dialogue studies (in which we used some workbook pages and lessons from our Basal), I asked them to think of a realistic scenario that would occur between two people living in Colonial times.  It could be a father and son harvesting rye, or a man and woman from the gentry at a social gathering.  Whatever they wanted.   Again from the Williamsburg site, I printed out a list of terms that would have been common for people to say back then (ie: 'Twas a good morning, or Hello, cousin, how are thee today?)  Using these phrases, I asked the kids to create a dialogue between the two people within that given scenario.  I got that off the teacher forum section...you have to be a member to access it.  Again, it is free (and no, they aren't asking me to say this...it just really is good ;) ) 

Oh my!   What fun they had trying to put the phrases into action.  My English Learners struggled with this, but in the end, they were able to create something that made sense and worked for the colonial times.

Next, using the circle maps of clothing they created earlier, the students drew the two people, wearing "authentic" clothing.  Placing them on a background, they wrote their dialogue in between the two people on a dialogue bubble.  Here is the final result.

This isn't complete, but you get the idea.

All in all, they had a good time doing this...and we put quite a few standards and subjects together!  Win-win for all.