Colonial Village: Upping the Worksheet Rigor

Here is the final product.  Read on for the how to!  :)

We are knee deep in our Colonies unit and I thought I would share a teeny little project we did to up the rigor of a social studies worksheet.

The worksheet (which came from this book, History Pockets: Colonial America, Grades 4-6+ , that I do like and recommend) asked the students to cut out the buildings that would be found in a typical Colonial village and place them on a sheet of paper.  They could then add the information cut out and, viola, a Colonial village with "research".

Boring.

Simple.

Base-level learning.

So to up the rigor a bit, we read the research section from the worksheet.  I gave them another informative essay about colonial villages.  We cross referenced the two materials and took note of the most important ideas (ie: what buildings were vital to a village, where were they placed, etc...)

Then, using a coordinate plane that I made up for the kids, I had them plan out their own village.  They drew a basic home, meeting house, the village square, etc...as well as a river and roads.  The kids needed to make sure that these buildings were from the research, and rectangular.

This is a drawing one of the students made, based on the research that we did in class.

This is 1/4 of a sheet of paper.  Each building got its own workspace.

The students then listed the coordinates of each building, measured each as well as found the area and perimeter.  (and since most measurements were fractional, they had to practice adding and multiplying mixed numbers....getting extra standards in there!)

So that is that.  A little way to make a simple worksheet just a little bit more rigorous.

Here is one completed "package".  Both the village plan and the math can be seen.

Another up close example.  You can see that the other math sheets are behind the first.

You can grab the coordinate grid and math organizer here.

What is something you have done to make a worksheet more intense?