Students created their own alphabet on a piece of paper. Next, we made homemade clay. Then, students used their alphabet to inscribe a fact they learned about ancient Mesopotamia on their clay tablets and share it with others. Finally, students created a 2D product so their work could be displayed.

The class decided to make a book for the final product to share with the 6-year old class. They chose 4 areas to research, Culture, Economics, travel, and History. Throughout their research they were looking for ways that culture was linked to the environment, and examples of cultural diffusion. They found examples in culture, ie: foods that have traveled throughout the world, in Economics, ie: companies that have entered many countries such as McDonalds, and in travel, ie: the types of experiences that may be common around the world, ie: on and off tour buses, hotel companies, etc. These findings were shared in their books to show how we are connected with multiple places around the world.

These are connections students made between the events that tell the history of Illinois.

We interviewed members of our community to learn how innovation has changed over time.

Students made posters to encourage people to conserve resources in English and Spanish.

Our students "immigrated" from different countries and made a scrapbook page about their homeland. They had to include a place/landmark, food, the culture, and a tradition of that country. They also had to provide a caption for each picture to tell us what was being represented in each picture. We took pictures of each student, removed the background, and strunk them down to be able to put themselves in pictures found online.

Our first graders ended their unit, "Our Special Location," by creating a mural. Along the way, students learned about murals in the Austin area and heard from two artists, including a successful muralist. Our students worked closely with our art teacher to represent different aspects of their special location, which was our school (Trinity). We had a big presentation in chapel with six students explaining what they'd learned along the way in this unit. And then, of course, we pulled back the curtain on the stage and revealed the finished mural by our first graders. It was a wonderful way to bring families in to celebrate and witness all that our students had learned in this valuable social studies unit.

These posters are students' displays created after researching different social groups in the Colonial Era.

For the migration and movement unit, students were given free choice to create an inquiry product. Some students created presentations on Google Slides while others created posters and books. The pictures attached include the inquiry wall I posted for students to assist in writing their action statements. Some examples of statements are "We will design a book in order to teach our community to celebrate diverse cultures;" "We will build the alphabet in our cultures to teach the school different foods;" "We will produce a guidebook to educate younger students about places around the world." The pictures of the projects include the book teaching about cultures. Students included the alphabet and foods from the culture. Another group made a poster of some of the traditional foods from the cultures they chose using the alphabet. They loved these projects and were so proud of their finished products!

These are connections students made between the events that tell the history of Illinois.

We started this Inquiry with our Investigation questions which we have now started to answer as we continue to work through this inquiry. This footsteps visual is great to show students what they are learning and display these so they can be proud of their work. We are in the middle of Module 5 in this inquiry and are about to begin our present footsteps on our path to equality and justice.

These are connections students made between the events that tell the history of Illinois.