Popplet in Social Studies

On the advice of M. Little, we as a group downloaded the Popplet application. I realized that this application would work well on my lesson on using context clues during our reading of ancient Indian civilizations. Students could easily create webs of their understanding of the unknown words that appear in the reading by webbing the context clues provided, the meaning of the word based on the context clues, and finally an image or drawing of the word or its meaning.

My lesson and how I used the Popplet application goes as follows:

Lesson: Indus River Valley Civilization

Aim: Using context clues to help us learn information about life in the Indus River Valley.

Materials: Copied page of “The Indus River Valley” taken from Ancient India by Teacher Created Resources and iPads.

Do Now: Vocabulary Review – Remove the word that does not belong in the set.

1. Christianity / Hinduism / Communism / Islam
2. Indus Valley / Mohenjo-Daro/Babylon/Sumer
3. Indus River/ Arabian Sea / Indus Plain / Bay of Bengal
4. Aryans / Mesopotamians / Mohenjo-Daro / Egyptians

Mini Lesson: 1) Describe and provide examples of different types of context clues.

• definition
• synonym or antonym
• examples
• restatement

2) Model using context clues for the word “destructive” and create a web of this word using the application Popplet.

Guided Practice: Together we will continue to read the next paragraph and use the context clues to define the word “flourished.”

Independent Work: Continue reading the text on your own and pull out words that are unknown to you and use the Popplet application on the iPad to create a web that displays the type of context clue provided, the meaning of the word, and an image/symbol that represents the word.

Share: Students will pair up and share their Popplet created webs with a neighbor at their table. Selected students will then share their Popplet created webs with the whole class.

Summary: How did using context clues help us learn about the Indus Valley Civilization?