Seminole Housing (Chickees)

DESCRIPTORS

Curriculum Areas: Writing, Culture, and Social Studies

Recommended Levels: Primary

Time Frame: 2 days (45 minute lessons each day)

Tribal Affiliation: Seminole Tribe

Geographic Location: Southeast

Developed by: Jessica Cohen, Lottie Jim, Leroy King, Renee Morales, Celesta Osceola, Lenora Roberts and Lee Zepeda

Email addresses for further questions: www.semtribe.com and tribune@semtribe.com

Date lesson was developed: July 24, 2001

American Indian Standards:

Language and Literacy

Standard 1: Listen for meaning and gain information from spoken English and a Native language.

Standard 2: Listen to Indian stories told in the oral tradition, comprehend their teachings and be able to retell them.

Standard 11: Use different forms of writing to communicate.

Social Studies

Standard 1: Culture

American Indian Art

Standard 1.1: Interpersonal Communication

Standard 2.2: Products of Culture

INSTRUCTION

Goal: To learn about and appreciate Seminole housing (chickees)

Behavioral Objectives: Students will:

• Participate in teacher-lead discussion of chickees.
• Create a chickee book.
• Write a description of their belongings in a chickee.

Prior Knowledge Needed:

• Demonstrate the expressive language necessary to describe the characteristics of a chickee.
• Use scissors.
• Use written language in an expressive form.

Materials and Resources Needed:

• Scissors
• Writing paper
• Poster of chickee (see attached)

• Pencils
• Crayons
• Book: Johnson, Dolores. The Seminole Diary: Remembrance of a Slave. NY: Macmillan, 1994.
• Computer with internet access

Culture Content and Strategies:

• Identify chickees.
• Listen to story, The Seminole Diary: Remembrance of a Slave by Dolores Johnson.
• View the website www.semtribe.com.

Lesson Summary and Performance Tasks:

The students will sit in a group and the teacher will read the story, The Seminole Diary: Remembrance of a Slave to the class. The teacher will focus the students’ attention on Seminole housing of the past, especially the chickee. The following day, the teacher will post a picture of a chickee so the students can become familiar with it. The teacher will initiate a discussion with the students to have them describe the chickee shown on the poster. Following the discussion, the students will construct a chickee booklet with illustrations that they have drawn and scanned or drawn with a computer paint program. This booklet will be in the shape of a chickee. In the booklet, the students will write a short story that begins: “In my chickee, I have….” They will write a description of their belongings in the chickee.

Assessment:

• Completed chickee booklets
• Participated in class discussion (checklist)

EXTENSION

Technology Integration:

• Scan picture of chickee

• Use paint program to paint a picture of a chickee
• Use students’ work on school’s website

Enrichment/Remediation:

The teacher could have individual students add more sentences to their chickee booklet. Students could take a field trip to a local chickee building work site to watch them build chickees. The class could take a trip to Ah-Tha-Thi-Ki Museum to see actual photos of Seminole chickees from long ago.

Teacher Reflections

To be added by the user

SEMINOLE CHICKEE