Stacey Venzel and Jessica Fobert’s fourth-grade students at PBE spent a week before the winter break building wigwams and longhouses in villages that represented the environments of the Algonquins and Iroquois, two Native American tribes that battled for territory in New York.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For this social studies STEM project, students included rivers and farmland in their villages as well as tools, canoes, and fires that were integral to the daily lives of these tribes. One group even included a shaman healing hut for the spiritual leader of the tribe as well as a wampam belt that was typical of the clothing worn by these indigenous people.

At the end of the week, each group presented their structures providing historical evidence to support the reasoning behind why they included each cultural aspect.

It was an amazing learning experience for the students to learn this part of history from their own state.