College students create Mosaic Museum social studies lessons
Dec. 29—A trove of fascinating history and science lessons can be found on Jekyll Island, and a recent class project at College of Coastal Georgia will bring these resources to local teachers.
Claire Hughes, an education professor at the college, asked her social studies methods class to design lessons for Glynn County Schools and the Mosaic Museum on Jekyll.
The students presented their final lesson plans at the end of fall semester.
"It's a wonderful connection and collaboration with CCGA, Glynn County and the Mosaic Museum," Hughes said.
The idea for the project came from a discussion between Hughes and Cathy Pittman, social studies and science coordinator for Glynn County Schools, during which they marveled over the large amount of history that can be found on Jekyll.
Pittman has worked with local teachers to make "bitmoji lessons," and she suggested the college students create these interactive online learning spaces using materials available through the Mosaic Museum and other Jekyll resources.
"One of the things that absolutely fascinated me ... is this concept of a bitmoji classroom, which was a fill in during the pandemic, and a lot of teachers have now bought into it as a strategy to engage kids providing enrichment and providing instruction," Hughes said.
Hughes reviewed with her class the social studies lesson standards in Georgia before taking the class on a field trip to the Mosaic.
The students later traveled around the island to other locations like the historic district and St. Andrews beach.
They were tasked with creating a social studies lesson that used Jekyll as a background through bitmoji technology. The lessons were made for children in K-8.
Topics included the Georgia Sea Turtle Center, the experience of African Americans with the segregated beaches of St. Andrews, the history of General James Oglethorpe's fight with the Spanish and more.
In a lesson focused on map identification skills, Madison Fu incorporated into her bitmoji classroom links to videos about Jekyll history and tourism and about map making.
In another lesson, a virtual picture of Gen. Oglethorpe takes a teacher or student to a primary source of Oglethorpe's writing. Icons of bookshelves lead to read-alouds.
"And then the plants that are next to each book on the shelf link to a slide with discussion questions," said Emily Hanson, who created the lesson.
Hughes said her students put in a significant amount of work to create these virtual lessons, all while preparing for their student teaching in the upcoming semester.
"The idea is to provide Glynn County with a bank of resources for social studies lessons that capitalize on where we are," Hughes said. "We're building off of our students' background knowledge, our students' location. We are in an incredibly rich historical area with Jekyll just right there."
